“This can’t be true,” I said. “We would have known. Someone would have told us.”
Michael shook his head. “Records were sealed. Names changed. The system failed you both.”
“Daniel—” I started.
“Get out!” he shouted at Michael. “I don’t care if you’re telling the truth. I don’t want to hear it.”
Michael stood, his face broken. “I’ll leave,” he said softly. “But I’ll give you proof. DNA results. Birth certificates. I owe you the truth, even if you hate me for it.”
When the door closed behind him, the room felt hollow.
Daniel and I stared at each other across a distance that hadn’t existed the day before.
“I love you,” I said desperately. “That hasn’t changed.”
Daniel’s eyes filled with pain. “Everything has changed.”
The days that followed were a blur of tests, documents, and unbearable waiting. When the DNA results came back, they confirmed it. Michael was Daniel’s father. Elena was his sister. I was her daughter.
We were cousins.
Our marriage was annulled quietly, legally. No dramatic courtroom scene. Just signatures and silence.
We didn’t touch. We barely spoke. The love didn’t disappear, but it twisted into something painful and forbidden, something neither of us knew how to carry.
Daniel moved out first. I stayed behind, surrounded by reminders of a life we’d almost had.
Michael tried to make amends, offering support, apologies, explanations. Daniel wanted nothing from him. I didn’t know what I wanted.
Months passed.
One evening, Daniel asked to meet me at the old orphanage. The building was scheduled for demolition. We stood in the courtyard where we’d once dreamed of escape.
I nodded. “But we have to choose what happens next.”
He looked at me, really looked at me, and for the first time since that morning, there was peace in his eyes.
“You’re still my family,” he said. “Just not in the way we thought.”
