In her hands, stained with dust and work, she carried something unexpected: a small carved glass bottle. Inside was a thick golden liquid that caught the lowering sunlight and seemed almost to glow from within, as if someone had trapped a warm piece of evening in glass.
Victor straightened immediately.
Grace stopped in front of Sofia, ignoring the billionaire father entirely, uncorked the bottle, and said softly, with a voice that sounded strangely calm for someone her age, “Drink this, and your voice will come back.”
Everything seemed to freeze.
Victor was on his feet in an instant, panic detonating inside him. Who was this strange barefoot child? What was that liquid? Every instinct in him screamed to intervene, to drag Sofia away, to call security, to shut the moment down before it became madness.
And yet—
He looked at the bottle.
He looked at Grace’s face, which held no malice, no slyness, no greed.
And then he looked at Sofia, whose wide eyes had fixed on the bottle with hope so pure it terrified him.
Something broke open inside him. Not logic. Logic was shouting for him to stop this. But beneath logic there was something older and more dangerous: a desperate father’s faith.
What if?