His knees buckled so hard they hit the ground before he even understood he was falling. He collapsed there in the dust in his thousand-dollar suit, not caring who saw, not caring what was ruined, not caring about anything except the sound that had just reached him like light after years underground.
He grabbed Sofia and held her with both arms as tears came out of him in waves he could not stop. He buried his face against her shoulder and sobbed with the helplessness of a man who had finally reached the far edge of grief and found something waiting there that looked impossibly like mercy.
People in the park began to notice. Conversations slowed. Children stopped running. A few mothers pointed, puzzled by the spectacle of a wealthy man in the dirt crying as if his heart had been split open.
Victor didn’t care.
“Say it again,” he begged, pulling back only enough to see her face. “Please, sweetheart. Say it again.”
Sofia looked at him, tears still clinging to her lashes.
“Daddy,” she said, more clearly this time.
And just like that, the wound he had carried for years broke apart and rebuilt itself into something entirely different.
He turned toward Grace in disbelief.