Sweet Revenge, bitter Soil

**Chapter 16: The Silent Monsoon**

The concrete cottage at the lower valley was exactly as Alejandro had promised: dry, sturdy, and entirely insulated from the cruelties of the weather. It sat on a gentle slope surrounded by wild fern trees, far away from the soot-choked perimeter of the barracks. Through the heavy rain-streaked glass of the manor’s eastern terrace, Anza could just make out its red-brick roof peaking through the gray fog of the valley.

She stood leaning heavily against the polished marble balustrade, her left leg bearing most of her weight while her splinted right knee throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. She wore a heavy, emerald-green silk robe provided by the housemaids—a garment so thick and luxurious it felt like a layer of armor meant to suffocate her. Her hands, still bound in clean white gauze, were pressed flat against the cool stone.

"He ate all of his broth this morning," a soft, hesitant voice spoke from the doorway.

Anza turned her head slowly. It was Maria, the young housemaid who had been assigned as her personal attendant. The girl held a silver tray with a fresh pot of jasmine tea, her eyes wide and anxious as she looked at Anza.

"The courier returned from the lower valley twenty minutes ago," Maria continued, stepping into the room with careful, measured steps. "He said Mang Tolits’ breathing has cleared completely. The doctor says the new medicine has stabilized his lungs. He... he asked the courier to tell you that the roof doesn't leak anymore."

A faint, bittersweet ache tightened in Anza’s chest. She looked back out at the red-brick roof in the distance. Her father was safe. He was warm. The price of his survival was currently wrapped around her body in the form of expensive silk, but as she closed her eyes, she knew she would make the same trade a thousand times over.

"Thank you, Maria," Anza whispered, her voice low and weary. "You can leave the tea."

The maid bowed quickly and set the tray down on a small mahogany table before retreating from the room, locking the heavy double doors behind her from the outside with a sharp, metallic *click*.

Anza didn't even flinch at the sound of the lock. The realization that she was a bird in a gilded cage had fully settled into her bones over the last forty-eight hours. She didn't rage against the doors anymore; she didn't scream at the walls. She was conserving her strength, letting her torn ligaments knit back together in the quiet darkness of her captivity.

The heavy rain outside suddenly grew louder, the wind whipping the dark green leaves of the surrounding acacia trees against the glass. The monsoon had fully arrived in the province, bringing with it a deep, early darkness that swallowed the hills by four o'clock in the afternoon.

The private connecting door to the study swung open.

Alejandro walked in, carrying the scent of tobacco and wet earth from his afternoon inspections at the central mill. He had discarded his formal suit jacket, wearing only a dark, charcoal-gray button-down shirt with the collar unbuttoned, revealing the hard lines of his throat. His hair was damp from the rain, and his dark, unhinged eyes immediately locked onto her figure standing by the balustrade.

He didn't speak. He walked across the room with a slow, predatory grace, his eyes never leaving hers until he stood directly behind her, his tall framework completely blocking out the light from the hallway.

He reached out, his long, powerful arms sliding around her waist from behind, pulling her back against his chest. Anza stiffened, her body instinctively resisting his touch, but Alejandro simply tightened his grip, burying his face into the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of her gogo-bark-cleansed hair mixed with the expensive soap of the manor.

"You look beautiful in green, Anza," Alejandro murmured, his voice a low, vibrating growl against her skin that sent a violent chill straight down her spine. "The color suits a woman who owns the valley."

"I own nothing here, Alejandro," Anza said, her voice freezing into an icy, dead calm that completely contrasted the frantic, rapid beating of her pulse against her ribs. She didn't try to pull away from his embrace; she knew it was useless. "Your lawyers made sure of that yesterday. I am just a piece of property listed under your assets."

Alejandro let out a soft, dark laugh against her neck, his lips brushing against her skin with a terrifying tenderness.

"You are the only asset I care about," he whispered, his large hands sliding up her ribcage until his fingers rested right beneath her chin, forcing her head back so she had no choice but to look up into his molten-gold eyes. "My mother left for Manila this morning. She took her trunks, her security details, and her pride. She will not return to this province, Anza. I have cleared the palace for you."

Anza stared at him, a deep, unsettling horror settling into her stomach as she looked at his handsome, unhinged face. He had ruined a multi-million-peso corporate alliance, stripped his own mother of her birthright, and restructured the legal framework of his family's empire—all for the sake of a girl he had found washing her face in a river basin.

He wasn't a man trying to win a heart; he was a god constructing a sanctuary out of the ruins of his own world, and he expected her to worship him inside it.

"You think because your mother is gone, the hatred stops?" Anza whispered, her gray-green eyes flashing with a magnificent, unyielding pride that refused to break under his weight. "You can clear the house, Alejandro. You can give my father a palace of his own. But every time you touch me, every time you look at me, I will remind you that the only thing you truly own is a body. My spirit belongs to the fields you burned."

Alejandro’s smile in the dimming light of the monsoon evening was a breathtakingly beautiful, tragic thing. He leaned down, his lips pressing firmly, possessively against hers, crushing her words into a silent, suffocating darkness.

"Then I will content myself with your body until your spirit grows tired of the wind, *aking sinta*," Alejandro murmured against her lips, his grip tightening around her waist as the thunder rolled across the valley outside, sealing them together in the quiet isolation of the manor. "Because the rain will eventually stop, but you and I... we are eternal."