PART 2 — THE SECRET BEHIND THE MASK
For the first few weeks of their marriage, Clara believed she had made the biggest sacrifice of her life.
Every morning, she woke up inside the enormous Montemayor mansion, surrounded by priceless paintings, marble floors, and servants who treated her like royalty.
But none of it felt like a blessing.
Because every night, she returned to the same bedroom.
The bedroom where Don Baste sat in his wheelchair, eating dinner silently while Clara tried to understand the man she had been forced to marry.
He was everything the rumors said.
Cold.
Difficult.
Demanding.
Sometimes he would purposely spill his drink and watch her reaction.
Sometimes he would complain about the food even when the chef had prepared the finest meals in the country.
Sometimes he would call her name in the middle of the night just to ask for something small.
A glass of water.
A blanket.
A book from the shelf.
Clara knew what he was doing.
He was testing her.
But what confused her was that behind all his cruelty, she saw something else.
Loneliness.
There were moments when Don Baste thought she wasn’t looking.
Moments when his angry expression disappeared and his eyes looked painfully empty.
One afternoon, Clara walked into the mansion’s library and found him staring at an old photograph.
It was a picture of a younger man.
A handsome man.
A man standing beside a woman who looked like his mother.
For a brief second, Clara saw sadness on his face.
Then he quickly covered it.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped.
Clara stepped back.
“I was just looking for a book.”
“You should learn not to enter rooms without permission.”
“I’m sorry.”
She turned to leave.
But before she reached the door, she heard him quietly say:
“Do you really think I’m a monster?”
Clara stopped.
She slowly looked back.
Don Baste was still staring at the photograph.
“I don’t know what to think,” she admitted honestly.
A bitter smile appeared on his face.
“At least you’re honest.”
Clara hesitated.
“People talk about you a lot.”
“I know.”
“They call you terrible names.”
His fingers tightened around the photograph.
“I know.”
“But I don’t think someone is a monster just because people decide they are.”
For the first time since their wedding, Don Baste looked directly at her.
And Clara noticed something strange.
His eyes were not the eyes of a cruel man.
They were the eyes of someone who had been hurt for a very long time.
That night, Clara found a small box outside her bedroom door.
Inside was a diamond bracelet.
Attached was a note.
“Thank you for not looking at me the way everyone else does.”
There was no signature.
But Clara knew exactly who had written it.
Months passed.
Slowly, something changed between them.
Clara stopped seeing Don Baste as the frightening billionaire from the rumors.
She began seeing the man behind the rumors.
She discovered that he secretly paid hospital bills for poor families.
She discovered that he built schools in remote villages but never allowed his name to appear on them.
She discovered that many employees stayed with him for decades—not because they feared him, but because they respected him.
One evening, Clara found Don Baste struggling to move from his wheelchair to his bed.
Without hesitation, she rushed over.
“Let me help you.”
He immediately pushed her hand away.
“No.”
“Don Baste—”
“I said no.”
His voice was harsh.
But Clara noticed his hands were shaking.
Not from anger.
From embarrassment.
“I’m your wife,” she said softly. “You don’t have to be ashamed in front of me.”
Those words hit him harder than she realized.
Because nobody had ever spoken to him that way.
Nobody had ever looked beyond his appearance.
That night, Don Baste sat silently for a long time.
Then he finally said:
“Clara… if you knew the truth about me, you would hate me.”
She frowned.
“What truth?”
But he only looked away.
“Not yet.”
A year after their wedding, Clara still had never seen Don Baste without his clothes covering his entire body.
He always wore oversized shirts.
Long sleeves.
Heavy jackets.
Even inside the mansion.
At first, she assumed it was because he was uncomfortable with his body.
But then she noticed something else.
He never allowed anyone to touch his back.
Not the doctors.
Not the servants.
Not even her.
One day, while helping him organize his medications, Clara saw an old medical file.
She wasn’t trying to read it.
But one sentence caught her attention.
“Reconstructive procedure completed successfully.”
Her heart skipped.
Reconstructive?
Why would someone who was simply overweight need reconstructive surgery?
Before she could look closer, Don Baste took the file from her hand.
“Don’t.”
His voice was different.
Not angry.
Afraid.
“Why are you hiding so much?” Clara asked.
For a moment, the powerful billionaire disappeared.
And she saw a wounded man.
“Because people only love beautiful things, Clara.”
She stared at him.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“No.”
Her voice became firmer.
“I married a man I thought everyone hated. And every day, you prove that they were wrong.”
Don Baste looked at her.
And for the first time, Clara saw tears forming in his eyes.
But he quickly turned away.
Their first wedding anniversary arrived quietly.
Clara expected nothing.
She assumed Don Baste would ignore it like everything else.
But when she entered the dining room that evening, she froze.
The entire room had been transformed.
Hundreds of candles lit the walls.
Fresh flowers covered the table.
A beautiful dinner waited for them.
And in the center was a small box.
“For you,” Don Baste said.
Clara opened it.
Inside was a necklace with a diamond pendant.
But the necklace wasn’t what made her emotional.
It was the message engraved on the back.
“To the woman who saw my heart before my face.”
Clara looked up.
“Don Baste…”
He slowly rolled his wheelchair toward the mirror.
“I think you deserve the truth.”
Her heart began racing.
“What truth?”
He reached behind his neck.
And his trembling fingers touched something she had never noticed before.
A hidden zipper.
Clara froze.
“What… is that?”
Don Baste looked at her.
“The reason the world thinks they know me.”
Slowly…
Very slowly…
He pulled the zipper down.
Clara stepped backward.
Her hand covered her mouth.
Because the person standing before her was not the man everyone called the “Pig Billionaire.”
The fake scars.
The artificial weight.
The entire appearance he had carried for years…
It was all a disguise.
And beneath it was a man Clara had only seen in dreams.
A tall, handsome man with a face that belonged on magazine covers.
The same man who had disappeared from public life years ago.
The billionaire heir everyone believed was dead.
Clara couldn’t breathe.
“Who… are you?”
He looked at her with tears in his eyes.
“My real name is Sebastian Montemayor.”
A pause.
“And for ten years, I hid from the world because I needed to know if someone could love me without knowing my face.”
Clara stared at him in shock.
Everything suddenly made sense.
The rumors.
The wheelchair.
The cruelty.
The test.
It had all been a carefully created mask.
And now, standing in front of her, was the man behind it.
But before Clara could say anything, Sebastian whispered:
“There’s one more secret you need to know…”
His expression changed.
And this time, Clara saw real fear.
“Your father didn’t just lose 50 million pesos through gambling.”
“He was involved in the reason I had to disappear.”
Clara’s smile faded.
“What are you talking about?”
Sebastian looked toward the locked cabinet in the corner of the room.
“The night your father sold you to me…”
“He wasn’t trying to save himself.”
“He was trying to hide what he did to my family.”
And Clara realized their marriage had never been an accident.
It had been part of a secret that had been buried for years.