Explain that

Chapter 7

Isabella's POV

Lily's small body collided with my legs before I could think to step back, her thin arms wrapping tightly around me, her face pressed into my stomach as though she had waited an eternity to do exactly that.

I stood frozen, my hands hovering uselessly above her trembling shoulders, my mind screaming at me to move, to speak, to do anything at all, while my body refused every command.

She smelled of hospital soap and something faintly sweet beneath it, and the warmth of her small frame against mine stirred something so deep and so aching inside my chest that my eyes burned before I could stop them.

This is not possible. This cannot be happening.

"Lily." Alexander's voice cut through the moment, low and controlled, though I could hear the tightness beneath it, the same tightness I felt squeezing my own throat. "Let go of the woman, sweetheart. You do not know her."

"But she is my mummy." Lily lifted her tearstained face toward him, so certain, so utterly unshaken in her conviction that something in me nearly broke apart right there in that corridor. "I saw her in my dreams. She has been coming to me for a long time, Daddy. I know her."

The machines down the hall kept their steady, indifferent beeping. A nurse passed with a cart, its wheels squeaking faintly against the tiled floor, and somewhere a door opened and closed, ordinary hospital sounds continuing on as though the ground beneath my feet had not just tilted violently sideways.

I finally found my voice, though it came out thin and unsteady.

"I am sorry, sweetheart, but I am not your mother. My name is Isabella. I only brought you here tonight because you fell in the road." I crouched slowly to meet her eyes, my hands gently, carefully, prying her small fingers loose from my dress, though it cost me more than I expected to do it. "You must be confused from the medicine they gave you."

"No." She shook her head fiercely, fresh tears spilling down her round cheeks. "I am not confused. You have white hair like me. You smell like flowers, like in my dream. Why do you not want to be my mummy?"

The question landed like a blow, and I had to press my lips together hard to keep from making a sound. Behind her, Alexander had gone very still, his eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made the air in my lungs feel too thin to breathe properly.

"That is enough, Lily." He stepped forward and lifted her gently into his arms, and though his voice remained soft for her sake, the glance he threw over her head at me was anything but gentle. "You need rest. We will discuss this after you sleep."

Lily buried her face against his shoulder, still hiccupping softly, one small hand reaching briefly back toward me before curling into his collar instead. I watched her go, my chest hollow, my knees threatening to give beneath me.

The moment a nurse arrived to settle her back into bed, Alexander turned on me fully, and there was nowhere left for me to hide from the weight of his stare.

"Explain that." Two words, flat and cold, though something violent simmered just beneath them.

"I cannot explain a child's confusion, Mr. Cole. Children say things. They dream. It means nothing." My voice cracked slightly on the last word, betraying me.

"It means nothing." He repeated it slowly, as though tasting the lie on his tongue and finding it bitter. "My daughter does not speak to strangers. She barely speaks to people she has known for years. And yet she called you Mummy the instant she laid eyes on you, insists you have visited her in dreams, and you expect me to accept that means nothing?"

"I do not know what you want me to say." I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the stuffy warmth of the corridor. "I have never met that child before tonight. I do not know why she said what she said."

"You are lying." He said it simply, without heat, which somehow frightened me more than if he had shouted it. "I have built an empire out of reading people who lie to my face for a living, Isabella. You are terrible at it."

My pulse hammered so loudly in my ears I feared he might hear it. I opened my mouth to argue further, though nothing convincing came, only a stammer of half-formed denials that crumbled before they even left my lips.

"I only... I only meant to help. I do not understand any of this any more than you do." The words tumbled out weak and unconvincing, and I hated myself for how transparent I sounded, how thoroughly he had already seen through me.

His jaw ticked once, twice, his gaze raking over my face as though searching for the seam where my lie would finally split open. For one terrifying second, I thought he might reach for me, might grip my arm the way Marcus so often did when he wanted answers, but he only stepped back instead, cold and controlled once more, which was somehow worse.

He withdrew his phone without another word to me and dialled, his eyes never once leaving my face.

"Daniels." His voice was clipped, businesslike, the fury banked but not extinguished. "I need everything on a woman named Isabella Hart by morning. Family, background, employment, wherever she has lived these past ten years. I want to know why my daughter recognizes her."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Hart. How did he know my surname was Hart?

I had given him nothing but Isabella. I was certain of it. And yet he had spoken my full name into that phone as though he had already known it long before I ever opened my mouth to deny anything at all.

"How do you know that name?" The words left me before I could stop them, sharper than I intended, panic bleeding into every syllable.

Alexander lowered the phone slowly, and the look he gave me then was not confusion, nor uncertainty.

It was triumph.

"You just confirmed it yourself," he said quietly, and I realized, with a sickening jolt, exactly what I had done.