Chapter 9: The Mask Breaks
511 Words
For the first time in weeks, Marco Villanueva smiled.
Not out of joy — but out of certainty.
“I finally caught you,” he muttered, eyes locked on the security footage from a downtown law office.
In the grainy video, a young man — familiar frame, familiar face — was walking out of Atty. Vasquez’s office.
“Tredy Sales,” Marco whispered. “You’ve been hiding behind lawyers, dummy corporations, and black cards. But not anymore.”
He grinned darkly.
“All this time… it was you.”
---
The following day, at Gran Santiago Tech, the air was heavier than usual. Students murmured, and rumors crackled like electricity in the hallways.
Tredy felt the shift as soon as he stepped onto campus. Eyes followed him — not with curiosity, but suspicion.
He wasn’t surprised.
At lunchtime, he walked into the cafeteria and instantly felt the silence.
Marco stood in the center, phone in hand, showing students a photo from the security footage.
“This man — Tredy Sales,” Marco declared, “has been pretending to be poor, struggling, and average. But guess what? He’s a liar.”
The crowd gasped.
Marco looked straight at him. “You’ve been manipulating everyone. Hiding your money. Playing both sides.”
Tredy walked calmly to the center of the room. “Done?”
Marco sneered. “That’s it? No denial? You really thought you could stay in the shadows forever?”
Tredy looked around — at the students who once ignored him, mocked him… and now, feared him.
Then he spoke.
“I never lied,” he said. “I just didn’t flaunt what I didn’t need to.”
Marco scoffed. “You’re a fraud. You don’t deserve any of it.”
Tredy smiled faintly. “Is that why your father’s project just got blocked again? Because someone who ‘doesn’t deserve it’ bought the land beneath your empire?”
Gasps echoed across the room.
Marco’s face went pale. “You—”
Tredy cut him off. “You spent years looking down on people. Mocking them. Bullying them. Maybe it’s time someone looked down on you.”
The silence was crushing.
Then, without another word, Tredy turned and walked out, leaving Marco seething in front of a crowd that no longer laughed with him.
---
That evening, Leira sat on her bed, replaying the scene over and over.
> “Tredy’s the ghost investor? Salcor Holdings? All this time?”
She thought of all the times she’d dismissed him, the arrogance in her tone, the pity in her smile.
But now, she couldn’t stop thinking about his eyes — sharp, unreadable, powerful.
---
Meanwhile, in his penthouse office, Tredy stood by the glass window, phone in hand.
“Phase two is complete,” Atty. Vasquez reported. “You now own the majority of properties connected to Villaridge’s expansion zones.”
“Good,” Tredy replied. “Let them panic.”
He ended the call.
This wasn’t revenge.
It was strategy.
And the game had only just begun.
---
© Treloce Amaris
- Writer
