“I’m Blake,” he said. “I know you learned something big yesterday. I’m sorry it happened that way. I didn’t know about you, but I should have listened to your mom.”

Oliver studied him. “Are you our father?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be?”

Blake’s voice broke. “More than I know how to explain.”

Noah whispered, “Are you going to make Mom cry?”

Blake looked at Emma, then back at him. “No. Not on purpose.”

For the next hour, the boys questioned him with brutal honesty. Did he have stairs? Did he eat cereal? Could he make pancakes? He listened to every question as if it mattered more than any business deal of his life.

Noah eventually sat beside him. Ethan talked loudly about dinosaurs. Oliver remained cautious, watching everything.

When the hour ended, Blake didn’t argue.

“Thank you for letting me meet you,” he told the boys.

Ethan said, “You can come again if Mom says.”

Noah whispered, “Bye.”

That single word nearly broke him.

Before Emma left, Blake handed her a folded document.

“I pulled records from that year,” he said. “Marissa wasn’t acting alone.”

Emma read the paper.

Payment authorization approved: Charles Winters.

Her father.

Blake’s voice was grim. “Your father paid Marissa three hundred thousand dollars after she blocked you from seeing me.”

Emma went cold.

Her father had helped her after the divorce. He bought her townhouse through a trust. Arranged doctors. Protected her during pregnancy.

Or so she had believed.

Then her phone buzzed.

Dad: Don’t trust Blake. He knows less than he thinks.

Another message came with a photo.

Marissa stood outside a private clinic with Emma’s father.

Beside them was Daniel Reyes.

The genetic counselor everyone believed had died four years ago.

But the photo was dated three weeks earlier.

Daniel was alive.

Emma looked up at Blake.

“Daniel isn’t dead,” she whispered. “And my father knows where he is.”

Across the park, her boys laughed innocently.