And in that word “logical” Thiago hid what he didn’t dare to say: that it wasn’t just Alice who needed her. That he needed her too.
Livia looked at him, and for the first time her voice sounded different.
“And you?” he asked. “Do you need me?”
The question hung in the air, heavy, alive. Thiago saw in her eyes the same confusion he felt. They drew closer without realizing it, breathing the same air. Thiago could smell her simple, floral perfume. He saw a small mark on Lívia’s neck that he had never noticed before. Her lips parted only slightly…
Then Alice wept from the room, as if fate itself had knocked on the door.
The bubble burst. Livia stepped back, ashamed, and went to see the baby. And it was there, in that room, where the truth shattered everything.
In the shallows, a tiny light flickered. Livia approached, frowned, touched the base… and discovered the camera.
The ice seeped into her blood. She searched the house. She found another one on the clock. Another in the kitchen. All pointing to the places where she had been with Alice.
When Thiago entered the room, Lívia already had a camera in her hand. Her face was pale, her eyes blazing with rage.
—You watched me all this time.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
Thiago felt the ground disappear.
—Livia, I…
“What were you going to explain?” her voice trembled. “That you pretended to trust me while you spied on me? That everything I told you… you already knew? You investigated me?”
—I needed to be sure that Alice…
“And I opened my heart to you!” she cried, breaking down. “I thought there was something real… and it was a lie. You never trusted me.”
Lívia threw the camera onto the sofa and went to the bedroom to gather her things. Thiago followed her, pleading, trying to explain that it was fear, trauma, pain. But she wouldn’t listen. She stuffed her clothes into the bag with trembling hands, tears streaming down her face.
Alice woke up to the noise. She saw Livia with the bag… and screamed:
—Mom! Mom!
That scream pierced Thiago’s body. Lívia knelt down and kissed the baby’s forehead.
“Forgive me, princess,” he whispered.
Then she looked at Thiago with eyes full of pain.
—I fell in love with you… and your daughter. But I can’t stay with someone who doesn’t trust me.
And he left.
The door closed. And, for the first time since Fernanda’s death, Thiago felt he was losing something alive. Something that had begun to heal.
The next three days were the worst of her life. Alice collapsed. The baby stopped eating, stopped sleeping. She cried, searching for Lívia in every room. At night she would wake up screaming “mama,” and when she saw Thiago alone, she would cry even louder, inconsolable.
Thiago tried to hire other employees. It was a disaster. Alice rejected them all. She yelled at one and backed away, hitting her head. To another, she simply refused to look at her, closing her eyes as if she could erase her presence.
At the company, Thiago was a ghost. He missed meetings, signed documents without reading them, and made mistakes. His partners called him to an urgent meeting.
“You need professional help,” they told her. “For you and for the girl.”
But Thiago knew the truth: it wasn’t a medical problem. It was grief. It was loss. It was love broken by mistrust.
And there, on a sleepless night, watching old recordings as if punishing himself, Thiago accepted it: Alice wasn’t the only one who missed Lívia. He did too. With painful clarity, he understood that he was in love with her. And that he had pushed her away out of fear.
On the fourth day, he left Alice with her mother and went out to look for her. He had the old address. The apartment owner, a gruff man, told him that Lívia had mentioned a shelter in the eastern part of the city. Thiago visited four shelters before he found her.
She was sitting on a bunk bed, thinner, with deep dark circles under her eyes. In her hand she held a photograph. Thiago recognized the image from afar: it was a photo of Alice, the same one he had printed and left on the refrigerator.
Her heart broke.
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