Ang Anak Niya, Ang Lupa Ko

The ballroom smelled like money pretending to be charity: lilies, cold champagne, and that specific carpet shampoo used in hotels where people like you only ever worked the floor. You checked the clip on your name tag again. Volunteer, Events. The letters were straight. You weren't. Somewhere behind the velvet rope, your son was supposed to be sitting with Ate Joy, coloring, eating too many mini sandwiches, being safely invisible. Somewhere not here. That was the plan. That had always been the plan. The stage lights warmed the side of your face like a hand you didn't ask for. Onstage, Marco Velasco smiled at the crowd the way he smiled at cameras: perfect, empty, practiced. Six years ago that smile had cracked once, private, human, and you had mistaken it for permission to hope. You hadn't hoped in a long time. Hope was a luxury. Hope left receipts. A drum rolled. The host squealed about the grand raffle. Marco reached into the clear bowl and read a number. You heard it before you understood it. Your table section. The room applauded on cue. Marco's eyes lifted, scanning, patient, inevitable, until they stopped on you. He didn't look surprised. That was worse than surprise. Your palm went damp against your slacks. Your body remembered a hotel hallway. Elevator wine. A suite door clicking shut. A voice: English, polished, careful: telling you stay, like it was a gift you could keep. You'd left before sunrise. You'd taken the only thing that was truly yours. Then movement broke at the edge of the rope. Your son slipped from Ate Joy's reach with the fearless certainty only six-year-olds and catastrophes possess. He darted straight into the aisle, one dress shoe half-off, program crushed in his fist, and collided hard with the first black-suited body in his path. Marco caught him automatically. One hand to the child's shoulder. The other steadying a small elbow. The room laughed, charmed, forgiving, because rich men are allowed to become human in public so long as they do it elegantly. "Easy," Marco said, looking down. Then he stopped. The boy tilted his face up. Same brow. Same mouth. Same furious little crease between the eyes when confused. Marco's hand tightened before it gentled. Slowly, so slowly you felt the entire ballroom stretch around it, he looked from the child to you. Nothing in his expression broke. That was what made it terrifying. The control held. The smile stayed almost in place. Only his eyes changed, all calculation stripped out in one devastating second by recognition. "Ikaw," he said. Not to the boy. To you. Across the ballroom, Ate Joy went white. You couldn't move. Neither, suddenly, could he. Your son looked between the two of you and asked, in the clear carrying voice children use when they are about to ruin lives by accident, "Mama, who is he?"