The words fell like drops of poison on the young woman’s already wounded heart, who had learned to find solace in her grandmother’s books and the sweets she stole from the pantry when no one was looking.
Don Patricio Vázquez de Coronado, a 60-year-old man whose gray hair spoke of decades spent building the family empire. Daughter of Opulence
He gazed at his daughter from his office window with a mixture of disappointment and cold calculation.
His other five children had made advantageous marriages that had expanded both the family’s fortune and political influence.
But Jimena, his only daughter, had become a burden that grew with each year she spent unmarried.
The night of the grand ball of the social season had arrived as a last desperate chance.
