Callum looked my father directly in the eye and said, calm as a blade, “You do not get to speak to my son that way. And before either of you says one more word, I think your guests deserve to know why you’re so desperate to punish a child for a history that doesn’t belong to him.”

The room went still.

My mother lost color. My father’s jaw tightened. And I realized, with a sudden surge of dread, that Callum knew something I didn’t.

For one suspended moment, no one moved. My mother’s hand gripped her clutch so tightly I thought the clasp might snap. My father stared at Callum with the kind of hatred that appears when a lie is about to lose its cover.

“Enough,” my father said, his voice low and dangerous. “This is not the place.”

Callum didn’t blink. “You should have thought of that before you humiliated a four-year-old.”

I stepped between them, my pulse pounding so hard I could barely hear my own voice. “Callum,” I whispered, “what are you talking about?”

He turned to me, and I saw something in his face that chilled me: not anger, but restraint. He had been holding this in. For how long, I didn’t know.