Chapter 4: "I Don't Have a Daddy."

Sports Day at Bright Horizons Preschool was one of those annoyingly perfect California mornings — blue sky, no wind, sunshine so warm it felt like the universe was showing off.

I stood on the sidelines in jeans and a white t-shirt, hair pulled back, sunglasses pushed up on my head, watching Nadia tear around the little track like her legs were spring-loaded.

"Go, Nadi! You got this!"

She heard me and spun around mid-stride, pigtails flying, to flash me a grin so big it took up her whole face. Dimples. Missing teeth. A tiny mole at the corner of her mouth.

That mole.

I'd stopped thinking about where it came from a long time ago.

Three years had changed me. I could feel it in the way I stood — shoulders back, chin up, taking up space instead of trying to shrink into it. The woman who'd flinched at Margaret Cheng's dinner table was gone. In her place was someone who ran a foundation, sat on three boards, and had learned, slowly and painfully, that the world didn't end when you stopped apologizing for existing.

Nadia finished her lap and came barreling toward me, red-cheeked and panting.

"Mommy! Did you see? I was SO fast!"

"The fastest," I said, and meant it.

---

**ROMAN**

Roman didn't want to be there.

His business partner, David Kwok, had dragged him along. David's son went to Bright Horizons, and David had a habit of combining parenting with deal-making, which meant Roman was standing on a preschool soccer field in a three-thousand-dollar suit, trying to look interested in a conversation about supply chain logistics while small children shrieked past his knees.

He wasn't paying attention to the field. He was checking his phone, thumbing through emails, half-listening to David talk about shipping routes.

Then he looked up.

Just a glance. Casual. The kind of look you give a room you're about to leave.

And his entire body locked.

There was a girl in the middle of the field. Three years old, maybe four. Pigtails. Little red sneakers. She was running the wrong direction and laughing about it, arms pumping wide with every stride — elbows out, fists up, like a boxer in training.

Roman knew that run.

He knew it because it was *his* run. The one his mother had old home videos of. The one his college track coach had spent a year trying to correct.

The girl turned, and he saw her face.

Dark brows. Deep-set eyes. Nose that was too sharp for a toddler. And at the right corner of her mouth — a mole. Small, round, unmistakable.

Roman's heart stopped. Then it started again, twice as fast, pounding against his ribs like it was trying to break out.

"Hey, you okay?" David nudged him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"That girl." Roman's voice came out strange. "The one in the red shoes. What's her name?"

David squinted. "Oh, that's Nadia Sun. Adorable kid. Smart as a whip. No dad in the picture, though — just her and her mom. Apparently the mother's some kind of big deal, really young, started a—"

Roman wasn't listening anymore.

*Nadia Sun.*

Last name Sun.

No father.

Just her and her mom.

Three years old.

The math wasn't complicated. It was brutal.

Serena had been eight months pregnant when she'd walked out his front door. That was three years and one month ago. This child was three. She had his face. She had his *mole*. She ran like him. And her last name was Sun.

Everything from that day came flooding back — the divorce papers, the battered suitcase, the Maybach, the fifteen billion dollars, and Serena's voice, quiet and calm, at the front door:

*I hope you never regret this.*

Roman's hands clenched at his sides.

"Alright, everybody!" A teacher's voice rang out over the field, bright and cheerful, amplified by a plastic megaphone. "Time for our next game! This one's for daddies and their little ones! Dads, come find your kiddo!"

The field erupted. Kids screaming *Daddy!* and sprinting toward outstretched arms. Fathers scooping daughters onto their shoulders, sons clinging to their necks. Laughter everywhere.

Nadia didn't move.

She stood exactly where she was, in the middle of the field, surrounded by the chaos of other people's families. She kicked a pebble with her sneaker. Didn't look up.

A chubby boy waddled over and tilted his head at her. "Nadia, where's your daddy? How come your daddy didn't come?"

A few other kids turned to look.

Nadia raised her head.

Her face was calm. Not sad. Not embarrassed. Just — matter-of-fact. The way a child states something they've accepted as completely ordinary.

"I don't have a daddy."

The words carried. Not loud, but clear. Clear enough that the parents standing nearby went quiet. A few exchanged glances. A teacher hurried over, crouching down, reaching for Nadia's hand.

"That's totally okay, sweetie. Your mommy can play with—"

"No, it's okay." Nadia looked the teacher dead in the eye. Serious. Certain. Three years old and already impossible to argue with.

"My mommy said my daddy's dead."

Roman heard it from thirty yards away.

The sentence hit him like a baseball bat to the chest.

Dead.

She told their daughter he was *dead*.

His knuckles went white. His fingernails dug into his palms hard enough to draw blood, but the pain didn't register — not compared to the thing clawing through his ribcage, the airless, suffocating realization that his three-year-old daughter was standing in the middle of a field full of fathers and didn't even know she had one.

The playground noise faded. The other parents, the other kids, the sunshine — all of it dissolved.

All he could see was that little girl, standing alone in a crowd, spine straight, chin up, not flinching.

Just like him.

*Exactly* like him.

Then Serena appeared.

She walked out of the crowd, calm, unhurried, and crouched beside Nadia. Took her hand.

"Come on, baby. Let's go play."

No awkwardness. No apology. No rushed explanation to the hovering teacher. She just stood up, took her daughter's hand, and turned to walk away.

She passed within ten feet of Roman.

Their eyes met.

For less than a second.

Serena's gaze slid across his face like he was a stranger at a bus stop. No recognition. No anger. No *anything*. She looked at him the way you look at someone you've never met and will never think about again.

And then she was gone.

"Mommy," Nadia said, twisting around to peek at Roman over her shoulder. "That man keeps staring at me."

Serena didn't slow down. "Nobody. Don't worry about it."

"'Kay."

Nadia turned back around. Didn't look at him again.

Roman stood frozen, watching two figures walk away — one tall, one small, hand in hand.

Nadia's arms swung wide as she skipped. That same loose, elbows-out stride.

His stride.

His daughter.

Walking away from him without a backward glance.

"Roman?" David was next to him, frowning. "You good? You look terrible."

"I'm fine." His voice was sandpaper. "I need to go. Something came up."

He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked to his car. Fast. Almost running. Like if he stayed on that field one more second, something in him would crack open and he wouldn't be able to put it back together.

---

He sat in the driver's seat for a long time.

Hands on the wheel. Knuckles white. Heart hammering.

He picked up his phone and called his investigator.

"I need you to look into something. Serena Sun's child — find out who the father is."

Silence on the other end. Then a careful, reluctant intake of breath.

"Mr. Cheng... you've asked me this before."

Roman went still. "What?"

"Three years ago. Right after your divorce."

"And?"

Another pause. Longer this time.

"The child was yours, sir. I confirmed it then. I told you."

Roman's grip on the phone tightened until the case creaked.

"You *told* me?"

"Yes, sir. You said—" The investigator stopped. Started again. Like a man who knew what he was about to say would do damage and was bracing for it.

"You said, *'Just a bastard. Not worth losing sleep over.'*"

The phone slipped out of Roman's hand and cracked against the steering wheel.

He knew.

He'd *known*.

Three years ago, someone had told him he had a daughter, and he'd waved it away like a stock tip that didn't interest him. He'd said those words — *just a bastard* — about his own child. About the little girl who'd just stood in front of a hundred people and said her daddy was dead, because that was the kindest version of the truth her mother could give her.

What had he been doing when he'd gotten that call three years ago?

Buying Vivian a twelve-thousand-dollar stroller.

Holding Vivian's hand at a prenatal appointment for a baby that didn't exist.

Planning his future with a woman who'd lied about everything, while his real daughter took her first breath in a hospital room where no one held her mother's hand.

Roman pressed his palms over his face.

Through the gaps in his fingers, something warm ran down.

He sat there until the parking lot emptied and the sun went down and the preschool turned off its lights, and he still didn't move.