The text from Lucy vibrated against my palm like a death sentence.
My knees buckled. I looked down at the infant in my arms—the child I had traded my soul for, the boy with David’s unmistakable, crescent-shaped birthmark mocking me from beneath his tiny left eyelid. The kid didn’t look like me. He looked like the blueprint of my own public execution.
“Mr. Mendez?” the nurse repeated, her voice cutting through the thick, sterile air of the delivery room. She held out a clipboard, a silver pen resting on top of the birth certificate paperwork. “We need your signature to finalize the paternal admission forms before we move the baby to the nursery. Sir?”
I looked at Valerie. The woman who had occupied my thoughts, my bed, and my bank account for the last year was staring fixedly at the ceiling, her jaw clenched, refusing to meet my eyes. The silent admission written across her pale face was louder than any confession.
“I… I need a moment,” I choked out.
I shoved the baby back into the nurse’s startled arms, ignored Valerie’s sharp, sudden intake of breath, and practically burst through the heavy double doors of the maternity ward. The hospital corridor was endless, a blur of fluorescent lights and the distant, agonizing sound of newborns crying. Every cry felt like a high-pitched laugh at my expense.
I collapsed into a plastic chair in the waiting area, my hands shaking so violently I almost dropped my phone.
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