Part 8

Luke clenched his hands to a fist, remembering what transpired five years ago. Christine left her in the middle of all of their supposedly love ones alone. She never went down as she promised.

When Liam came and whispered about a certain scandal leaked with his face on it, he instantly run in their room and found her and her favorite things gone. His laptop was at the middle of their bed opened. A video that he found in his laptop earlier and intended to erase was opened. Although it was stopped playing, it's window tab was opened in his' laptop screen signifying that someone just watched it

Ah, she fled and never asked for his explanation

Liam found out that the video was shared at a file sharing site that some can access. These kinds of video with known faces can scaterred on social media sites faster than he breathes. Christine leaked it!… He can't believe it. She put his name and his company in trouble because of that.

Media flocked at their mansion the next day following the leaked scandal. His father called an emergency meeting at their mansion for all of their major shareholders for a crisis management.

When afternoon came, Olga cried at every tv station for justice as she said she was used in their family troubles. She poured her hearts out and many women, powerful to not called for Luke's public apology. But he didn't do it and he can't reach Christine on any means at hand. Olga wanted it in the first place, he remembered as she was the one who told him to shot it. He didn't even remembered saving that low class porn

His father warned him to keep silent as it will all passed. Many rotten tomatoes and eggs threwn at public speeches later, masses forgot it but their stocks value plummetted as their major shareholders used it to manipulated the foreign markets into taking him down. It's him or they will all withdraw their shares.

He was threwn to a tropical country for two years just to calm the public and took another year to get the helm of the company again. All of those years, he was alone again as his supposedly wife never throw any statement for her part of the leakage.

Christine's father is a powerful businessman being a major developer in their country. He threw a lot of money just to spare his only daughter from public's view. There's a media blockout in their family and she was never seen. A year after the scandal, a divorce paper came. They never had a prenuptial agreement, but he was richer than her being a struggling architect that time but she never asked for anything. Of course her father is an old money too. He signed the paper the moment it made it's way to him.

Olga's career catapulted because of it, becoming a supermodel overnight.

Ingrid, his sister suffered too as she was a social media darling during those times and there's a public outcry of her being supportive of her cheating-maniac brother. She was banned to a lot of social gatherings. Liam gathered all broken shards but didn't want presidency. His brother immediately gave back the company reign the moment he learned to stand on his feet again

"You saw Christine? When? Where?", Liam asked him at his office that afternoon after his meeting at Linton.

"She's the senior architect at Linton's", he replied casually as he looked down at their quarterly report at hand

"Fuck", Liam cursed. "So what did you do? You pulled your project?"

"No"

"Don't tell me you're interested with her again"

"No", Luke replied the second time

"Why are you still pushing with it? There's a lot of architectural firm locally and you can afford international design firm too", Liam uttered

"Because Linton specialized with the house I wanted", he reasoned

"Or you have hidden agenda?"

He looked at his brother, a younger version of him. "Christine means nothing to me now. You know she left me not before she leaked it", he said. He can't even say scandal

"So you want to get back on her?"

He leaned his back on his chair and looked straight to his brother, "maybe, maybe not"

Christine woke up with a boy squealing inside her house. She looked in her table clock and shocked that she was overslept. It's almost noon that Saturday. She searched the origin of the shriek and found a little boy tickled by a middle aged woman.

"Good morning Tin, I'm sorry we woke you up", the middle aged woman apologized as the little boy pulled Tin for a hug

"Good morning, mommy, Ms. Candy said you slept very late last night", the boy said

"It's alright Charlie, it's time for me to wake up", Tin said smiling and looked at the other woman. "Thank you Candy for taking care of Charlie. I'm just busy at work for almost a week. I know it's hard to keep things here by yourself"

"It's alright Tin, I love taking care of your son and your house as well", the woman smiled warmly. Her real name is Candelaria but preferred to be called Candy. She said it's cooler that way. Candy is her househelp eversince she was pregnant.

"Are we visiting grandpa today?", Charlie said. Charlie is four year old and he looked at Tin's father the only father figure in his life. There's always her brother, Carl, but he's not always around. Carl is a chef and continuously go to places around the world to teach himself new thing or two about cooking

"We are, little man", she squatted at the floor to level with him, "I'm sorry I'm not here for you this past few days. There's something we need to do at the office but today, we'll play, how about that?"

The boy shouted in excitement, "I want to go to the mall and eat ice creams"

"Why do we need to go to the mall to eat ice cream? We have one here", she smiled

"Well there's a playground there, you know where you can act like a chef like uncle Carl or an architect like you mummy"

"What? You don't want to go to office like grandpa?", she asked

"I don't want to be a enveloper", the kid said and she laughed. Candy joined her in that laughter

"You mean developer sweetheart", she messed with the kid's hair

"Tin, you should eat first. I cooked something earlier. Let me warm it", Candy offered

"Of course, anything from your cooking skills please"