Surrender (Echelon #4)

Jessica Manlapig thought she understood the price of survival - until Manila taught her otherwise.

A journalism student from Nueva Ecija, she works herself to the bone to keep her family afloat, until debt and desperation push her toward The Blue Book - a shadowy network where companionship is currency and morality is negotiable. One night, she is sent to meet a client she knows only by an alias. But when the door opens, the man standing there isn’t a stranger. He’s Alexander Almeda - heir to one of the country’s most powerful families. Cold, calculating, and devastatingly unreachable.

What begins as a transaction quickly turns into something neither can define. Jessica’s body becomes collateral; her dignity, a contract. But beneath Alex’s armor of control lies a man haunted by his own ruin, drawn to the one woman he was never meant to touch. Their connection burns with tension - part obsession, part salvation - and every encounter blurs the line between punishment and desire.

As Jessica sinks deeper into his world of money, secrecy, and power, she must confront the question she’s been running from since the how far can survival go before it becomes surrender?

And when love finally enters the equation, it’s no longer about the contract - but the cost of breaking free.

SURRENDER is a story of power and ruin, of a girl who sells her soul to save her family and the man who learns too late that some hearts aren’t meant to be owned.