Maria was walking quietly down the corridor, with Salima beside her, both wiping their hands after leaving the restroom.
But something suddenly caught Maria's attention. She stopped, her gray eyes watching silently from afar.
There, at the end of the hallway, her son Leonardo had approached a beautiful brunette girl holding the child, Mateo, in her arms.
His gaze was sharp, cold, like knives. He took his child from the girl's arms without a word of thanks, then turned his back and walked away with steady steps.
Maria noticed how the girl kept looking at Leonardo, her eyes full of a thousand questions, and a smile left incomplete.
Something stirred inside Maria... something she hadn't seen in her son's eyes for years.
She said nothing but exchanged a brief glance with Salima... and both understood silently that a moment had happened.
---
Rehana sat alone in a corner of the hospital.
She was trying to gather her scattered thoughts after that strange encounter.
Who was this man? Why was his look filled with cruelty?
There was something in his presence that unsettled her—not just his handsomeness, but the way he held the child, his walk, those eyes that carried a strange moment she couldn't understand.
She whispered inside herself:
"Is he Mateo's father? Does he know...?"
Then she remembered the note, the folded paper, and felt the questions piling up more than ever.
---
After Rehana returned home, while Leonardo was driving his car elsewhere in the city,
his hand gripped the steering wheel tightly, his eyes fixed on the road, then to the rearview mirror as if trying to shake off a memory... but it was chasing him.
A faint scent of perfume lingered in his nose, a fragrance he didn't know the name of but would never forget.
That red dress—how it highlighted the curve of her body, the color of her dark skin, her long flowing hair, her lashes that moved gently when she looked at him, and... her smile.
A smile that did not frighten him, but unsettled him.
Suddenly, he heard his child's voice whisper from a few days ago: "Rehana."
He paused for a moment, muttering almost inaudibly:
"So, it's her..."
---
At Rehana's home, she sat with her mother after returning.
Silence ruled the room until Salima broke it with a question:
— "Who was that man?"
— "I don't know, but... apparently, he is Mateo's father."
She said no more.
But inside, the information was growing...
"Was he the cause of all this?
Did he know that the child's mother died because of something bigger?
Is the note they found connected to him?
And why this strange tremble I felt when he got close?"
---
Three days later, during another visit to the hospital, their paths crossed again.
Maria was in the waiting hall, then she met Salima and Rehana, and they exchanged a conversation, but Mateo was in a bad mood, crying and screaming, refusing to sit in his grandmother's lap.
Maria said kindly:
— "Rehana, could you?… It seems he loves you."
Without hesitation, Rehana stepped forward, held the child in her arms, and as soon as her fingers touched his small face, he calmed down and returned to quiet.
She started to play with him and laugh, her voice warm, like a soft song that could only be heard by the heart.
At that moment, Leonardo arrived.
He stopped a few steps away, didn't approach, but was close enough to see.
He saw her there... laughing, her face glowing with a light he did not know.
But what made his muscles tense was the man sitting across from her, looking at Rehana with a long gaze, clearly admiring her, not hiding it.
He frowned.
He said nothing, but felt something exploding inside him.
Jealousy? Maybe.
Rejection? Certainly.
He looked at her for a long moment, then turned his face and walked away.
But Maria was watching him from afar, saw everything, read the silence in his steps, the jealousy in his eyes, and smiled to herself without saying a word.
---
The chapter ended, but something new began to beat in his heart...
Not just suspicion, but that lump men feel when they see what they don't have...
and fear losing it.
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