It had been fake from the very beginning.
He had known the child wasn't his. He had known everything. And he had still chosen to lie to her face, to make her hope, to use her for whatever purpose served his "business."
That deliberate, calculated deception hurt worse than simple abandonment ever could.
Because even with full knowledge of the truth, he had looked her in the eyes and pretended to care.
And now, alone in the sunlit room with the broken pieces of the tablet scattered on the floor, Daniella cried as if something inside her had been permanently broken.
Her hand never left her abdomen.
The small, faint flutter of life continued beneath her palm, steady, innocent, and completely unaware of the betrayal that had just shattered its mother's world.
Daniella's mind fractured around a single, merciless question.
Why had her life become like this?
