Lucien POV
I was born in the middle of monsoon season, in a private hospital suite that smelled like orchids instead of antiseptic—because my mother couldn't stand the sterility of hospitals. That detail, I'm told, was important to her. The irony of it stuck with people: a storm raging outside, silence within. A child born into chaos, welcomed by curated peace.
Lucien Adrien Tantoco.
First son of Oliver Tantoco.
First grandson of the legal wife.
Heir-apparent of the conglomerate.
I grew up knowing my name came with weight. Not just wealth. Not just legacy. But centuries of tradition, fractured bloodlines, and a family tree so gnarled you could get lost trying to trace it.
In truth, I didn't understand the full scope of it until I was older. Until my father died.
Our story didn't begin with me. Or even with my father. It began with my grandfather—Elliot Tantoco. A man who clawed his way out of poverty with nothing but a high school education and a gift for turning street smarts into empire.
By the time he was thirty, he had his first wife, a shipping license, and enough money to buy land in five provinces. By forty, he had bodegas, banks, airlines, and multiple families scattered like state secrets.
Three wives. Dozens of mistresses. Children in nearly every city.
But only one legal marriage.
My grandmother, the formidable Rosario Lim-Tantoco, was that wife. She came from a respectable Chinese-Filipino family that dealt in textiles and old-world pride. She was smart, sharp, and entirely aware that marriage was less about affection and more about strategy.
She helped build the empire, stood beside my grandfather at every ribbon-cutting ceremony, signed every joint venture contract, and looked the other way when the names of his "assistants" grew suspiciously beautiful and young.
Their only son—her only child—was my father, Oliver. And because Chinese tradition still ruled even behind closed boardrooms and gated subdivisions, Oliver was the heir.
Not the eldest son from the second family. Not the children from affairs or scandal. Bloodlines meant something. Legitimacy mattered.
My father, Oliver, was everything a man like that was supposed to be. Handsome. Golden. Educated in London, groomed for power.
But unlike my grandfather, he didn't hunger for domination. He was charismatic, yes. But soft in the ways men like my grandfather called "a weakness."
He didn't like confrontation. Didn't want family wars.
He had mistresses, sure—flight attendants from our airline, up-and-coming actresses, TV hosts, the occasional journalist—but he never had another family. Never crossed that line.
He never wanted chaos. And in a clan like ours, that made him an anomaly.
I loved him. And I think he did the best he could with what he inherited. When I was still a kid, before the weight of expectation settled on my shoulders, I remember Sunday mornings—just the two of us—eating taho by the veranda. He didn't talk much, but when he did, it stuck.
"You don't have to be like me," he told me once. I was fourteen, angry about some newspaper headline linking him to an actress. "But you'll have to be something. Decide early what kind of man you're willing to live with."
I didn't understand that line until much later.
My mother, Lilia, was Chinese-Filipino too. A quiet force of discipline and poise. She was the only one who could stare down both my father and grandfather without flinching.
She believed in order, tradition, and dignity. She never raised her voice, but when she was upset, the silence was almost biblical.
She kept me grounded—at least as much as a boy born into this life could be.
Our house was too big for its own echoes. Every corner curated. Every rug imported. I was raised by tutors, surrounded by staff who knew never to speak unless spoken to. There were rules, and I followed them.
I never rebelled because I had no reason to. My father gave me space. My mother gave me structure. And the rest of the world bent around my name like gravity.
Then came Jaden—my younger brother. Three years younger, a lifetime apart. If I was the heir, he was the escape artist. Jaden had none of the pressure, none of the expectations.
He surfed, played guitar, flirted with girls in art school. Once he even launched a streetwear brand with his friends—it actually trended for a semester. I was annoyed and proud at the same time.
We were close, but our roles were pre-written.
I left Manila at sixteen. Full scholarship to Harvard. It was my choice, but also not really. Everyone expected it. Study tech. Build something clean. Something that wasn't stained by family politics and Philippine oligarchy.
I believed I could outrun the name. I told myself I'd build my own empire—something from scratch. Code. Apps. SaaS platforms. My co-founders and I worked out of a dingy dorm room in Palo Alto, high on caffeine and secondhand ambition. We thought we were invincible.
For a while, it felt like freedom.
Then came the call.
Private plane. Cardiac arrest. No survivors.
My father, Oliver Tantoco, was dead at fifty.
It should've broken me. But what I felt was a strange kind of hollowness. Like someone had vacuum-sealed me into a version of myself I didn't know how to carry.
When I landed in Manila, the air felt heavier than I remembered.
Jaden picked me up from the airport, still in a worn T-shirt and Ray-Bans like none of this was real.
"I didn't think you'd come," he said.
"I had to."
"You didn't."
He wasn't wrong. But I did come. Because someone had to answer the call. Because we were the first family. Because my grandmother was waiting.
The wake was a power play dressed in mourning clothes. Politicians. Businessmen. Journalists who'd once written about my father's dalliances now showed up to pay their respects.
My grandmother sat in silence, dressed in jet-black, flanked by old-money aunts and cousins who looked ready to declare war.
But I could see the tremor in her hands. She'd lost her only son. The heir she'd raised with such precision. The boy she swore would inherit the world she helped build.
And now, like vultures, the rest of the family circled.
The second wife's son—the first-born, but illegitimate.
The daughters from affairs.
The cousins with business degrees and blood in their eyes.
Everyone smelled blood.
I stood next to my grandmother in that funeral hall, and my grandfather—now too old to fight his own battles—looked at me with that steel-eyed gaze that had once carved empires.
"It's time," he said simply.
Two weeks later, I was appointed Executive Head of Maharlika Airways.
Jaden laughed when I told him. "You're really The One now."
"I've always been The One," I said.
"Yeah," he grinned, "but now they expect you to die for it."
We never fought over the seat. There was no throne, just a long mahogany table where men toasted legacy while quietly planning each other's downfalls.
Jaden didn't want a part in it. He stayed in Singapore, running a creative firm that let him keep his conscience clean.
"Why do you let them chain you?" he asked me once.
"Because I'd rather be inside the cage than outside with no key."
He looked at me too long. "You sound just like Dad."
And I hated that he was right.