The sharp clatter of keys striking the marble floor echoed through the silent foyer, yet no one came.
Sebastián Cruz—accustomed to bending boardrooms and markets to his will—stood motionless at the entrance to his dining room, his blood running cold even as fury pulsed in his temples.
What he was seeing made no sense. It had to be exhaustion, or some cruel trick of fate. He had returned home hours early on a routine weekday to retrieve forgotten documents before heading back to his steel-and-glass office tower. He did not expect warmth in the mansion. He did not expect life.
And he certainly did not expect this.
At the long walnut table—untouched since his wife’s funeral five years earlier—sat a scene that violated every rule of his house.
María, the young housemaid barely out of her teens, still in her crisp gray uniform, was seated instead of working. And she wasn’t alone. Four children sat with her.
Four identical boys.
Sebastián blinked. They couldn’t have been older than four. They wore pale blue shirts that stirred an ache of recognition in him, paired with makeshift aprons. Messy brown hair framed faces so alike they looked copied from the same mold, their wide eyes following María’s movements.
“Slowly, little ones,” María murmured softly. “Everyone gets the same.”
She spooned simple yellow rice onto each plate with careful precision. It was humble food, almost poor food, standing in violent contrast to the fine china beneath it. Yet the boys watched it like treasure.
Her gloved hands—meant for scrubbing floors—now brushed crumbs from their mouths with maternal care that tightened Sebastián’s chest.
He should have shouted. He should have demanded answers. Instead, he stood frozen.
When one boy turned to laugh at his brother, the light revealed a profile that struck Sebastián like a blow—the shape of the nose, the curve of the smile, the way the child held his fork.
It was like staring into his own past.
His heart thundered. How had they entered? His home was sealed with security, guarded and monitored. And yet here they were—four small intruders sharing rice at his forbidden table.
The intimacy of it terrified him.
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