The Sound of Silence
[Jay's POV]
The second day without Keifer didn't start with a bang. It started with a whisper—the soft, terrifying whisper of a phone that refused to light up.
I woke up at 7:00 AM, my hand immediately fumbling for the nightstand. Nothing. No "Good morning, Jay." No "London is still grey." No "I miss you." Just a blank lock screen and the mocking ticking of the clock on the wall.
Maybe he's just busy, I told myself as I sat up, the silk sheets feeling colder than they had yesterday. He's in London. The time difference is brutal. He's probably in back-to-back meetings with those 'fax machine' board members.
But by 11:00 AM, the "busy" excuse started to wear thin.
I was in the garden pavilion, my Advanced Engineering tablet open in front of me, but the equations looked like static. Every thirty seconds, my eyes flicked to my phone. I checked my signal. I checked the Wi-Fi. I even restarted the device, half-convinced that the entire telecommunications network of the Philippines had failed just to spite me.
"A watched pot never boils, and a watched phone never pings," a voice said.
I looked up. Mamma (Serina) was walking across the grass, carrying a tray of iced hibiscus tea. She looked at me with a knowing, sympathetic smile—the look of a woman who had spent half her life waiting for a Watson man to come home.
"He hasn't called?" she asked, setting the tray down.
"Not a word," I admitted, my voice tight. "Not even a text to say they landed safely at the second hotel. Is... is this normal for them? When they go on business, do they just... vanish?"
Serina sat down next to me, pouring the tea. "With Keizer? Yes. He gets into 'The Zone.' When he's negotiating a merger, the rest of the world ceases to exist. He forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep, and yes, he sometimes forgets to call. And Keifer... Keifer is his father's son, Jay."
"But he promised," I whispered. "He said 'no interruptions' when he got back. He said he'd be home in forty-eight hours
"And he will be," Serina assured me, reaching out to squeeze my hand. "But right now, he's probably neck-deep in a legal battle over a textile patent. Don't let the silence scare you, darling. In the Watson family, silence doesn't mean absence. It means they're fighting for the future."
The Spiral
Despite Mamma's words, the afternoon was a slow torture.
I tried to distract myself by joining the group chat. Rory, Erdix, Freya, and the others were in the middle of a heated debate about where to go for the post-exam party.
Rory: Has anyone heard from the Prince? He's been ghosting the chat for 24 hours. Even for him, that's 'peak chill'.
Erdix: Probably lost his phone in a pile of money. Or maybe London finally kidnapped him.
Freya: Jay? Is he alive?
I stared at the screen, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. I didn't want to admit to them—or to myself—that I was just as in the dark as they were.
Jay: He's just busy with Pappa. Major merger stuff. You know how it is.
I lied. I hated lying. But the "Mariano" in me was terrified of appearing weak, of appearing like a girl who was so desperate for a boy's attention that she couldn't function without a text.
I put the phone face down on the table and stood up. I couldn't sit still. I spent the next three hours wandering the halls of the estate. I went to the library, but the smell of his sandalwood candle made my chest ache. I went to the gym, but seeing his unused weights reminded me that the house felt half-empty.
By 8:00 PM, the silence had shifted from "busy" to "ominous."
I was back in the Blue Suite, pacing the length of the balcony. The Manila skyline was glittering, but it felt like a cage. My mind, trained for logic, began to construct worst-case scenarios.
Scenario A: The jet crashed. Scenario B: He realized that being with a Mariano was too much work and he's staying in London to find someone 'simpler'.
Scenario C: My father, Jasper, found a way to intercept the Watson communications.
"Logic, Jay. Use logic," I hissed to myself.
But logic has no power over the heart.
The Midnight Vigil
Midnight came and went. Still nothing.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the plush bear from the arcade clutched in my lap. I looked at the contact name: Keifer. I wanted to call him. I wanted to scream into the phone and ask where he was. But the thought of him being in the middle of a life-changing meeting and me appearing like a "distraction" stopped me.
"A Mariano does not beg for attention," my mother's voice echoed in my head.
"I'm not a Mariano anymore," I whispered to the empty room. "I'm a Watson. And Watsons fight for their own."
I grabbed my phone and opened the flight tracker. The return flight wasn't scheduled for another twelve hours. I opened the London news. 'Watson-Mariano Textile Merger Hits Gridlock.' Gridlock. That was the word.
Suddenly, there was a soft knock on my door. Serina stepped in, holding a small plate of cookies and a warm glass of milk. She saw me sitting there in the dark, the blue light of my phone illuminating my tired eyes.
"Still awake?" she asked softly.
"I can't shut my brain off, Mamma," I said, my voice cracking. "What if something is wrong? What if he's changed his mind about me?"
Serina walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling me into a side-hug. "Listen to me, Jay. Keifer has been a 'prince' his whole life. He's had everything handed to him. But you? You're the first thing he's ever had to earn. He isn't going to change his mind. He's just in the middle of a storm. And when a Watson is in a storm, they put their head down and they work until the sun comes out."
"I just wish he'd tell me the sun is still there," I murmured.
"He will," she promised. "Now, try to sleep. Tomorrow is the last day of the silence. Tomorrow, the gates open."
I lay down, eventually drifting into a fitful sleep filled with images of grey London streets and red dots moving across maps. I didn't know that while I was sleeping, seven thousand miles away, Keifer was standing in a boardroom, refusing to sign a document until a specific clause was added—a clause that protected the Mariano assets.
He wasn't ghosting me. He was winning a war for me.
But as the sun began to rise on the third day, I was still just a girl with an empty inbox and a heart that was learning that the loudest sound in the world is the silence of the person you love.