“Enough,” Miro assured him. Because of course. How could Vito suddenly have a change of heart, and decide he wanted Santi close? He needed something from him. His time, his expertise, everything he was built up to become. “Everything you did for Villa? He needs to do that inallhis hotels.”
No wonder he’d gotten so upset when Santi brought up his profit margins.
“You think you can fix this without going back, Kuya? You can’t,” Miro said, shaking his head. “You’re not as perfect as you think you are. Just let Lolo have whatever he wants. We never wanted for anything when we were in his good graces naman.”
“I disagree,” Santi said. Because he’d seen love that didn’t want for anything. Because he knew what it was supposed to feel like. It shouldn’t feel like someone had a hold on you, a chain to your wrist they could pull back anytime you asked for something.
“Then you must be a bigger idiot than I thought,” Miro concluded, shaking his head.
“I guess I am.”
“And you really must hate us.”
“I don’t,” Santi said sharply, glaring at his brother. Didn’t he know that was the hardest part about all of this? “I never hated any of them. Or you. You just make it very, very difficult for me to love you.”
There wasn’t much that Santi and his brother could tell each other after that. Miro left, but not before he had taken one last glance at the building. Miro had been five years old when the Santillans left Lipa, and Villa hadn’t made the same impression on him as it had Santi, maybe. But there was...something in that last little look. Regret? Anticipation? Santi didn’t know.
As it was, he knew that he was just putting off an inevitable confrontation with his grandfather, and at the moment, he wasn’t brave enough for the fight. Not yet.
He was about to turn and walk back to his office when his phone started to ring. And Santi didn’t know why, but he just had a feeling that something was wrong. There was nothing to indicate it, even a random phone call from Kira wasn’t unusual. But there was something. A tension in the air, or maybe he was still angry over what his grandfather was trying to pull.
“Kira?” he asked.
“I just need someone to listen,” Kira said, and the tension in her voice was so palpable he could almost taste it. “Talk this through out loud.”
“Okay,” he said, moving toward the parking lot, checking his pocket for his keys. “I’m listening.”
“A BatElec transformer exploded, and they can’t restore power until tomorrow,” Kira began, speaking very quickly as Santi put her on speakerphone. Safety first. “And I need to harvest, temper and pack 150 bars of dulce de leche white chocolates for Eugene and Jenny’s wedding by 8PM tonight. And that would be doable if I didn’t have to move everything, and I don’t even know if I have enough time, where I’m supposed to move, because of course I don’t have a contingency plan—”
She continued to talk, finding more problems than solutions. Meanwhile Santi was darting and driving through Lipa like he’d been doing it his whole life, slipping into side streets and narrow areas until he made it to the Laneways five minutes faster than if he stayed on the main roads.
A miracle.
“I think I can call them and cancel the order,” she said. “The couple won’t be too disappointed, I don’t think. Oh god, I hope I can still be a bridesmaid, I already had the dress, and you’re already my plus-one!”
“Do you have a pen and paper?” Santi asked, pulling into a parking space at the Laneways, and sprinting toward Gemini.
“What?” Kira asked. “Santi, are you running?”
“I can help,” he told her, quickly checking the time on his smartwatch. He could see Gemini Chocolates and its explosion of plants. And just seeing the Laneways and its facade already helped calm him, helped him think. “It’s 4PM now. We need to break down all the steps you need to take, and find out...”
He made it to the door of Gemini, swinging it open with his arm. The rest of the shop, currently operating on candles and phone flashlights, looked at him in shock. What a sight Santi must make, in his jeans and boat shoes and smartwatch, sweating and panting because having abs didn’t make you the best runner, squinting because he really did need glasses, and where was Kira?
“...if we really do have enough time,” he said, striding to the back to swing open the door to the chocolate kitchen, where Kira was standing in the middle of the room with candles lit everywhere, her phone in her ear as she stood poised on her kitchen island with a pen and paper.
Santi’s heart, which had been beating erratically since Miro left, slowed. The fear and the nerves he’d felt, the worry he carried when he saw the memo from Carlton, it all moved to the back of his mind. To him, there was nothing more important than helping Kira, right here, right now. This, at least, he was sure he could do.
“Kira,” he said gently before he hung up.
She looked up. To his surprise, she put down the pen and marched across the room, her brown eyes blazing in the low light. Then she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly, burying her head in his chest like she needed to be sure that he was here.
“You came,” she said. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“I wanted to be here. I want to help,” he assured her, because he could. If nothing else, he could move things.
“But what about Sunday Bakery?”
“Closed for the afternoon, because we had to install a new oven,” Santi explained. “We can use the kitchen at my house. Bribe our friends, if we have to.”
