Never Judge

"Because the whole family would rather forget about Uncle Miguel." Nicole said sadly as they walked towards a grave at the corner of the marble mausoleum. 

It was cold and eerie inside, it made Katerina shiver as their footsteps echoed across the room.

"What happened to him?" Veronica tentatively asked. She had tried to pry the story out of the siblings in the hospital but they refused to tell her.

"Uncle Miguel loved. That's his biggest mistake." Eric said with a sigh.

"I'm sure your parents love each other, what makes Uncle Miguel so different?" Veronica asked.

"Uncle Miguel and dad were born two years apart, Uncle Miguel coming after dad. Without the pressure of having to inherit or lead the family he thought that he was free of all the pressures of belonging to the Chan family, this included the person he chose to love." Miguel said as he looked over to Nicole who was in a trance as she looked at her Uncle's grave.

"Uncle Miguel and Nicole may not have ever met, but their stories have a lot of parallels. According to the older employees at the Chan home Uncle Miguel was quite the free spirit and he was very friendly with women." Miguel continued to explain.

"Friendly like Alexi is friendly?" Katerina asked.

"No, friendly like Nicole. He wasn't afraid to get to know people and to date around, but he never really had a girlfriend among them and nothing physical would happen." Eric laughed as he clarified what Miguel meant.

"Anyway, the elders and the board members ignored him going on dates. They were dates, nothing serious, some were with women they approved, others were with women they did not. I guess you could say our uncle had a big heart." Miguel took out a candle and passed it to Eric for him to light at the grave. "One day, Uncle Miguel comes home with a woman. She was a rising star in the business field and worked at the Reyes Group. He had met her on one of his visits with dad to Uncle Emilio, the woman stole his heart." 

Veronica sighed, it did sound similar to what Nicole was going through.

"Uncle Miguel insisted that he loved the woman, that he wanted to marry her. Everyone objected." Miguel said as his voice faded.

"She isn't of our people, she isn't like us, she isn't from a family like ours." Nicole said as she continued her brother's story. "Uncle Miguel had loved someone our family saw as beneath them. They all objected and forced Uncle Miguel to break up with the woman."

"Unfortunately, Uncle Miguel was as hard headed as Nicole over here." Eric teased as he pointed at his sister.

"I'm smarter than him. I have to be." Nicole said in a serious tone.

"Anyway, Uncle Miguel argued that he wasn't the heir so who he married didn't matter. Who he loved was not a family affair. The elders objected." Miguel said with a sigh. "They did everything to break them up. They threatened to cut him off, Uncle Miguel didn't care. They then said they would block him from every hospital in the country so that he couldn't work, again, Uncle Miguel didn't care, he insisted that he loved the woman."

"Then?" Katerina asked as she held her breath.

"Then they went too far. When I was six and Miguel was one, Uncle Miguel and the woman eloped. They thought they would be safe enough abroad, they were wrong. In an attempt to separate them our grandfather caused the woman's death, she was with their one year old daughter. A few months later Uncle Miguel returned home, his heart was broken beyond repair. I remember seeing him walk around the old house like a ghost, like he had no will to live. A month after Miguel's second birthday, a maid found Uncle Miguel in his room, he was already dead." As Eric said this he whipped a tear from his eye. Katerina came up to him and hugged him gently. Among the three siblings it was Eric that had the most vivid memory of their uncle. He was old enough to remember and to understand what had happened.

"A few years back we found out that the only reason he had continued to hold on to his life for a year was because he thought his daughter might have survived. Grandpa made him think she survived, but in an argument grandpa revealed that she too had died with her mother." Nicole explained. "It ruined him. He felt like he was the reason his wife and daughter had died, he couldn't go on without them."

"That's why Nicole can't tell the family about Ian yet." Miguel explained.

"But Ian comes from a rich family, they just fell from grace but they are an old rich family." Veronica said.

"He is of no importance in the eyes of the Chan elders. He will only be someone of worth when he gets the Lim name back to its former glory." Nicole explained shaking her head. "Until then, to them he is nothing more than an ordinary employee at the Reyes Group, no matter how much Cedric favors him."

"How could they so easily get rid of a mother and her child?" Veronica was in shock. She always thought that the Chans were more open and more understanding than the Abad family. It sounded like they were just as bad.

"They are worried that people of what they consider lower birth, would only be after our money. That it isn't love or even lust, but the financial gain that motivates them." Eric explained in a sad tone.

"So the mother and the baby girl, are they buried here too?" Katerina asked, hoping that at least in death man and woman could at least be next to each other.

"Uncle buried his wife, but they never found the baby's body. The accident was out at sea, so we assumed that the baby drowned and the body sank to the bottom." Nicole said as her voice cracked. She couldn't imagine having to go through what her uncle went through. They were from a family of murderers and yet they said they saved lives as doctors. It ashamed all three siblings. 

"I refuse to suffer the same fate as my uncle." Nicole said as they watched the candle burn in their uncle's grave.