He saw his own blue eyes staring back at him.
The shape of his chin. The arch of his brows.
Two living mirrors.
“Alex, what’s wrong? The light changed,” Clara said impatiently.
He didn’t hear her.
A horn blared behind them, sharp and aggressive, but he was deaf to everything except the thunder of his own blood.
Beatriz bent down and gently wiped one girl’s face.
He saw a life he didn’t know. A struggle he hadn’t been part of. A truth about to destroy his flawless plan.
“I need to get out,” he muttered, unbuckling his seatbelt.
“What? Alexandre! We’ll be late to the ceremony!” Clara shouted.
But he was already out of the car.
The summer heat hit him like a slap—gasoline and hot asphalt replacing artificial air.
He walked toward the bus stop like a sleepwalker.
Beatriz looked up.
Their eyes met.
No surprise in hers.
Only an old, deep resignation—as if she had feared and expected this moment every day for three years.
In that instant, with the city roaring around him and his fiancée screaming his name from the luxury car, Alexandre knew the man he had been until a minute ago was about to die.
“Beatriz,” he said, his voice rough and unfamiliar.
She instinctively stepped slightly in front of the girls, like a lioness protecting her cubs.
“Alexandre.”
No hatred in her tone. Only a coldness that hurt more than insults.
One of the girls tugged at her mother’s skirt.
“Mommy… that man looks like us.”
The sentence fell like a verdict.
Alexandre’s knees nearly gave way.
He crouched down, ignoring that his three-thousand-dollar suit brushed the dirty pavement.
“What are their names?”
“Manuela and Alice,” Beatriz said firmly. “And yes. They’re yours.”
No doubt. No calculations.
The truth vibrated between them.
Clara arrived moments later, heels striking concrete, white dress glaring under the sun.
“Alexandre! What the hell are you doing? Who is this woman?”
Beatriz met Clara’s gaze with dignity money couldn’t buy.
“I’m nobody. Just someone waiting for the bus.”
Then to Alexandre: “Go back to your life. We already have ours.”
“No,” he said immediately.
He stood.
“There won’t be a wedding, Clara.”
The chaos that followed blurred—Clara screaming, the ring thrown against his chest, the car speeding away.
Alexandre stayed.
The bus arrived with a pneumatic hiss.
“Canceling a party is easy,” Beatriz said quietly. “Being a father is hard.”
He followed them onto the bus.