She waited for the rest of the sentence. The part that would make it make sense. Because she knew that. She already knew that. Divina was hers, hers and Seb’s, a fact she had long since made her peace with and rebuilt her entire world around. She was not Julian’s by blood. That was not new information.
And yet. The way he had said it. Is not our baby. It isn’t mine. Isn’t Sebastian’s? Not any version she had already filed and understood.
Our. She stared at him. Her heart was very loud now. She had promised not to interrupt. She was trying.
"What I’m trying to say is..." Julian stopped. Started again.
"Divina is not my child." He held her hands a little tighter. "And she is not yours either."
Amara blinked.
A soft smile touched her face. The kind that cos automatically when the brain hasn’t caught up yet. The kind that ans nothing except I am still here and I am listening and I don’t understand yet.
"Or Seb’s," Julian added.
The smile stayed.
Amara’s mind was running. She could feel it a thousand doors opening at once, a thousand questions rushing through all of them at the sa ti, and yet sohow none of it was arriving. Like a signal travelling a very long distance, moving fast but not yet reaching the place it needed to reach.
I don’t want to overreact, she thought carefully, still looking at him. I’m just going to let him finish. I promised I would let him finish.
She nodded once. Slowly. Julian watched her face. He pressed forward.
"Amara." His voice dropped even lower now. The most careful it had been all evening. "At the hospital. Before the DNA was done. Before any of it," He stopped. Drew a breath. "I couldn’t protect her. I didn’t know in ti and I couldn’t..." His throat moved. "Our baby girl was switched."
Amara’s expression didn’t change. The smile was still there. Small and soft and completely, terrifyingly still.
"The baby girl in the next room," Julian continued, watching her eyes, "in that cradle she is not the baby girl you gave birth to."
Sothing moved behind Amara’s eyes. Very slowly. Like sothing shifting underwater. She nodded again.
"I promise I will find her." Julian’s voice was firm now, underneath the softness, the voice of a man making a vow, not a request.
"I’ve already found the third mother. She was away for an ergency, out of the country, but she’s back now. I have a lead. I’m close." His hands tightened around hers. "I will find our baby girl. I will bring baby Justina Amara ho. I promise you that."
Silence. Julian waited.
The room was so quiet he could hear the faint sound of one of the babies stirring down the hall. The distant murmur of a nanny’s voice settled them back down.
Amara was still looking at him. Sa face. Sa small, soft, motionless smile.
Still nodding, barely, just a slight continuous movent of her head, like a person listening to music only they can hear.
"Amara." Nothing. "Baby."
The smile.
"Say sothing." He leaned forward slightly, his eyes searching her face. "Amara, please say sothing. Anything."
She looked at him.
And he could see it now up close, with his hands holding hers and his face inches from hers, that she was not calm. She was not okay. She was not nodding because she understood and had accepted it and was at peace.
She was nodding because her mind had gone sowhere very far away, and her body hadn’t noticed yet that it had left.
"Amara." His voice cracked slightly on her na. Just slightly. "Co back to . I need you to co back."
The smile broke.
Not all at once. It happened the way ice cracks one thin line first, then another, and then everything giving way at once.
"If she is not my baby..." Amara’s voice ca out small. Smaller than Julian had ever heard it. "Where is my baby girl?"
Julian’s chest tightened.
"Where is my princess?" It wasn’t even a question anymore. Just words falling out of her, one after the other, like she couldn’t stop them. "Who took her. How... how could she be switched, how does that even... why, Julian, why, where is she now, who has her..."
"Amara..."
"Where is she?" Her voice climbed. "Who has my baby, who has her right now, tonight, where..."
"Baby, listen to ." Julian moved closer, his hands going to her face. "Look at . I am going to get our baby. I promise you. I will bring her ho, I will put her in your arms... look at ..."
But Amara wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was sowhere else entirely.
"She is not my baby." She said it like she was just now understanding the shape of it. "She is not my baby. She is not my baby."
The words kept coming, the sa ones, over and over, each repetition quieter and more terrible than the last. The tears were falling freely now... not the sharp, angry tears from earlier.
These were different. These ca from sowhere deeper and darker, from the place a mother keeps the things she cannot afford to think about.
And Amara was thinking about all of them.
Julian could see it happening, and he couldn’t stop it. Her eyes had gone sowhere he couldn’t follow, flickering, darting slightly, like she was watching sothing play out in front of her that no one else could see.
And she was.
A cold, airless room. A baby crying and no one coming. A baby hungry. A baby cold. A baby was handed to soone who didn’t know her sll or the specific way she liked to be held or the sound of her mother’s voice.
And worse, the thoughts that ca after the first ones, the ones that lived in the darkest corners, what if they needed her gone? What if they needed to make sure Amara never found her? What if soone had already decided that a baby was worth more in pieces than whole?
No, no, no.
The word ca out of her like it was being pulled.
"No. No. No..."
"Amara."
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