The neighbors came out to watch. Lucas and Pedro were wearing their best clothes, which were simple, but clean and well-ironed thanks to Helena’s hands.
The restaurant Antônio took them to was elegant, with white tablecloths and crystal glasses.
For Lucas, it was like stepping into another world. Pedro couldn’t stop staring at the lights and the large aquarium at the entrance.
When the owner stood up to greet them, he smiled warmly.
“Ferreira family, it’s so nice to see you.”
But when his eyes met Fernanda’s, there was a heavy silence for a second. He recognized her.
She did too. And when he looked at Helena, the certainty grew even stronger: it wasn’t the first time their lives had crossed paths.
During dinner, they talked about light things: school, the neighborhood, Lucas’s dreams, Pedro’s mischief.
But beneath the surface, the tension was growing. There were questions none of them dared to ask in front of the children.
Only when the two little ones left for the aquarium did Antônio take a deep breath.
“Fernanda… Doña Helena… I need to be honest with you.”
They both stiffened.
—When Lucas told me your full names, I had a suspicion—he continued—. “Helena,” “Fernanda,” “Ferreira”… Thirty-odd years ago I met a family with those same names.
Fernanda clutched the napkin tightly.
“You disappeared,” she said softly, her eyes filled with tears. “One day you were there, being my brother’s friend, helping around the house… and the next you were gone as if you’d never existed.”
Antônio closed his eyes for a second.
“I… I was starting the company, I got married, my life changed very quickly. Your brother got mixed up with dangerous people, and I… I was scared. I distanced myself.”
“You abandoned him,” Helena said, her voice sharp with years of resentment. “You abandoned him and us.”
“I have no excuses,” he admitted. “Only mistakes.”
Fernanda looked at him with a mixture of anger and pain.
“It wasn’t just my brother you left behind. Do you remember my sister, Beatriz?”
The name fell on the table like a weight.
“Of course I remember,” Antônio whispered. “But I was told he had left the neighborhood.”
—She “left” because she had no other choice—Helena replied, with a bitter laugh. —Beatriz got pregnant at nineteen. By you.
Antônio’s world shook.
“That can’t be…” he murmured, pale. “We… we were friends.”
Fernanda stared at him.
“One night at a party, you’d drunk too much. She liked you from the start. She took advantage of that night. She looked for you afterward, but you’d already disappeared.”
Then came the story that shattered him: a religious family, the shame, Beatriz working while pregnant, crying at night, without support. The baby born on a rainy day.
Then, the impossible decision: to give the child up for adoption to someone trustworthy to prevent him from going to an orphanage. The heart condition, the sadness, Beatriz’s death at only 23 years old.
“And the child?” Antônio asked, his voice breaking. “Where is my son? Is he alive?”
Helena and Fernanda looked at each other.
“The boy never left the family,” the grandmother finally said. “Beatriz asked us to raise him. We registered him as Fernanda’s son. That boy grew up believing his father had abandoned him. That boy… is Lucas.”
Time seemed to stand still. Antônio turned his head toward the aquarium. There was Lucas, laughing with Pedro, touching the glass as a huge fish swam past them.
The same gleam in his eyes, the same way he frowned when he was concentrating, the same quiet dignity.
“Is Lucas… my son?” she whispered.
“Biologically, yes,” Helena replied. “But we’re the ones who raised him. Fernanda was the one who got up in the middle of the night when he had a fever, the one who worked in three different houses so he could eat.”
Antonio felt the guilt like a physical weight. He had a son and never knew it.
A son who had saved him without knowing who he was. A son with a heart condition, like his mother. A son who had grown up in poverty while he amassed a fortune.
“I want to tell you the truth,” he said. “I want to be your father.”
“Not like that, not all at once,” Fernanda replied quickly. “Lucas is only ten years old. If you tell him now that his whole life was a lie, you’ll devastate him.
Let him get to know you first. Be present. And when he’s ready, we’ll tell him everything.”
Helena added firmly:
“You may have given him life, but we gave him his childhood. If you’re going to enter his world, it will be with respect and step by step.”
Antônio nodded. They were right. He knew about business, but he knew nothing about being a father. He didn’t want to take away from the child the security they had worked so hard to build.
Then Helena spoke of something else: Lucas’s hereditary arrhythmia, the expensive treatments, the medications they sometimes couldn’t afford, her own illness, the daily struggle to survive.
And something inside Antônio shifted completely.
“It’s not charity,” he said when Fernanda tried to refuse his help. “It’s my responsibility. I unknowingly caused some of this pain. Now that I know, I’m not going to look the other way.”
That night, three tired and wounded adults, and a rich man burdened with guilt, made a silent pact: to take care together of that honest child who, without realizing it, had linked their stories.
In the following days, Antônio moved quickly. He thoroughly investigated Rodrigo and uncovered the truth: the manager was selling information to the competition and planning to hand over the documents Lucas had found.
In a meeting with all the directors, he publicly exposed him, not only for the betrayal, but for humiliating a young man who had done more for the company in five minutes than he had in years.
Rodrigo was escorted out of the building, and that door closed forever.
At the same time, another opportunity arose.
See more on the next page
Advertisement
