The Magnate's Holiest Sin (Cavanaugh #3)

Kabanata 3

Kabanata 3

Explained

I was trying to give my older brother a bright and genuine smile that could tell him a message that I was indeed perfectly fine, good, and alive. Currently having a video call with my worried kuya using this new and pricey tablet that Laki bought for me yesterday.

Actually, I didn't really want to accept it, aside from the thing that just cost too much, I didn't want to receive anything from him. What if he would ask an exchange of it?

Unhappy about the fact that he effortlessly bribe me, I accepted the tablet with second thought, but I accepted it anyway for the sake of my older brother because Laki was telling me about my kuya, and that, how could I contact the only family that I had without gadget? Of course, I told him reasons, reasons that I could buy my own phone or tablet, I could-would work, but again, to no avail, he told me the painful truth of getting a job and what was working feel like.

He said that it wasn't that easy to find a job, apply and get accepted, it would take weeks, months, or even a year before I could find one decent job to work on, and he was talking to me like nothing happened. I knew that it would take me too much time to find a job, and I would like to work, but kuya forbid me.

My older brother told me that it was not my responsibility to work for us, it was his. He just graduated college four years ago under business administration, and he's twenty six years old now.

Our parents wasn't planning on adding another baby, I was an accidental baby because mommy had forgotten to drink pills in two days, she was stressed out and couldn't think clearly. That was the time daddy started cheating, as far as I know, he just stopped the cheats when he found out that mommy was pregnant. However, that wasn't the ending of their problem because daddy cheated again the day I turned twelve.

Enough with that. Kuya King on his part after he graduated, hadn't worked in a big company, he was just working in a simple restaurant near our location as a manager because he was afraid to leave me with our parents that couldn't stop fighting, blaming one another almost everyday or after work 'til the two of them got admitted in a public hospital. I lost them, we lost them last year, kuya decided to work here in Manila, he didn't wanna leave me there, so he brought me here with him, and now my brother was doing his best to earn and save money for my college.

From a few of his friends that I only knew, though I knew that my older brother was a person with high profile, do the socializing and associating like those normal people out there, I hadn't heard from his friends that he tried to date even a single woman, he was just too focus on his work that he couldn't give himself time, and for him, relationships meant problems, he wouldn't like to add another problem in his life. What a workaholic person could do? Just work.

We had a deal, kuya said that I wouldn't be taking college for this year, I would skip school for now. I was giving him time, let him save and provide us our needs for one year, before I could finally go back to school.

On the other hand, while I was here, I could not get the images of Laki and the woman out of my head whenever I see his face. I couldn't prevent myself from shuddering and sweating whenever I could feel Laki's charismatic presence near me, or whenever he would try to talk to me could make me faint and lose my consciousness.

And I had to endure this 'til the next two months.

"May gusto ka ba'ng ipabili sa'kin, hm?" kuya asked, but he wasn't looking at me on his screen, he was busy flipping some papers on his desk.

I had no idea where he was, maybe he was in his apartment that his employer had provided for him to stay while he hadn't bought his own property or he was in the office something somewhere?