Producers of sugar and molasses made this region a very wealthy place for decades; Among them is the Monguaba Factory, owned by the richest and most traditional family in Greenville, the Mendonça e Albuquerque.
Fifteen years later, a stranger named Teobaldo Faruk, arrives in town and is enamored with Eulalia; however, she is still waiting for Zé Leandro.
Maria Altiva, Pedro Afonso's wife, humiliates Teobaldo, saying that a stranger without a penny is not worth approaching a Mendonça e Albuquerque.
Teobaldo vows revenge and discovers that Pedro Afonso, a gambling addict, owes money to several people to whom he signed promissory notes.
One day, Zé Leandro returns, ready to flee with Eulalia and Helena and start a new life with them with the fortune he accrued from mining.
Theobalds finds out and decides to take action: he buys all of Pedro Afonso's notes and becomes his sole creditor and therefore owner of all his possessions.
Knowing that Pedro Afonso would be unable to pay the debt with money, he requires a different type of payment: the funeral will be at the mansion of the Mendonça e Albuquerque, and Helena will marry him in the future.
Twenty-eight years ago, Altiva's sister, Santa Maria (also known as Santinha), then a teenager, shared a romance with the owner of the British Club, Richard da Silva Taylor.
Shocked, Santinha proposes to bring the baby home, pretending it was the son of a mill worker who abandoned him for not having the means to sustain it.
Altiva reluctantly agrees, but forces her sister to hide the truth and swear that if someone is suspicious, Santinha will become Artemio's mother.
Hercules runs from creditors threatening to kill him and his family as he is secretly married to the niece of Florence, Ines, with whom he has two children.