JAY POV —
THE PARK, PAST MIDNIGHT
The park was empty in the way only cities learn how to be.
Streetlights cast pale circles on cracked stone paths. The trees stood still, leaves barely stirring, like even the wind didn't want to intrude on whatever was about to happen here.
I saw him by the fountain.
Keifer Watson.
Not the heir.
Not the name that haunted boardrooms.
Just the boy I once loved standing under a flickering light like he didn't know whether he deserved to exist in it.
He turned when he heard my footsteps.
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then he walked toward me.
Three steps.
Four.
And then his legs gave out.
He dropped to his knees in front of me like gravity had finally caught up to him.
The sound of it—bone against stone—made my chest seize.
"Keifer—"
"Please," he said, breath shaking, head bowed. "Please don't stop me. If you do, I won't get through it."
I stayed.
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
"I know you know about my mother," he said hoarsely. "But I don't think anyone ever told you what it felt like."
My heart started to pound.
"I was fourteen," he whispered. "She stood in front of me."
My breath caught painfully.
"She told me to look away."
The world narrowed.
"Kaizer didn't hesitate," Keifer said. "He wanted me to see. Wanted it burned into me. Wanted me to understand what power looks like when it doesn't pretend to be kind."
My vision blurred.
"She died in front of me," he said, voice breaking completely now. "Because she chose me over Watson. Over money. Over every man in that family."
I sank to my knees in front of him without realizing it.
"She knew they'd come for the inheritance," he continued. "The elders. The head families. All of them hated the fact that I was named heir. Hated that my grandfather trusted a child more than grown men."
He laughed bitterly.
"They wanted a figurehead they could control. I was a problem."
I swallowed hard.
"Kaizer wasn't supported," Keifer said. "Not by the Watsons. Not by his sons. He was never respected."
His hands trembled.
"He just wanted the money. The name. The control. And when he couldn't take it from the family—he tried to break it out of me."
I knew this part.
But hearing it from his mouth felt different.
"I was already marked," he said. "Already dangerous just by breathing."
He finally looked up at me.
"And then there was you."
My chest tightened.
"At first… yes," he admitted. "It was a plan."
The words hurt even though I'd known them before.
"I was supposed to make you fall in love. And then disappear. Break you. Use you to get to Aries because I blamed him for everything before and to show him what happens when you cross Watson interests."
My nails dug into my palms.
"But it didn't work," he whispered.
I said nothing.
"Because you weren't just… leverage," he said. "You were a storm."
A sob tore out of him.
"You helped Section E when no one else did. You listened when they were spiraling. You showed up. You fought for them. You made them better."
He shook his head.
"And I watched the plan rot from the inside because I was falling for you faster than I could stop it."
My throat burned.
"They fell for you too," he said. "Not romantically—but completely. You became family."
He laughed weakly.
"We all forgot the plan existed."
Silence settled between us.
"Everything was a mess for all of us but whenever you were with me I forgot everything and the only thing left in my mind was that I loved you and then the Watsons noticed," he said softly.
My stomach dropped.
"They realized you weren't just someone I cared about—you were someone who they could use to destroy me if you were hurt."
He looked at me, eyes shining.
"They thought they could use you."
My blood went cold.
"That's when I panicked," he admitted. "That's when I told you the truth about the plan...."
I remembered.
The way his voice shook.
The way he wouldn't meet my eyes.
"I thought if you hated me a d weren't near me" he whispered, "they'd lose interest."
Tears slid down my face.
"I thought if I broke my own heart first, I could keep you alive and safe. "
My breath hitched.
"That's why I pushed you away," he said. "Not because I stopped loving you Or because you were a plan"
He swallowed hard.
"But because loving you was painting a target on your back.I had to protect you and my brother's I couldn't bear to even think about losing even one of you by there filthy hands..."
I reached for him then.
Grabbed his face in my hands.
"You don't get to decide that alone," I said, voice shaking. "You don't get to sacrifice us without letting me choose."
"I know," he sobbed. "And I will regret that for the rest of my life but i couldn't risk it Jay because I knew you as soon as I told you,you would have meddled and that would have cost you your life Jay and I couldn't..."
He leaned into my touch like he'd been starving for it.
"And the pills?" I asked softly.
His shoulders slumped looked at me with a bit of shock...
"After you left," he admitted. "That's when they started."
My heart cracked.
"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Couldn't breathe. Every quiet moment turned into your voice leaving."
He laughed hollowly.
"They told me it would help. That it would keep me functional."
His eyes met mine.
"I just wanted it to stop hurting."
I wrapped my arms around him fully then.
He broke.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just shaking, silent sobs pressed into my shoulder like he was afraid the world would hear him.
"I love you,Jay Jay" he whispered into my collarbone. "I never stopped. I don't think I ever will."
I closed my eyes.
"I don't know how to forgive you," I admitted. "I don't know how to unlearn the pain."
He pulled back just enough to look at me.
"I don't need forgiveness tonight," he said. "I just need you to know the truth."
I cupped his face again.
"The truth hurts," I whispered. "But lying hurt worse."
We stayed there.
Two people kneeling on cold stone.
Surrounded by ghosts.
Then slowly—carefully—he leaned forward.
Not demanding.
Not desperate.
Asking.
I didn't pull away.
Our foreheads touched first.
Breaths tangled.
And when his lips finally met mine—
It wasn't fire.
It wasn't hunger.
It was grief and love and years of words that never made it out.
Soft.
Trembling.
Real.
I kissed him back.
Because love doesn't disappear just because it gets wounded.
And when we pulled apart, tears still falling—
I rested my forehead against his.
"We're not completely broken keifer...," I said.
"I know," he replied.
"But we're honest now," I whispered.
He nodded.
And under the quiet sky, with everything broken and nothing promised—
We chose truth over silence.
For the first time.
---
KEIFER — MANILA
AFTER MIDNIGHT
The park was too quiet.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
No traffic bleeding through the trees. No stray laughter. No city pulse. Just the sound of water moving somewhere nearby and the faint scrape of shoes against gravel as I walked back and forth like an animal waiting for a verdict.
I'd said okay to her text without thinking.
My body knew before my mind did.
If she asked me to meet her at the edge of the world, I would've gone.
I had been running for six years.
Tonight, my legs finally gave out.
She stood there when I turned—still, unreadable, real in a way memory never is. Not the girl I left. Not the ghost I carried. Someone forged by loss and survival and distance.
Seeing her felt like being caught mid-lie.
My knees hit the ground before I understood what was happening.
Not strategy. Not performance.
Collapse.
It was the same way they had hit the floor when I was fourteen and the world taught me what blood cost.
I didn't look at her at first.
I couldn't.
Because if I did, everything I'd buried would surface at once, and I wasn't sure my heart could survive that kind of pressure.
The image came anyway.
My mother's back.
Her body between mine and Kaizer's rage.
Her voice steady even as fear shook through it, telling me not to look away because men like him thrived on silence.
I had watched her die.
Watched the blood darken the floor of a house that was supposed to protect us.
Watched my father's face as he did it—not angry, not grieving, just greedy.
Ownership without love.
That was the inheritance he believed in.
At fourteen, I became the heir to a name people wanted but didn't trust in my hands.
The elders hated it.
A child with witnesses. A boy with memory. A future they couldn't rewrite.
They wanted me small.
Controlled.
Disposable.
My grandfather's faith in me made me dangerous.
My mother's love made me untouchable—until Kaizer proved otherwise.
Power taught early leaves scars that never heal right.
By the time I met Jay, the plan was already alive.
Not mine at first.
A suggestion. A contingency. A way to keep leverage human.
She was supposed to be a weakness.
She became the reason everything fell apart.
I remembered watching her laugh with Section E, how she slipped into their chaos like she'd always belonged there. How she saw them—not as messes to fix, but people to stand beside.
They weren't supposed to love her.
None of us were.
But she made it impossible not to.
She became family without asking permission.
And that terrified the people watching me from the shadows of boardrooms and bloodlines.
Because she wasn't just someone I loved.
She was someone they could hurt.
The realization had landed like ice in my veins.
Using her would've been easy.
Destroying her would've been expected.
Protecting her meant burning everything else.
So I chose the ugliest option.
I let her believe I was cruel.
I let her believe she was a tool.
I let her walk away thinking I'd planned her pain from the beginning.
Because hatred, I'd learned, kept people alive longer than love ever did.
The moment she left, the silence moved in.
Not quiet.
Pressure.
The kind that crawls inside your skull and never shuts up.
Every room echoed with her absence.
Every choice tasted like betrayal.
The pills came later.
Not because I wanted numbness.
Because guilt is loud, and sleep is impossible when every dream ends with blood on the floor and her face turning away.
They said the medication would help me function.
They didn't tell me it would hollow me out.
Six years of breathing without living.
Six years of carrying love like a crime scene I couldn't revisit.
And now she was here.
Close enough to touch.
Kneeling in front of me, not towering, not accusing—meeting me where I'd finally fallen.
Her presence shattered the last wall I had left.
I felt myself break in a way pills never reached.
Not dramatic.
Just honest.
Everything I'd done to protect her had still hurt her.
Everything I'd sacrificed had still cost her.
And she was still here.
Not forgiving.
Not forgetting.
But listening.
That was worse.
That was mercy.
Her arms came around me and the world cracked open.
I cried like the fourteen-year-old who'd learned too early that love dies violently.
Like the eighteen-year-old who'd been told power mattered more than people.
Like the man who had loved one woman so deeply he'd chosen to become her villain just to keep her alive.
I realized then that I hadn't survived the last six years.
I'd endured them.
And she—standing, breathing, choosing to be present—was the first thing that made survival feel like something else entirely.
Hope scared me more than enemies ever had.
Because hope meant I could lose her again.
And this time, I wasn't sure I'd live through it.
But when her forehead rested against mine, when her breath shook the same way mine did, one truth burned through everything else:
I had loved her from the moment the plan died.
I loved her when she left.
I loved her in every empty year that followed.
And if loving her again destroyed me—
At least this time, it would be honest.
At least this time, I would fall facing her...