Chapter 5 #2
“Mr. Perez, please, perhaps you’ve been given incorrect information—”
“Enough!”
The roar shook the room.
I flinched.
“You think I don’t know my own child?” he thundered. “You think I spent weeks searching for her only to mistake her for someone else?”
He closed the distance between us.
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him—every ounce of fury pouring off him like heat from a fire.
I retreated instinctively until my back slammed against the wall.
“A blind intern,” he said with bitter disbelief. “Of all the cruel jokes fate could have played on me, it places my daughter in the care of a blind intern.”
Then I heard him laugh.
It wasn’t amusement. It was the sound a man made when he was one step away from breaking.
“The only reason you’re still standing there is because Zara is in this room,” he said, each word sharpened by fury.
“I know this may be difficult to believe,” I forced out, my throat tight. “But she came into my life three weeks ago. Terrified. Bruised. Barefoot.”
My voice wavered. “She could barely tell me her name, let alone where she came from.”
My fingers curled into my palms.
“I know I should have called the police. I know that.” Shame weighed heavily on every word. “But I was selfish. I looked at her and saw a child who needed someone, and I convinced myself fate had finally decided to give me back something it had taken.”
The room was deathly silent.
“I never hurt her. I protected her. I cared for her.” My voice softened. “I loved her so much that I started believing she was my daughter.”
The instant the words left my mouth, I felt him move.
Each step stole the air from my lungs until all I could sense was him—his presence, his fury, the dangerous restraint barely holding it together.
“Stop.” His voice was low enough to chill my blood.
My heart stumbled.
“Stop calling my daughter Zara.” Each word was edged with contempt. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve spent so long in darkness you’ve mistaken another man’s child for your own. Blindness is one thing. Delusion is another. Unfortunately, you seem afflicted by both.”
The words landed like a whip crack.
You’ve spent so long in darkness you’ve mistaken another man’s child for your own.
Blindness is one thing. Delusion is another.
The sentence echoed through my head, merciless and sharp.
My fingers curled at my sides.
All my life, people had spoken around my blindness. Some pitied it. Others ignored it. The cruel ones used it as a weapon when they wanted to wound me.
Yet somehow, hearing it from him hurt more.
Maybe because a part of me already carried those fears.
Maybe because every day was a reminder of everything I couldn’t do.
Everything I couldn’t see.
Heat crawled up my throat.
I hated that his words made me feel small, broken and ashamed.
As though the darkness behind my eyes was not merely a condition, but a flaw. A stain. Something that made me lesser.
Something that deserved contempt.
My throat tightened painfully.
Years of hard-earned confidence cracked beneath the weight of a few cruel words.
And for the first time in a very long while, I wished I could see.
Not to look at him.
But to know whether the disgust I heard in his voice matched the expression on his face.
A chill crawled down my spine.
Because in that moment, I understood something terrifying.
The only thing standing between me and the full force of Rafael Perez’s wrath was the little girl in the room.
Then I heard new footsteps enter the room.
I didn’t need an introduction to know who it was.
Ramiro’s familiar scent reached me a second later, instantly sharpening my awareness.
Paper rustled softly somewhere to my left.
A file being opened. The quiet turning of pages.
Then a pause.
A subtle exchange. Someone handing something over.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree.
“That’s the DNA report,” Ramiro said quietly. “She is indeed your Tess, Rafael.”
My stomach dropped.
The DNA test.
The one Ramiro had arranged yesterday.
The one I had desperately hoped would prove all of this was a mistake.
Instead, it had confirmed my worst fear.
The room fell silent.
Then I heard the sharp slap of papers hitting a desk.
“I don’t need a DNA report to recognize my own daughter,” Rafael said.
The conviction in his voice stole what little hope I had left.
My stomach dropped.
“You may leave,” Rafael said to Ramiro. His voice had gone completely flat now—dangerously calm. “I’ll deal with her myself.”
“I’ll be outside,” Ramiro said simply.
Then came the sound of his footsteps retreating, until the door to the outer office clicked shut with a soft finality that felt louder than it should have.
I couldn’t see Rafael.
But I could feel him—his rage, his anger—pressing against the air like something alive.
He shifted in front of me.
Repositioning.
His attention moved between me and Zara like a blade calculating distance.
I could sense it—the way his focus shifted between me and Zara, like a predator weighing two targets, deciding which mattered more in that moment.
“My daughter doesn’t even seem to recognize me anymore.”
Something in Rafael’s voice cracked—just for a second.
Then it hardened again.
“I don’t care how she ended up with you. You’ve had my child for three weeks. You will pay for it.”
His words sharpened with every syllable.
“I didn’t steal your child,” I said evenly, forcing my voice to remain steady.
“If I had, I wouldn’t be standing in your company on my very first day as your assistant—with her right there beside me.
I wouldn’t have brought her into your building.
I wouldn’t have sat her in a visitor’s chair like she’s something to conceal. ”
I drew in a breath.
“I don’t take children, Mr. Perez. And you cannot honestly believe a blind woman could orchestrate something so elaborate without it collapsing around her immediately.”
My fingers tightened on the desk—not in anger, but to keep myself anchored.
“You have to believe me,” I added more quietly. “I didn’t take her. I found her. I helped her.”
His silence shifted.
I could feel it.
So I pushed forward.
“Do you remember the night your brother broke into my apartment?”
I didn’t need sight to know I had him.
“The same night you saved me,” I continued, my voice tightening at the memory. “That was the night she appeared on my doorstep.”
My hand moved instinctively toward Zara.
“Barefoot,” I said softly. “Bruised. Terrified. She couldn’t even stand properly.”
My throat tightened.
“She was begging for help.”
I swallowed.
“I took her in. Cleaned her wounds. Gave her food. Warm soup. Safety—something she clearly hadn’t known in a long time.”
A breath.
“She barely speaks. She’s autistic. Very attached to me. She panics when she’s separated for too long.”
My voice lowered slightly.
“She just wants to stay close. Always.”
Then, carefully—
“You know she’s autistic... don’t you?”
Silence answered me.
My chest tightened.
“I’m only asking one thing,” I said, softer now. “Please... don’t take her away from me completely.”
“You stand in my office,” Rafael said coldly, “and dare to make demands?”
A cold step closer.
“Your boldness is not bravery. It’s foolishness.”
“My daughter’s name is Tess,” he growled, fury cutting clean through the room. “Not Zara.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, my voice quieter now, confusion seeping in despite my effort to hold it back. “She told me her name was Zara.”
His jaw tightened.
“Zara is her mother’s name,” he said sharply. “She said it because losing her mother... broke something in her. It’s the only name she could reach for when everything else disappeared.”
The words landed wrong in my chest.
Wrong in a way that hurt.
“So let this be the last time you refer to her by that name.”
“Oh...”
It slipped out before I could stop it.
Something tight and painful coiled in my chest as understanding rearranged itself into something far worse than ignorance.
Tess had never actually told me her name was Zara.
She barely spoke in the first place.
She had whispered that name in her sleep.
Over and over.
Just that name, slipping past her lips like something she didn’t understand but couldn’t stop repeating.
I had thought it belonged to her.
A name she was trying to hold onto.
But it wasn’t that at all.
Now I understood.
It wasn’t identity. It was loss.
A word her mind kept reaching for in the dark, searching for the mother she could no longer find.
“You’ll never see her again.”
The words landed like a sentence of death.
And then I heard him move closer to Tess.
My entire body went still.
“Tess...”
His voice changed—lower now, softer in a way that made it worse.
And my chest cracked open.
No.
No, he couldn’t take her.
Not like this.
Not after three weeks of breathing her laughter, her silence, her fragile trust into something that finally felt like purpose.
She wasn’t just a child I cared for.
She was the reason I had started waking up without emptiness.
The reason my world had started making sense again.
And now he was pulling it away like it had never existed.
I moved before I could think.
“Mr. Rafael,” I said quickly, forcing courage into my voice as I stepped forward.
My hand reached out, searching blindly through the space I remembered.
Chair. Edge.
And then—
Tess
I found her instantly and held on.
“Please don’t take her from me,” I said, voice breaking despite my effort to control it. “She’s already scared. She trusts me. You can’t just remove her from—”
My throat tightened.
“She needs me.”
“Take a step back, Loretta,” his voice snapped suddenly, sharp as a blade. “Or I will unleash hell you are not prepared to survive.”
My grip on Zara’s hand tightened unconsciously.
Tears burned behind my eyes, invisible but heavy enough to change the way my voice carried.
I couldn’t let go.
Not even if my hands shook.
“Mr. Rafael—please,” I whispered, my voice breaking completely. “I’ll do anything. Anything at all, just don’t take her from me.”
My throat tightened painfully.
“I wouldn’t survive that kind of heartbreak,” I added, barely above a breath. “And I don’t think she would either.”
The words were not pride anymore.
Only desperation.
And then—
A beat of silence too heavy to breathe through.
“Fine,” he said suddenly.
“Marry me,” Rafael added coldly. “And you can stay with her.”