"She... I never found out what happened to her. I was told she died in the accident."
Gael sat down, his legs suddenly feeling weak. Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years of grief, loneliness, a broken heart that had never fully healed. And all because of a lie? A terrible mistake?
“My God,” he whispered, tears finally welling up in his eyes. “Is Amélia still alive?”
The young woman – his daughter, as he now realized – nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s in Valencia. She raised me alone all these years. She always talked about you. She always loved you.”
Gael looked at the wedding ring on his finger, then at the face of his daughter, whose existence had been completely unknown to him. Three lives, separated by a tragic misunderstanding, which were now to be reunited after more than two decades.
And in this restaurant in Barcelona, surrounded by the quiet murmur of other guests and the scent of red wine, Gael Monteverde began to cry, not out of sorrow, but out of a reawakened hope that he had thought lost forever.
