The city lights shimmered against the glass towers of Cebu, each window reflecting a thousand untold stories. Elena Cruz stood at the edge of her family's balcony, the silk of her evening gown whispering against the marble floor. From this height, the world looked small—cars like ants, people like shadows. Yet she felt smaller still, trapped in a life scripted long before she had a chance to write her own lines.
Her father's voice echoed in her mind: "You were born to lead, Elena. To inherit, not to toil."
But what did inheritance mean if it came without struggle? Without the chance to prove she was more than a surname, more than a fortune?
She closed her eyes, imagining herself not as the heiress of Cruz Holdings, but as an ordinary young woman—someone who could walk into an office unnoticed, someone who could earn respect through effort, not entitlement.
Tomorrow, she would begin her masquerade. Tomorrow, Elena Cruz would vanish, and in her place, a humble applicant named Elena Ramirez would step into Velasco Enterprises.
She did not know that fate was already waiting for her there, in the form of Adrian Velasco—the man whose gaze could unravel her defenses, and whose heart carried wounds deeper than hers.
And so began a story not of riches, but of masks. Not of power, but of love.