The Billionaires Innocent Mistress

Her mind was drifting as she walked, holding a tray filled with food that cost at least ten thousand pesos per plate. She was directionless after the news that shook her whole being earlier. She almost dropped her cellphone because of it, as she started sobbing in the bathroom.

“Your father is in the hospital, fighting for his life!”

Her mother’s voice thundered in her ears and continued to echo inside her head. Her father needed five hundred thousand pesos for the heart operation he had in their province of Oas, Albay, while he was pulling the carabao in the fields earlier. She was from Legazpi City, a Bicolana who was forced to go to Manila and stop her college education due to the hardships in life. She was beautiful, if beauty was the criteria, but she lacked the height to compete in beauty pageants, so she never stood a chance as a candidate.

If only she was blessed with height, she would probably be able to earn and support herself in her studies. But she was short, standing only at 5’1”. She hadn’t even finished her first year of college, so her only choice was to work as a waitress. She wasn’t even qualified, to begin with. That’s what the manager said during her interview. He said she lacked education but was able to hire her because she was good at talking and exuded self-confidence. It was a stroke of luck for her.

She looked around, her mind consumed by the problem. Where would she get five hundred thousand pesos? Perhaps her ears had become immune to being a waitress in this five-star restaurant, as she still couldn’t save any money. She received the Manila rate, with free accommodation, but not free meals. She was sending her two siblings, Lexa and Lexus, who were in high school, to school.

She was helping her parents. Her father was a humble farmer, working and planting vegetables in their field. Her mother sold the produce in the market. They managed to get by in their daily lives, but they lacked the funds to lift themselves out of poverty. The land where their house stood in the province didn’t belong to them. It belonged to the land’s owner, who had once made an inappropriate offer to her, an old widow. She didn’t tell her father about it because she didn’t want to anger him and cause a conflict with the man. They might be kicked out, and they had nowhere else to go.

Heart forced herself to provide what her siblings needed for their studies. She provided them with WIFI, a computer, and other gadgets. It was deducted from her salary, and she continued paying for it until now. If she had any savings, it was meager, not even reaching fifty thousand pesos. How would she be able to afford her father’s operation?

Her father said not to have the operation anymore because it would only bring more expenses. He said to just accept it if that’s where his life ends. She couldn’t bear to accept that. It was so painful to be a child who couldn’t do anything for her parents in their time of need. It was so hard to be poor. It seemed that the people in the restaurant where she worked had no problems. They could spend almost thirty thousand pesos on a meal, just for two people. She wished they would give that money to people who are in need.

Heart fought back the tears as those words reminded her of painful memories. She restrained herself.