Surrender

DISCLAIMER: This book is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions, and events are fictional or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The story delves into difficult realities faced by its characters, including s****l coercion, economic exploitation, and psychological distress. These themes are depicted to explore the complexities of survival, agency, and inequality, not to romanticize or excuse harm. Due to the sensitive nature of certain scenes, reader discretion is advised. PROLOGUE The sound of my keyboard filled the small office, steady and uneven, like a heartbeat trying to find its rhythm again. The tapping wasn’t graceful, more like hesitant stutters mixed with bursts of forced confidence, the soundtrack of someone convincing herself she still knew what she was doing. It was past eight, but the world outside my window hadn’t fully woken up yet. Makati was still half-dreaming, the streets humming faintly with traffic, the skyline wrapped in the early light of morning. Everything looked softer at this hour, like even the city hadn’t decided who it wanted to be today. From my desk, I could see it clearly, the tower that would change everything. Almeda Towers. It rose above the rest with that quiet arrogance buildings get when they know they were built for people with power. Its glass caught the sunrise just right, turning gold at the edges the kind of glow that tricks you into thinking something holy lives there. The name glared back at me from the screen, sitting innocently in the signature block of an email draft. Horizon Foundation Headquarters. Level 18, Almeda Towers, Ortigas Center. Words meant to be harmless. Words meant to be routine. But my body reacted before my brain caught up, like muscle memory had been waiting years just to flinch. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Not typing. Not deleting. Just trembling between decisions, which honestly felt like my brand. I had rewritten this message three times. Too formal. Too casual. Too revealing. Finally, I’d stripped it down to what it was supposed to be, a professional inquiry. A request for a meeting. A journalist reaching out to a foundation about a feature on education for underprivileged children in Sagada. That was all it needed to be. Nothing more. The kind of email any respectable reporter could send with zero emotional damage attached. And yet, staring at the name, Almeda, something in my chest tightened, slow and sharp, like a memory I wasn’t ready to touch. A memory with teeth. A memory that never asked permission before biting. I shouldn’t have cared. It was just a building. Just an address. Just another project. That’s what I told myself, anyway. But lies like that taste metallic, and the bitterness lingered. But the truth was, I’d spent years running from that name. From what it meant. From who it belonged to. From everything it still had the power to break. I pressed my palms flat on the desk, grounding myself. The hum of the air-conditioning filled the silence. My half-empty coffee sat cold beside me, forgotten. My reflection on the laptop screen looked composed, professional even, but my pulse betrayed me. It thudded fast, reckless, like it remembered a story I tried so hard to forget. Almeda Towers.The universe, it seemed, had a cruel sense of humor. I hit send before I could change my mind. The email whooshed away, final and irreversible. No turning back, no unsending, no hiding. Then I leaned back, exhaling slowly. My eyes drifted again toward the skyline, toward the gleaming tower in the distance. It watched me like it knew something I didn’t. Makati moved on as it always did: fast, unbothered, relentless. Jeepneys rattled. Cars groaned. People hustled. The city refused to pause just because my past had decided to resurrect itself. But for me, in that small, sterile office filled with the ghosts of old stories and unwritten ones, time stood still. The air thickened, the walls felt closer, and the familiar ache settled in my ribs. I didn’t know it then, but that single email, that small act of courage or foolishness, would be the beginning of the one story I never meant to write. The story of how I found him again. And how, despite everything I promised myself, I would break all over once more.