“Allison lied to me.”
Catalina looked at him for a very long moment.
Then quietly asked:
“Did she force you to betray your children too?”
That stopped him cold.
Because suddenly the conversation shifted away from his humiliation.
Toward his choices.
And choices are much harder to defend.
Diego rubbed both hands over his face.
“I thought…” He stopped.
“What?”
His voice cracked slightly.
“I thought having a son would fix everything.”
There it was.
The ugly truth underneath the entire affair.
Not passion.
Not romance.
Legacy.
Ego.
The Rivera obsession with sons carrying family names like royal bloodlines mattered more than the daughter already drawing pictures hoping her father would notice them.
More than the little boy pretending not to cry after hearing adults call him “sensitive.”
Catalina’s chest tightened painfully.
“You already had children,” she whispered.
Diego looked destroyed then.
Actually destroyed.
Not because Allison lied.
Because for the first time, he finally understood what he sacrificed willingly.
Ana appeared quietly beside Catalina then.
Small.
Brave.
Holding her stuffed rabbit against her chest.
Diego looked at her immediately.
“Mi princesa—”
Ana stepped backward.
Not dramatically.
Just instinctively.
Like her body no longer trusted him automatically.
That movement nearly broke him.
Catalina saw it happen in real time.
Good fathers fear disappointing their children.
Men like Diego only understand consequences once love stops reaching toward them willingly.
Ana looked up carefully.
“Are you staying with her?”
The question hung heavily in the doorway.
Diego swallowed hard.
“No.”
“Because she lied?”
