My throat tightened.
My voice came out broken, fragile.
Barely audible.
“Dad?”
Just that one word.
Soft. Raw.
A plea I hadn’t realized I was making until it left my mouth.
Vasquez’s expression hardened instantly.
The warmth I had been searching for—the ghost of the man I remembered—vanished.
His eyes darkened.
“Don’t,” he said, voice low and lethal, “Ever call me that.”
The word hit harder than any physical blow I had taken today.
My chest caved inward as if something inside me had been struck and shattered at once.
My breath caught.
Stuck somewhere between inhale and exhale.
For a moment—I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process.
After everything.
After years of believing he was gone.
After mourning him.
After building a life around the idea that I had lost my family—this was what waited on the other side of that grief?
This?
I stared at him.
Searching.
Desperately.
For something.
Anything.
A flicker. A memory.
The man who used to lift me onto his shoulders so I could see fireworks.
The one who taught me how to shoot before I could spell my own name.
