In that instant, something inside my cold, collected frame crumbled. I didn’t think about lawyers, social services, or adoption laws that take decades. I saw two human beings the world had decided to throw away, and I saw my own loneliness reflected in them. I put the children in the car. The leather seats were stained with mud and soot, but for the first time in years, my car didn’t feel empty.
What began as an act of impulse became the greatest battle of my life. I took them to my mansion, a marble fortress where food was plentiful but love was scarce. The shock was brutal. The children didn’t know what a hot shower was; they screamed in terror at the sight of their own reflections in the giant mirrors. Ravi spent his nights under the bed, hiding pieces of bread in the sheets for fear that hunger would return for him.
—Mr. Sérgio, why are you cleaning us? Are you going to sell us? —Ravi asked me one night, his eyes filled with tears as I tried to heal the sores on his feet.
My heart broke into a thousand pieces. I knelt before them, ignoring the pain in my knees on the cold floor.
“They are not merchandise. They are my children, if you will allow me to try to be your father,” I told them.
But happiness is fragile. When news leaked to the press that the “golden bachelor” had two children at home, the hyenas began to howl. My own family, distant cousins who were just waiting for my death to inherit my fortune, hired investigators. They weren’t looking out for the children’s well-being; they were looking for a scandal to have me declared unfit and take control of my companies.
And then, the shadow appeared. A woman named Elena showed up at my door with a sharp-tongued lawyer. She claimed to be the biological mother. She wore cheap clothes but acted with calculated coldness. She demanded ten million dollars to avoid reporting me for kidnapping and taking the children back to the garbage dump they’d come from.
“Those children are my property, millionaire,” he spat in my face. “Either you pay, or tomorrow you’ll see them on every news channel crying while the police take you away in handcuffs.”
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