Her eyes. The moment I really looked into them, something inside me went still in the most dangerous way. I was looking at myself. There was nothing sentimental or vague about it, none of that watered-down bullshit people used when they wanted resemblance to mean more than it did. I looked at that child and saw my own goddamn eyes staring back at me from a smaller, brighter face.
No one could deny it. Not me. Not any stranger in that room.
And sure as hell not Edwina.
She had seen it too. I knew she had. Her face gave her away before she could stop it. Fear moved through her too fast, and her eyes filled with tears she fought like hell to hold back. She knew exactly what I had noticed. She knew what was happening inside my head the second I looked at that little girl and the truth drove itself between my ribs.
Helena was mine. My daughter. I was fucking sure of it.
The years vanished into nothing. All I could see was Edwina’s panic. The life she had hidden. The daughter she had kept from me so completely that I had been reduced to a stranger asking my own child her name while she looked at me with innocent curiosity and called mesir.
Sir.
The memory of it made something black twist inside me. I was the stranger. Me.
The man standing at the edge of my daughter’s life. The outsider. She looked at me with caution because my face meant nothing to her, my voice carried no memory, and every instinct in her little body told her I was someone unknown.
And Daniel?
That bastard was familiar.
He had her smile, her trust, and her little arms around his neck as if he had earned a place in a life that should have had my name carved into it from the beginning. He took cake from her hand with ease, standing inside the shape of her day while I watched like some fucking intruder at my own daughter’s birthday.
That truth hit hard enough to make violence feel reasonable. I should have been the face she knew. The voice that meant safety. The man she ran to without thinking. I should have been there for the birthdays, the small ordinary shit that makes a father real in a child’s life.
Instead, I wassir.
And Daniel was here.
I could still feel that room on my skin. Children laughing. Music playing. Balloons brushing the ceiling while I stood there trying not to rip the truth out of Edwina with my bare hands. I should have dragged her out the second I understood.
A part of me wanted to. The worst part of me was already starving for answers, blood, and anything that could make the last five years hurt less than they did in that moment.
But Helena was here.
Jesus fucking Christ.
My daughter was standing right in front of me with birthday frosting on her fingers, looking up at me with those bright, careful eyes. Rage was carving through me, yet I could not letit touch her day. I would not turn that little girl’s birthday into a battlefield. Edwina deserved answers torn out of her, maybe worse, but Helena deserved one clean memory from the man she did not know yet.
So I swallowed the fury until it burned. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the small velvet box I had bought on the way. Now my hand almost shook around it.
Helena looked at the box, then up at me. “Is that for me?”
I crouched in front of her, forcing my voice not to break. “Yeah, little star. It’s for you.”
Her eyes widened. “Mommy, can I?”
Edwina did not answer at first. Her stare burned into me, panic and pain stretching between us like a live wire. Then she gave a small nod.
Helena took the box with both hands and opened it carefully. Inside was a tiny silver bracelet with a little star charm hanging from it.
She gasped. “It has a star.”
“It does,” I said, my throat tight as hell. “Thought it suited you.”
Her smile hit me so hard I almost forgot how to breathe.
“Thank you, sir.”
