Chapter 3

But she was different, too. Andreas was the oldest of six children. He’d fed most of them as babies—cuddled them, changed them, taken them out in the pram. He’d even been mistaken for the mother of his youngest brother more than once, what looked like a fifteen-year-old girl hefting a chunky toddler about on her hip all over the hills of north-west Spain.

Beatriz felt so very different.

Because she was his. And now she was here, he could stop pretending to be her mum. Or anyone’s. Ever again. And her wide-eyed stare, fixed unblinkingly upwards as she decimated the bottle, would never care. She just knew him to be safe. Comfort. Some instinctual family, formed out of blood and blind sound, before she had even been born. And as she got older, they could teach her everything else that she needed to know.

Everything he’d ever wanted from his family.

“Come on, beautiful,” he murmured as he tugged the empty bottle away. “Daddy’s coming to get us today. We get to go home.”