Page 67 of His Daughter

She was in her late twenties. Blonde hair pulled back from her face. She looked at me. Her gaze moved from my face to the baby in my arms, and her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened. Her hands clenched at her sides.

"Who are you? And why are you holding my baby?"

EIGHTEEN

DECLAN

The water was hot, the steam thick. I stood under the shower with my eyes closed and my palms flat against the tile, letting the night replay behind my eyelids.

I was happy. The word was foreign in my mouth. I was genuinely, in-my-body happy, and the unfamiliarity of it was almost frightening. I turned off the water and reached for the towel.

Then I heard my name.

Not Thea's voice. Not the night nurse. A voice I hadn't heard in months — higher, sharper, edged with something desperate and raw. A voice that hit the base of my spine before my brain identified it.

Then Lena screamed.

I didn't dry off. I pulled joggers from the hook on the bathroom door and dragged them over wet skin. My feet were bare. My hair dripped onto my shoulders and down my chest. I was in the hallway in four seconds, the cold floor shocking against my soles, water leaving prints on the hardwood.

The front door was open.

Thea stood in the entryway, her body angled sideways — one arm locked around Lena, the baby pressed against her chest, shielded. Her other hand was raised between herself and the woman in the doorway, palm out, a barrier made of nothing but air and the force of her will. Her face was pale. Her jaw was set.

Lena screamed — rigid, red-faced, her mouth stretched open.

Kira stood in the entrance of my penthouse.

My feet stopped. The hallway narrowed. The air left the room like a door slamming on a pressurized cabin. My lungs locked. My hands hung at my sides, and the water still running down my forearms dripped onto the hardwood.

Kira.

She looked different. Thinner. The bones of her face were more visible than I remembered. Her hair was pulled back, but strands had come loose, sticking to her temples with sweat or rain or both. The coat she wore was too thin. Her eyes were red-rimmed, raw, swollen, locked on Lena.

She was the woman from the Dominican restaurant with the plastic chairs. The woman who ordered for me in Spanish, and said, “Trust me.” The woman who left because she felt trapped by an invisible limit. She tried to reach me after, and I blocked her number in my kitchen in the dark with a whiskey in my hand and told myself the past needed to stay in the past.

The past was standing in my doorway.

"Declan! Declan, that's my baby!" Her voice cracked on my name. Her hands reached toward Lena — trembling, grasping, the fingers opening and closing on the air between her and the child. "Give me my baby. Please. Please give me my baby."

Thea pulled Lena tighter against her chest. The baby's screaming climbed — sharp, piercing, filling the penthouse and bouncing off the glass.

I stepped into the room. My voice came out low and steady, and I didn't recognize it as mine.

"Kira."

She turned and saw me fully. Her eyes swept down my body — the bare chest, the wet hair dripping onto my shoulders, the joggers riding low, the water still beading on my skin — and her face changed. The desperation didn't leave, but something else layered over it. Disgust. Recognition.

"There he is." Her voice flattened. "Father of the year."

"What are you doing in my apartment?"

"I'm here for my baby." She took a step forward. Her shoe left a wet print on the hardwood. Thea stepped back, angling her body, one arm locked around Lena, her other hand raised. "I'm not leaving without her."

"Thea." I kept my eyes on Kira. "Take Lena to the nursery."

Thea moved. She didn't run — she walked, steady, controlled, her body between Lena and the doorway until she cleared the hallway. I heard her footsteps recede, the nursery door, Lena's screaming thinning as the distance opened, and Thea's humming started — low and tuneless.

I turned to Kira. She watched the hallway where Thea disappeared, her body leaning toward it, her hands still raised. Her fingers trembled so badly the tendons in her wrists were visible.