Dream Project

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

New Beginning

 

Via Antoinette Soliven and Lloyd Vinzent Olivar became stepsiblings when her mother, Olivia, and his father, Victor, got married.

Via Antoinette, fondly called as Toni, was just ten years old when her father, Antonio, died of heart attack.

Lloyd Vinzent, much known as Lloyd, was then twelve years old when his mother, Lourdes, died of ovarian cancer.

She was twelve and he was fifteen when her Mommy and his Daddy were joined in Holy Matrimony.

Olivia was a successful bank executive in a big banking company at Beaunne City, Sorocon while Victor was a successful civil engineer/senior partner working for a big construction firm at Beaunne City, Sorocon.

They were ex-lovers. When they had met again in a twenty-four hour convenient store, they had agreed to meet again and again until they decided to get married.

Olivia and Victor had sold all their properties from their first marriages and kept the money on the bank for the college education of their daughter and son. They did start anew – bought a new house and lot in an exclusive subdivision and work hard for their children's future.

When Lloyd started on his college education as a civil engineering student at UF – Vienburg, Olivia resigned from her job to focus more on taking care of her stepson and own daughter. She had also started a business, a twenty-four hour supermart they had named as Via Mart.

When Toni started on her college education as a journalism student also at UF – Vienburg, they had started planning for a dream project.

But everything had changed Toni and Lloyd's lives when their parents died on a car accident just a few days after Lloyd graduated from college with honors.

He was twenty-one and she was eighteen. They had no one else to turn to but each other. They did have few distant relatives but they were already both of legal age so there was really no need to be dependent on them.

It was only after their parents' untimely death that they had discovered that their parents' had incurred a large amount of unpaid bank loans.

An investment company involved in money laundering activity had victimized their parents. The money they had planned on spending for their dream project had all been washed away when the scam had blown. Such had also delayed their parents in paying for their dues at the bank. Their parents had given much importance spending the money for their college education.

Toni had really felt so weak, helpless and hopeless but Lloyd had become tough for both of them.

Lloyd had sought the legal advice of the fourth cousin of his mother, who was a lawyer. He had been advised to sell everything their parents had left behind, pay for the loans, buy a smaller house and lot, work for his first job offer on the same construction firm his Dad had worked and provide for both him and Toni.

He sold the house and lot, the Via Mart, the vehicles, the appliances, the jewelries and others. He hadn't sold everything. There were few properties that had to stay.

The large amount of money they had raised from the sold properties and insurance benefits had been used in paying for the bank loans, buying a small house and lot in average type subdivision and opening a bank account.

Early Saturday morning, May 3, 2008, they had left the house they had lived in for six happy long years. Aboard the only vehicle, a year old blue sedan, Lloyd hadn't sold; they went to their new house at Gelrose Place, also in Beaunne City, with their bags of clothes and other personal stuffs.