Noah Brooks.
Eli Brooks.
Maybe they had my eyes, my chin, my blood.
But they had her name.
Her life.
Her courage.
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Three years and two months.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
Their birthday.
I had been in Milan then, negotiating a deal that made the business press call me ruthless and brilliant. I remembered standing on a hotel balcony that night, unable to sleep, feeling a strange ache I had blamed on whiskey and exhaustion.
Somewhere across the ocean, Maya had been giving birth to our children.
“Were you alone?” I asked.
Maya looked down at her coffee.
“My neighbor was there. Mrs. Alvarez. She drove me to the hospital. Stayed the whole time.” Her fingers tightened around the cup. “The nurses were kind.”
Not me.
Not their father.
The man who should have held her hand was building walls around a life he thought he controlled.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked up sharply.
“Don’t use that like it fixes anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then what do you want, Adrian?”
The question was simple.
The answer was not.
“I want to know them.”
Maya’s face closed.
“And after that? You want weekends? Holidays? A judge? Your last name on their birth certificates? Security men outside my apartment? Your family looking at my children like they’re pieces on a board?”
“No.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it.”
“You meant things before.”
Her voice lowered.
“You meant forever once.”
The words found the old wound between us and pressed hard.
Lina dropped a fry.
Noah picked it up and put it back on her plate.
“Floor fry,” he said solemnly.
“No floor fry,” Maya corrected automatically.
Lina frowned. “But Noah fixed it.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Maya caught it and looked away, but I saw the corner of her mouth twitch.
For one second, the grief made room for something else.
Then it disappeared.
I reached into my jacket and placed my phone on the table, screen down.
“I’ll give you whatever information you need. My address, my attorney, financial disclosures, anything. I won’t take them from you. I won’t force anything.”
Maya studied me.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m not my grandfather.”
The moment I said it, her eyes changed.
Fear.
Not memory.
Fresh fear.
“What do you know about him?” I asked.
She lowered her voice.
“I know enough.”
“Maya.”
She glanced at the children.
“Not here.”
That answer chilled me.
Eli suddenly covered his ears.
A motorcycle had roared past the café, loud and abrupt. His small face tightened. Before I could think, I reached toward the sugar packets and gently pushed the little ceramic holder closer to him.
He looked at it.
Then at me.
Then, after a long pause, he took out three white packets and placed them in a row beside his cars.
The tension in his shoulders eased.
Maya watched silently.
“He likes lining things up when he feels overwhelmed,” she said.
I nodded.
“I used to count ceiling tiles.”
Her eyes lifted.
“When?”
“When my grandfather had meetings at the house. I’d sit outside the office and count tiles until the shouting stopped.”
Maya’s expression shifted again, not forgiving but remembering that I had not emerged from my family untouched.
Noah leaned across the table.
“Do you have cars?”
