AUTHOR POV
The velvet blanket sat perfectly still for exactly four minutes. Underneath it, Jay Jay was already growing intensely bored of her own self-imposed exile. She didn't want Keifer to leave, and she certainly knew how heavy his executive duties were, but being stuck with the unblinking, terrifyingly strict Angelo Kuya was testing her patience.
Slowly, the edge of the blanket lifted. Two large, glossy eyes peeked out.
Angelo didn't move from his laptop. His broad shoulders were perfectly square, his spine straight as a steel rod. He looked like an apex predator waiting for a silent alarm.
Jay Jay let the blanket drop entirely. She walk forward towards Angelo, the hem of Keifer's giant blue t-shirt on her mid thigh . She stand right beside Angelo's chair, quietly pulling herself up to stand.
She didn't make a sound. She just stood there, exactly three inches from his arm, staring up at the side of his face with a look of ultimate, pure innocence.
One minute passed.
Then two.
Then three.
Angelo's POV
I could feel her eyes burning into the side of my face.
I kept my gaze locked onto the perimeter cameras, refusing to give her the satisfaction of an acknowledgment. I have stood my ground against heavily armed cartel bosses without blinking. I have stared down corrupt politicians. I am her elder brother ,I am the wall she cannot break.
But three minutes of absolute silence from Jay Jay was a tactical anomaly. It was highly dangerous.
Finally, I snapped. I sighed, closing my laptop screen halfway, and turned my head to look down at her.
My chest tightened. She was standing there in Keifer's ridiculous, oversized blue shirt, her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her lower lip wasn't pouting anymore—it was soft. Her eyes were wide, glassy, and completely clear, reflecting the midday sunlight like a pair of marbles. She looked so small, so entirely defenseless, that my military defenses instantly turned to absolute mush.
"What, Jay?" I asked. My own voice betrayed me. It came out incredibly soft, like cotton, losing every single ounce of its usual authoritative edge.
Jay Jay didn't speak right away. Instead, she slowly raised her right hand, holding up a small, neon-pink elastic rubber band between her fingers. She peeked up at my long hair, which was currently tied back in a neat, professional low bun.
"Kuya..." she whispered, her voice a tiny, sweet melody. "Can you let me tie your hair? Please?"
My internal alarms immediately went off. "No."
Jay Jay's shoulders instantly dropped. The light in her large eyes dimmed, and she looked down at her bare toes, clutching the pink rubber band tightly to her chest. She looked like an abandoned kitten in the rain.
I looked around the empty cottage. The windows were secure. My men were strictly stationed outside the perimeter fences. There was absolutely no one inside this house to see what was about to happen. Nobody would ever know.
I let out a heavy, defeated breath. "Fine. Just... don't pull it."
AUTHOR POV
The transformation was instantaneous. The melancholy kitten vanished, and the chaotic gremlin took full control.
"YESSS!" Jay Jay squealed, her face lighting up with a mischievous grin that made Angelo instantly regret every single life choice that had led him to this moment.
Before he could even adjust his position, she scrambled onto the structural frame of his heavy wooden chair, using his broad shoulder. She sat cross-legged on the polished wood, towering over the fearsome commander.
"Stay perfectly still, Kuya! The royal stylist is at work!" she commanded, immediately plucking the secure black band from his hair.
Angelo's POV
I closed my eyes, bracing for impact.
Within ten seconds, I realized that giving her permission was a catastrophic tactical error.
She wasn't just tying my hair; she was actively trying to destroy my dignity. Her fingers began parting my hair into sections, pulling and twisting with unnecessary enthusiasm.
"Jay Jay," I grumbled, my hands gripping the edge of the table. "You are pulling my scalp."
"No, I am not! I am creating a masterpiece!" she hummed happily.
I could hear the frantic clicking of the plastic rubber bands. She was gathering small chunks of my hair and tying them into tiny, ridiculous vertical sprouts. I looked at the dark reflection of the glass cabinet across the room. My heart stopped. She had already created three tiny, upright pigtails across the top of my head, making me look like a deranged cartoon character.
"Jay, enough," I scolded, my tone hardening back into my proper Kuya voice. "Get down from the table. This is completely unacceptable behavior during a high-stakes security detail."
Author's POV
The sudden boom of Angelo's strict voice echoed through the high ceilings of the cottage. Jay Jay froze, dropping the neon-pink rubber band onto the table. Her large eyes widened in dramatic horror as she clutched her chest over the loose, oversized blue shirt, letting out a sharp, gasp-like wheeze.
"The... the stress..." she mumbled, her eyes rolling back into her head with ultimate theatrical flair.
Before Angelo could even process what she was doing, she let her limbs go completely limp. She tumbled sideways from her cross-legged position, sliding right off the edge of the dining table and landing flat on her back onto the plush rug below with a soft, dramatic thump. Her eyes closed tight, her head tilting to the side as she went completely static, playing dead with absolute dedication.
Angelo's POV
My heart completely bypassed my chest and dropped straight into my stomach.
"Jay Jay!" I yelled, throwing my chair back so hard it nearly flipped over.
Years of high-stakes combat training completely short-circuited. My tactical brain went blank. I dropped heavily to my knees beside her limp form on the rug, terrified that she had genuinely hurt her spine or hit her head from that height. My hands, which were usually steady enough to hit a target from half a mile away under sniper fire, were visibly shaking.
I grabbed her shoulders, panic clouding my judgment. "Jay! Wake up! Respond to me!"
Receiving no answer, I began to shake her forcefully, rocking her small frame back and forth against the floorboards as hard as I could, desperate to jolt her back to consciousness before calling an emergency medical helicopter. "Jay Jay! Open your eyes!"
Suddenly, her right eye snapped open. Then the left. The blank, unconscious mask vanished, replaced by an expression of absolute, profound irritation.
"Oh my God, stop!" Jay Jay snapped, reaching up to aggressively slap my hands away from her shoulders. "When someone fainted, we have to splash cold water, not shaking them that much hard that they be milkshake! Huh! Only Keifer knows how to do it, you don't know anything, Kuya!"
I froze, my hands suspended in mid-air, my chest heaving as the icy terror in my veins instantly transformed into pure, boiling fury. "You... you were faking it?!"
"Only because you were using your scary dictator voice!" she huffed, scrambling up into a sitting position and adjusting the giant, sliding collar of Keifer's blue t-shirt. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, sniffing haughtily. "Keifer knows exactly how to handle a delicate fainting spell. He carries me to the sofa and brings me ice water. You just try to scramble my vital organs! You have zero training!"
I stared at her, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw ached. My hair was still tied up in four ridiculous vertical pink pigtails, and I was currently being scolded on basic medical procedures by a clumsy teenager who had just thrown herself off a table for fun.
I slowly stood up, smoothing down my tactical vest, trying to force my face back into a cold, unbothered mask. "Okay. Okay, I get water."
Jay Jay's mischievous eyes blinked, a victorious, tiny smirk dancing on her lips. Without a moment's hesitation, she instantly flopped back down onto the rug, closing her eyes tightly and neatly folding her hands over her stomach.
"Okay," her voice echoed cheerfully from the floor, her face returning to total stillness. "I am fainted again."
I turned toward the kitchen, silently counting to ten in three different languages, wondering how on earth I was going to survive the next twenty-three hours without losing my absolute sanity.
Angelo sat at the dining table, his laptop open as he coordinated real-time satellite feeds of the island coastline.
Suddenly, his phone buzzed. It was Keifer.
Angelo picked it up instantly. "Keifer. What's the status in Manila?"
"The board is a nightmare, but we're forcing the meetings through," Keifer's voice came through the line, tight with stress. He paused, exhaling a heavy breath. "Listen, Angelo... I know she's driving you crazy, but keep an extra eye on her. Give her what she want and whatever she want ,than she willl not bother you if you strictly talk to her she will eat your head,and she will become your headache,and especially the second-floor veranda. The lock on that screen door has been sticking, and she loves to sneak out there to watch the birds. Just don't let her go near the corridor upstairs. Please."
"I have the property secured, Keifer. She's downstairs on the couch," Angelo replied, his voice a flat, confident baritone. "Focus on the Watsons. I'll handle Jay Jay."
"Okay. I'll call you when the next session ends," Keifer said, hanging up.
Angelo set the phone down and returned to his monitors. A high-priority encrypted firewall alert suddenly flashed on his screen. A breach attempt was hitting their offshore servers. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his military focus instantly locking onto the cyber threat.
For a critical twenty minutes, his surroundings blurred. Under the immense pressure of the server attack, his mind completely slipped.
He forgot about the upstairs corridor.
Author's POV
Upstairs, Jay Jay had grown intensely bored of her velvet blanket submarine. Wearing nothing but Keifer's loose, oversized blue t-shirt, she pattered quietly down the corridor.
Seeing the veranda door slightly ajar, her inner mischievous kitten took full control. She wanted to climb the railing, wait for Angelo to look up, and give him a dramatic royal wave just to see his strict face crack.
She pushed the door open, stepped onto the high balcony, and confidently hopped onto the smooth wooden railing. But the massive, flowing fabric of Keifer's shirt snagged on a decorative iron planter.
She lost her balance.
Her hands clawed desperately at the empty air. A piercing, genuine shriek of absolute terror ripped from her throat as she pitched completely backward over the edge of the second floor.
CRASH. SNAP. CRASH. SNAP . THUD.
She plunged straight down through the thick, rigid branches of the hibiscus trees. The heavy, wooden limbs broke her fall but tore mercilessly into her skin. With a final, sickening thud, she hit the hard earth beneath, rolling into the dirt.
Angelo's POV
The scream shattered the air, violently ripping me out of my security screens. My blood ran completely cold.
The veranda.
I threw my chair back, my body moving on pure, adrenaline-fueled instinct. I didn't take the stairs. I launched myself straight over the first-floor deck, dropping to the ground, landing hard on my boots, and sprinting through the broken foliage.
"Jay Jay!" I roared. My voice was raw, carrying a level of unadulterated panic I hadn't felt in years.
She was curled into a tiny, trembling ball on the grass. The giant blue t-shirt was torn to shreds at the sleeves and heavily stained with mud. But the sight of the blood made my breath catch in my throat. This wasn't a game. She was bleeding heavily.
Sharp, broken branches had carved deep, jagged lacerations across her bare arms and down her thighs, the crimson tracks staining the blue cotton. A jagged cut right at her hairline was dripping bright, thick blood down her pale, dirt-streaked face. Her left big toe was mangled, the nail violently torn back and oozing blood.
"Kuya..." she whimpered. Her voice was a broken, breathless little sob. Her large eyes were wide, flooded with genuine, agonizing tears. "Kuya, it hurts... my feet..."
Suddenly, her legs jerked. Her small toes violently curled inward, clamping tight as a severe, excruciating cramp seized her muscles from the shock of the fall. She let out a sharp, agonizing wail, clutching her feet as the spasms twisted her bleeding toes. "Kuya, the cramps! I can't move them! It hurts so much!"
Author's POV
Angelo dropped to his knees in the dirt, his massive hands trembling as he carefully checked her neck and spine. Guilt, heavy and suffocating, crushed his chest. Keifer warned me, his mind screamed. He told me to watch the corridor, and I forgot.
"Don't move, Jay. Hold onto me," Angelo commanded, his voice tight and thick with suppressed emotion. He carefully scooped her fragile, bleeding frame into his arms, lifting her as if she weighed nothing.
Jay Jay didn't pull any stunts this time. She buried her face directly into the collar of his tactical vest, sobbing uncontrollably, her small body shaking violently from the sheer pain and physical shock.
He carried her swiftly into the living room, laying her down gently on the sofa. The silence in the cottage was heavy, punctuated only by her ragged breaths and quiet whimpers. Angelo fetched the heavy trauma kit, kneeling before her on the rug.
First, he grasped her feet, his large, warm hands firmly but gently massaging her arch to force the agonizing muscle cramps to release. Jay Jay cried out, squeezing her eyes shut as the tension slowly melted from her toes.
Next came the antiseptic. "This is going to sting, Jay. Stay still."
As the alcohol pad touched the deep, bleeding scratches on her arms, she let out a sharp, breathless gasp, her fingers clutching the sofa cushions. "I'm sorry... Kuya Angelo, I'm sorry... I won't be naughty anymore..."
Angelo didn't say a word. His jaw was clenched so tightly it looked like stone. He carefully wiped the blood from her face, applying sterile butterfly stitches to the cut on her head, before wrapping thick, clean bandages around her sliced arms and legs.
Finally, he dressed her bleeding toe, securing it tightly.
When he finished, he stood up, looking down at the small, heavily bandaged teenager swallowed by the ruined blue shirt.
"You could have died," Angelo said, his deep voice incredibly low, cracking slightly. The terrifying older brother facade was gone, leaving only a guardian who had almost lost his charge. "No more games, Jay Jay. No more jumping. You sit right there, and you do not move until Keifer gets back."
Jay Jay just nodded miserably, tucking her bandaged knees against her chest. The painful scratches stung with every breath, and she stared blankly at the floor, the heavy reality of her own clumsiness finally sinking in.
Author's POV
The storm of physical trauma made sleeping an absolute impossibility for Jay Jay that night. She had hit the hard ground so violently during her fall that every muscle in her back and chest throbbed with deep, internal bruising.
Swallowed by the clean, spare blue t-shirt Angelo had found to replace her torn one, she tossed and turned on the soft cushions of her bed upstairs, letting out soft, helpless whimpers. Every time she tried to drift off, the jagged scratches on her arms and thighs would sting sharply against the fabric, and her heavily bandaged toe would throb with a fierce, burning heat.
Angelo's POV
I sat in the armchair beside her bed, the glowing screen of my laptop illuminating the dark bedroom as I kept my eyes fixed on her fragile, restless form. Hearing her quiet, exhausted cries tore at my chest with a heavy weight of guilt.
I had let my focus slip for one was bleeding heavily from her head and toe, but what if I had missed something? What if she had internal lacerations under that giant blue t-shirt? What if a hidden, deeper cut was slowly bleeding under the bandages on her legs?
"Kuya..." she whimpered softly around 2:00 AM, her large, glassy eyes opening in the darkness. Her voice was cracked, small, and entirely drained of its usual mischief. "My back... it feels like a truck rolled over it. I can't close my eyes."
I set my laptop aside and walked over, kneeling right beside her mattress. The strict dictator mask was completely gone. I carefully slid my hand behind her neck, lifting her head just enough to help her sip a glass of cool water.
"Your body took a severe impact, Jay. The adrenaline has worn off, so the bruising is settling in," I explained, my voice dropping into that rare, cotton-soft register. I took a fresh, cool damp cloth and gently dabbed it against the butterfly stitches on her hairline, checking to ensure the bleeding had completely stopped. "You need to stay perfectly still. Let the medicine work."
She clutched a corner of my tactical vest with her bandaged fingers, her small frame shivering from sheer exhaustion. "Don't go back to the computer, Kuya... it's scary when it's quiet."
"I'm right here. I won't move," I murmured, sitting down on the floor right beside her bed, resting my back against the frame. I placed my palm gently over her blanket, grounding her. It took another agonizing hour, but the sheer physical exhaustion of the trauma finally won.
Her breathing slowed, her fingers loosened from my vest, and she finally slipped into a deep, heavy sleep.
Author's POV
The next morning, the harsh sunlight filtered through the bedroom windows, illuminating the pale, bandaged girl still fast asleep in her bed. Angelo stood quietly out on the second-floor corridor, his phone pressed tightly to his ear as a secure line connected to Manila.
"Angelo kuya," Aries' voice barked through the static, sounding incredibly tense and deeply frustrated. "We have a major complication. The Watson faction launched a legal and physical blockade on the northern shipping ports early this morning. They are trying to freeze Keifer's executive clearance to force him into a vulnerability window."
Angelo's eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching as he looked back through the open bedroom door at Jay Jay. "What does that mean for the extraction timeline? Keifer was supposed to land the helicopter here in four hours."
"He can't leave," Aries muttered, a sharp, bitter edge to his words. "Percy and I are actively redirecting our security details to counter the port siege, and Keifer is trapped in an emergency lockdown board meeting to protect his inheritance. We cannot clear a flight path today without alerting their scouts to the island's coordinates. We have to push the return back. We are coming after one more day."
Angelo's POV
I gripped the wooden railing of the corridor, a cold drop of sweat rolling down my neck. One more day.
"Understood," I said, my voice completely flat, though internally my tactical brain was spinning out of control. "The cottage perimeter is dark and fortified. They won't find her here. But Aries... she's heavily injured. She fell from the second floor yesterday. Head laceration, deep scratches, severe muscular bruising. I'm still monitoring her to make sure there aren't more cuts hidden under the swelling."
There was a sudden, dead silence on the other end of the line. I could hear Aries' sharp, furious intake of breath. When he spoke again, his voice was dangerously quiet, his hidden protective side instantly flaring up into pure rage.
"What did you say?!" Aries roared, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of anger and panic. "You let her fall?! How the hell did you let your sister get hurt while she was under your watch, kuya?! You had one job!"
"An offshore server breach pulled my detail—"
"I don't care about the servers!" Aries snapped fiercely, completely losing his temper. "He's always leaving things in chaos! I am always angry at Keifer for putting his corporate empire over her safety, but you were supposed to be the wall! If she is broken, if she has deeper injuries from those trees, I swear to God—"
Suddenly, a click beeped on the line. "Hold on, Aries. Keifer is patched in on the secure line."
The line merged, and Keifer's voice flooded the call, sounding raw, breathless, and utterly exhausted from the ongoing battle in Manila. "Angelo? Aries? I just broke away from the executive board for two minutes. Listen to me... the blockade is tight, but I've bypassed the port restrictions. I am finalizing the paperwork tonight. I am coming tomorrow. First thing in the morning, I'll be on that helicopter."
Aries let out a harsh, mocking scoff on the line. "Oh, how generous of you, Watson. You'll come tomorrow? While you're playing CEO in your high-rise tower, do you even know what's happening on the island?!"
"Aries, back off," Keifer warned, his voice dropping into a dangerously dark, protective register. "What happened?"
I closed my eyes, my hand tightening on the phone. I knew if Keifer found out she had actually bled, he would abandon the multi-billion-dollar companies, break the lockdown, and fly straight into a fatal Watson ambush at the ports.
"Everything is fine, Keifer," I lied smoothly, cutting off Aries before he could speak. "She's upstairs sleeping in her bed. Just finish your meetings and get here tomorrow."
"Make sure she stays away from the balcony, stairs Angelo," Keifer murmured, completely unaware of the reality. "I'll see you tomorrow."
The line clicked dead. I slid the phone back into my pocket, the heavy silence of the corridor settling over me once more. I looked back into the bedroom at the small, bandaged teenager swallowed by the blue shirt. I had to play the role of a hyper-vigilant caretaker for one more long, high-stakes day, praying that my medical check was right and no more hidden injuries would flare up before her 'tree' finally came home.