Chapter 2

"Marta? What are you doing back here?"

I grabbed the windowsill to steady myself, frozen in place.

She was supposed to be on a flight to Australia.

I'd walked her to security myself. Watched her pass through without looking back.

By the time she landed, I was supposed to be gone.

I'd thought I'd never see her again. But there she was, standing right in front of me.

"Dad."

She said the word quietly, without answering my question.

She shifted to the side and reached back behind her.

"Look who I brought."

A figure stepped out from behind her.

It took me three full seconds to recognize that face.

Laura. My ex-wife.

The woman who had carved the deepest wound of my life.

My expression went cold. The chill rolling off me could have frozen the air solid. I stared hard at my daughter.

"Why are you with her?"

"Don't you know how much I hate that woman?"

But Marta acted like she hadn't heard a word I said.

She looped her arm through Laura's and softened her voice into something gentle and coaxing.

"Dad, it was all just a misunderstanding back then. Mom knows she was wrong. Can't you just forgive her?"

A misunderstanding.

The word hit me like a slap. A wave of rage surged straight to my head.

This woman had cheated on me after giving birth. I'd caught her. Then she'd flipped it around and accused me of marital rape, landing me in prison for three years—turning me into the kind of man the whole neighborhood pointed at and called a rapist.

When I got out, I found she'd cleaned out every account I had, run off with her lover, and left our one-month-old daughter in an orphanage to fend for herself.

And now my daughter—the girl I'd raised for twenty years—was calling all of that a "misunderstanding."

I looked at her and felt something go cold inside me. She was a stranger.

"Marta," I said, pressing hard to keep my voice level, "you were too young back then. You don't know what really happened. That woman is a selfish, heartless liar."

"She abandoned her own newborn daughter. She has no right to call herself a mother. She—"

"Enough!"

She cut me off before I could finish.

Her eyes were red, and the look she gave me was full of disappointment and fury.

"Dad, Mom had her reasons!"

"If you hadn't interfered and pulled me out of that orphanage early, she would've come for me herself!"

"I wouldn't have spent all those years without her—growing up like some kid nobody wanted!"

I went still.

She thought me taking her out of the orphanage was interfering?

I opened my mouth. Something lodged in my throat like a stone.

Then Laura spoke up from beside her, eyes glistening.

"That's right, Andre. I was completely out of options back then. I had no choice but to leave Marta at the orphanage temporarily."

"But you took her without a word to anyone. Do you have any idea how many years I spent trying to find her?"

Her voice broke. She began to cry softly, shoulders trembling.

Marta immediately stepped in front of her, eyes full of reproach aimed straight at me.

I stared at Laura standing there twisting everything upside down, and the blood rushed so hard to my head I could barely see straight. I leveled a finger at her face.

"That's a lie! You took every cent I had and disappeared with your boyfriend! You know exactly what you did!"

"You cold, scheming—"

I spat out those last words and lunged forward a step.

But I didn't reach Laura. Marta stepped between us and shoved me hard in the chest.

I stumbled back two steps and slammed into the windowsill. For a second I nearly went over.

"Stop it!"

She stood in front of me, eyes blazing.

"You're a rapist. What gives you the right to talk about my mom like that?"