The drive back from the chapel was a blur of cold silence and suffocating thoughts. Dominic Vazklov. My father. It sounded wrong, like a cruel joke the universe had decided to play on me. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the car window, watching the barren countryside stretch endlessly into the horizon. My chest ached with the weight of his words, his cold dismissal.
For years, I'd held on to this fragile hope, a flicker of a dream that one day my father would come for me. That there was a reason for my suffering, a purpose for the endless cycle of pain. But now? Now, I wasn't so sure. Dominic's words echoed in my head, sharp and unrelenting.
"You would have been dead before your fifth birthday."
