"Two years," Julian said, his voice a low, gravelled snarl inches from her face, his hand still gripping her arm hard enough that Renata's breath came in short, panicked gasps. "Two years I called that little girl my daughter. Two years I let you erase Camille from every conversation, every photo, every memory of this house, and told myself I was protecting my family." "Julian, you're hurting me—" "You stole my daughter's mother," he said, and something in his tone had gone past anger now, into a territory that frightened even Sophia, still frozen by the crib with one hand braced protectively over the sleeping infant. "You stole two years of Mia's life from Camille. You stood in my house and let me believe a lie so complete that I don't even know what parts of my own marriage were real." "I did it for us," Renata gasped, tears finally breaking through the composure she'd maintained for two straight years. "Everything I did, I did because I loved you, because I wanted this family—" "This was never your family to want." Julian's voice dropped even lower, quieter now, which somehow made it more frightening than the shouting had been. His eyes, still red-rimmed and unnaturally bright with a fury that had been building silently for the entire length of their conversation, held hers without blinking. "You just crossed a line you can never return to." Behind him, Sophia lifted the baby carefully from the crib, cradling her against one shoulder, already moving toward the door — toward whatever came next for a family that had just watched two years of careful lies collapse in the space of a single, unforgiving minute.