Chapter 1 - The Homeless Girl Left a Baby at My Door, and the Newborn Had My EyesRain hammered my estate in Bosques de las Lomas just after midnight.
Someone knocked.
Three times.
Slowly.
I stood behind the door with one hand near the gun beneath my jacket.
Nobody came to my home after midnight without a reason.
And people rarely arrived with good news.
I opened the door.
A little girl stood outside.
Seven years old, perhaps.
Drenched.
Barefoot inside shoes that were falling apart.
Her knees were covered in dirt.
Her lips trembled from the cold.
And against her chest she held a black plastic bag.
Something inside it cried.
“Sir,” she whispered.
I stared at the bag.
“What is that?”
“A baby.”
My expression hardened.
“Where did you get him?”
She looked toward the dark road behind her.
“Your trash bins.”
I froze.
“I don't have a baby.”
She looked down at the newborn.
Then back at me.
“He has your angry face.”
Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed.
That night, I didn't.
I stepped aside.
“Come inside.”
The girl hesitated.
“You won't take him away?”
“No.”
She entered.
My housekeeper, Carmen, rushed toward us.
“Boss?”
“Get towels.”
Carmen immediately obeyed.
The child placed the newborn in my arms.
He was tiny.
Far too tiny.
His skin was cold.
His lips were pale.
I wrapped him in my jacket.
The little girl watched me carefully.
“What's your name?”
“Sofia.”
“Where are your parents?”
She lowered her eyes.
“My grandmother is sick.”
“Where is she?”
“The hospital.”
“And you've been alone?”
She nodded.
“For how long?”
“Three days.”
My jaw tightened.
Three days.
A seven-year-old had survived three nights alone in the rain while protecting a newborn she had found beside my property.
I looked toward Carmen.
“Call Dr. Reyes.”
She nodded.
Sofia watched me.
“Is he going to die?”
“No.”
I didn't know whether it was a promise or an order.
But I said it anyway.
Carmen brought blankets.
The doctor arrived twenty minutes later.
He examined the child.
“Hypothermia,” he said. “Malnourishment. But he'll survive if we stabilize him.”
I exhaled.
Then Carmen found the envelope.
It had been taped beneath the blue blanket.
My name was written across the front.
I recognized the handwriting instantly.
Dr. Isabel Méndez.
My former fiancée.
The woman who had disappeared from my life twelve years earlier.
The woman I had once loved.
The woman who knew things about my body and my medical history that almost nobody else knew.
I opened the letter.
The first sentence made my blood run cold.
You need to know what happened to the child created from your genetic material.
I stared at the baby.
“No.”
I kept reading.
Isabel mentioned a private fertility clinic.
A genetic procedure.
Frozen samples.
A password.
A project my father had funded secretly.
I hadn't thought about it in twelve years.
After the shooting that nearly killed me, my doctors had preserved several reproductive samples while I underwent treatment.
I was told they were later destroyed.
Apparently, they weren't.
The letter gave me one location.
One password.
And one warning.
Do not trust anyone who tells you this child has no connection to the Moretti family.
The baby began crying.
I looked down.
Then froze.
Blue-gray eyes.
My eyes.
The same shape.
The same pale ring around the iris.
I stared at him.
Sofia crossed her arms.
“I told you he was yours.”
I looked at her.
“How would you know that?”
“I saw him.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
She shrugged.
“He looked like you.”
The doctor finished examining him.
“Boss, we'll need a DNA test.”
I nodded.
“Immediately.”
Sofia stepped forward.
“Will you keep him?”
“Yes.”
“And me?”
I looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
She hugged herself.
“When people find children like me, they send us away.”
I didn't answer immediately.
The girl had asked the question like she already knew the answer.
I crouched.
“You're staying.”
Her eyes widened.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the baby.
“And him?”
“Both of you.”
She smiled.
It was the first time I'd seen her do it.
Then the door opened.
A child welfare officer entered with two assistants.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes?”
“We received a report involving an abandoned infant and an unaccompanied minor.”
I stared at her.
“They're under my protection.”
“That isn't legally sufficient.”
“We'll make it sufficient.”
She glanced at Sofia.
“We need to place her somewhere safe.”
Sofia immediately tightened her grip around the baby's blanket.
“Please.”
Her voice broke.
“Don't separate us.”
I looked at her.
“Why?”
“He was freezing.”
She wiped her eyes.
“I promised him I wouldn't leave him.”
Something inside me tightened.
Men had begged me for their lives.
None had ever moved me like this.
I turned toward the officer.
“They stay here.”
She hesitated.
“This is a temporary arrangement.”
“Then make it temporary.”
She looked at me.
I looked back.
Eventually, she nodded.
After she left, Sofia sat beside the baby.
I watched her.
“Why did you bring him here?”
She looked at me.
“Because he needed someone.”
“You could have taken him to the hospital.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“That someone would take him.”
She looked toward the door.
“So I brought him to the strongest man I could find.”
I frowned.
“Why me?”
She whispered:
“Because everyone is afraid of you.”
Then she smiled faintly.
“Bad people are scared of strong people.”
I stared at her.
Then at the baby.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe she had found the right door.
Or maybe someone had deliberately led her to it.
At 3:14 a.m., my phone rang.
It was the child welfare officer.
“We found Sofia's grandmother.”
“Where?”
“Santa Elena Hospital.”
“Is she conscious?”
“No.”
“She worked for your family thirty years ago.”
I froze.
“What was her name?”
The officer told me.
I knew it.
Carmen knew it.
The woman's name had appeared in my father's old financial records.
Then the officer said:
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“She claims your late father secretly had another daughter.”
My eyes moved toward Sofia.
The little girl was sitting beside the newborn.
May you like
And suddenly, I wondered whether the child who had saved my possible son...
was my niece.
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