It was a regular Saturday afternoon.
Bella was lying on the floor, drawing on scratch paper with the scented pens Andi had bought during her last "budget shopping that wasn't really budget." Gesly was watching anime reruns while pretending not to read the comments on Alonzo's latest post with his sister. And Andi? She was in the kitchen, frying lumpiang shanghai in full home attire—oversized shirt, hair in a bun held by a pencil, and slippers with a broken strap.
Then—ding-dong.
Just one sound of the doorbell, but in a house that rarely had visitors, it felt like a warhorn.
Bella stood up. "Ate, someone's here!"
"Can you check? Maybe it's Kuya Alon—"
"No, Ate. There are bodyguards."
Andi froze.
She walked to the gate, still holding her spatula. And there it was—a black luxury car. A driver in uniform. Two men in suits.
And stepping out, dressed in a crisp white barong and black slacks, was a man she hadn't seen in months.
Lolo.
No grand announcement was needed. The air shifted on its own.
"Good afternoon, Andrea." His voice was calm. Regal. Not angry—but heavy. "I was in the area. Thought I'd visit my grandchildren."
Andi glanced down at herself—shirt with a 'Pizza is Life' print, an oil stain on the collar.
No choice. She had to summon her CEO energy despite looking like a DOST scholar on break.
She opened the gate fully and smiled—polite, but sharp.
"Would you like to come in, Lolo? We have… shanghai."
The house wasn't grand, but it was clean.
Lolo Dela Vuega stepped inside and looked around with quiet curiosity. Not judgmental—just observant. As if memorizing every corner.
Bella curtsied. Yes—an actual curtsy. Andi taught her how to be extra.
"Hello, Lolo."
"Hello, Isabella. My, you've grown."
Gesly appeared next, frozen halfway through a sip of Coke. "Lolo," he nodded.
"Gesly. Your bruises healed?"
"…How did you know?" he asked.
"Your sister updates me. In her own… language."
Andi, just entering the room, nearly choked. "You saw that email?"
"I did. Quite… passionate." He smirked. "Your subject line was 'GENG GENG – Update on the Children.' Very creative."
They sat around the table. Lumpiang shanghai, fried rice, iced tea in mismatched mugs.
Lolo, of course, ate like he was in a five-star hotel—fork and spoon held neatly, movements slow and deliberate, napkin perfectly on his lap. As if even ketchup had no right to drip on his plate.
"You've done well, Andrea," he said finally, cutting through the silence. "I expected… more chaos."
"Give it time," Andi muttered. "My siblings are very creative."
He chuckled softly. "I wanted to ask—are you open to transferring them to a private school now? Somewhere more… aligned with their surname?"
Andi put down her spoon. "With all due respect, Lolo… I think they're better off learning how to ride a jeep and squeeze into a school canteen than worrying about golf club memberships."
Gesly paused mid-bite. Bella blinked.
Silence.
Then—
Lolo leaned back in his chair. "Spoken like your mother."
And for the first time that afternoon, Andi smiled—genuine and soft.
When he left, he placed something in Andi's hand.
Not money.
A small black key. To a safety deposit box.
"Just in case I'm gone before you reach my age," he said. "You'll know what to do."
And with that, he returned to his car. Quiet power. One last glance before the engine purred and he disappeared down the street.
---
The last time he saw his daughter alive, she was screaming at him.
"I'm not a toy, Papa. I'm not a doll in your house!"
Her voice had echoed through the marble halls of their ancestral home, bouncing off portraits that stared silently down from the walls. She wore jeans and slippers—slippers, in his house—as if she was already shedding her role as a Dela Vuega before she even walked out the door.
"I love him," she'd said. "He fixes cars, Papa. He smells like grease and oil, and he can't even pronounce 'charcuterie' properly. But he makes me laugh. And he treats me like a person—not an asset."
He remembered his reply.
"You'll crawl back when you get tired of poverty. And I won't open the gate."
God, what a cruel thing to say.
But back then, pride mattered more than people. Legacy weighed heavier than love.
She never crawled back.
Instead, she disappeared into a life she never let him touch.
He caught glimpses, over the years—
A wedding photo she never sent. A blurry Facebook picture of her, pregnant, arms wrapped around the man he once called "a mechanic with delusions." And eventually, one photo that hit harder than any letter could.
Three children. A girl with her smile. A boy with her fire. And the eldest—Andrea. The exact mirror of who her mother was before she ran.
He thought he had time—to fix things, to write, to show up at her door and say, You were right. I was wrong. I miss you.
But then the call came.
Car accident. Both parents gone.
All that was left was guilt— And a girl with her mother's fire and her father's stubbornness.
When he saw Andrea at the funeral, he almost didn't approach. She looked so much like her mother it physically hurt.
But she met his eyes with quiet defiance. She didn't cry. She didn't bow. She simply held her siblings close, and in that moment, he saw everything his daughter had been—living on through her.
He had lost a daughter. But maybe—just maybe—he had a second chance with a granddaughter.
That's why he gave her the account. Why he never forced them to live in the mansion. Why he let her choose thrifted clothes, public schools, and ₱150 daily allowance instead of chauffeurs and imported lunchboxes.
She wasn't rejecting his wealth. She was protecting the life her mother died trying to build.
And for that, he respected her—silently, quietly—like an old man who knew that saying sorry could never bring someone back, but could at least make sure the next generation didn't grow up cold.
When he visited their home, he noticed— The lumpia wasn't fancy, but it was cooked with garlic. The iced tea wasn't brewed—it was powdered—but served in a chipped glass with love.
And when Andrea said, "They're learning more in public school than they ever would under a chandelier," he smiled.
Because in that moment, he heard his daughter's voice again.
As he sat in the backseat of his car after leaving their house, he stared at the small key in his palm—the one he'd given to Andi.
It wasn't just a safety deposit key.
It was the last piece of his daughter's life: A journal. A photo. A letter never sent. Her jewelry. Her savings.
And one sentence burned in his mind:
"If I die before we fix things, tell Papa I didn't hate him. I just wanted to be loved—without being ruled."