Her chin lifted a fraction. “Because it’s true.”
“In front of him.”
Her expression didn’t change. “There is noin front of him.This is what it is.”
My jaw tightened, the muscle ticking once as I leaned forward slightly, closing the space between us by inches.
“Then you should say the rest of it too.”
“Alois—” her voice dropped, warning now.
But I was already past that. “Say all of it,” I continued.
“This isn’t the place?—”
“No,” I cut in again. “It’s exactly the place.”
Rafael’s glass touched the table softly. “Beatriz,” he said.
She didn’t look to her father.
Her eyes stayed on mine.
“This is not happening here,” she declared, each word placed carefully.
Too late.
“Don’t you think he’s going to figure it out anyway?” I scoffed.
Her brow furrowed, confusion cutting through the control for the first time. “What?—”
“Or are you planning to keep this version going indefinitely?” I continued.
“Alois, stop.”
“No. Because you don’t get to decide that alone.”
Her expression shifted again—this time not confusion. Frustration. Anger. “Decide what?” she snapped.
And there it was.
The break.
I held her there.
Looked at her.
And said the one thing I shouldn’t have.
The one thing that had been sitting under everything since I walked out of that room.
“Especially when the baby gets here.”
Nothing moved. Not immediately.
The noise of the restaurant kept going around us—plates, voices, the low hum of everything continuing exactly as it had before—but at the table—nothing.
Rafael went still first. His attention sharpening into something precise, controlled, dangerous in a way that didn’t need volume to be effective.