THIRTEEN
802 Words
🕊️ Chapter 13 – Secrets That Return
Althea left without looking back. Every step she took down the grand staircase was heavy—yet with each one, she felt a strange sense of freedom pressing against the weight in her chest. Her heart ached, not from fear, but from a truth she had never asked to know.
When she finally stepped outside the mansion gates, the cold night breeze greeted her. She paused, inhaled deeply, and gazed at the distant city lights.
“So this is what love feels like,” she whispered softly. “Beautiful… until it burns.”
Inside the mansion, Xavier stood still, his eyes fixed on the door where Althea had disappeared.
“Lea, what have you done?” he muttered.
Lea laughed—low and bitter. “What you forced me to do, Xavier. Did you really think you could bury the past just by changing your name? By hiding your guilt behind walls of luxury?”
She walked toward him, each step echoing like the blows of a long-forgotten past.
“I gave you everything,” Lea said, her voice trembling. “The company, my loyalty, even myself. And what did I get in return? A contract that erased me. A paper that turned me into a ghost.”
Xavier said nothing, but inside him burned a fire that had long been caged.
“You don’t understand,” he finally spoke in a low tone. “I did it to protect you. If I hadn’t signed that agreement, we would’ve lost everything—the Madrigal Group, our name, the life you have now.”
“Life?” Lea laughed bitterly. “Is this what you call life, Xavier? Watching you replace me with a woman who has no idea about your sins?”
Xavier turned away, staring out the window.
“She didn’t deserve to be part of this mess. She had nothing to do with our past.”
But outside, as Althea walked alone along the dim streets, different thoughts ran through her mind.
She wasn’t crying anymore.
She wasn’t hiding.
Every word she’d heard from Lea pierced through her heart like nails—but with every wound, she found a new kind of strength.
And in her silence, a decision began to form.
She would not leave without a fight.
She would not be just another woman consumed by Xavier Madrigal’s power.
The next morning, she returned to the company—not as a wife, but as a woman ready to expose the truth.
The office was quiet when she walked in. Employees exchanged glances; they knew something had happened.
She marched straight to the conference room, where Xavier sat with the board of directors.
“Mrs. Madrigal—” one of them started, but she cut him off.
“Miss Reyes,” she corrected firmly. “And I want everyone here to hear the truth.”
Xavier turned, startled. “Althea, this isn’t the place—”
“No, Xavier,” she interrupted. “This is exactly the place.”
She stepped forward and placed an envelope on the table.
“Everyone in this room deserves to know the truth behind the company they serve—the truth behind the man they call Chairman Madrigal.”
She opened the envelope. Inside was a document signed by Lea Sandoval Madrigal.
Silence filled the entire room.
All eyes turned to Xavier, who could not utter a single word.
“Do you call that business?” Althea’s voice trembled, but her tone was resolute. “Because to me, that’s betrayal disguised as sacrifice.”
Lea, seated at the far end of the table, smiled faintly. “You’re braver than I thought,” she said. “But you have no idea what you’ve just started.”
Althea met her gaze with an icy smile. “Then maybe it’s time someone finishes what you both started.”
She stood, leaving the documents on the table, and walked out.
As she exited the room, she could feel eyes following her, whispers rippling in her wake—but she no longer cared.
For the first time, she wasn’t running from the story. She was writing it.
Outside the building, sunlight greeted her face.
And for the first time since the contract began, Althea felt that she was once again in control of her own destiny.
Meanwhile, across the city, Lea sat at her desk, gazing at an old photograph of the three of them—herself, Xavier, and Althea. A cold smile found on her lips.
“Let’s see, Mrs. Madrigal,” she whispered. “How long you’ll stay strong… when the ghosts of the past return.”
And as she stepped out of her office, the air seemed to still—
as if a storm was about to begin.
- Writer
