Part 4 — My Fiancé Abandoned Me at the Altar, but a Strange Man Looked at My Daughter and His Smile Immediately Disappeared

“Greg did not enter your apartment alone that night…”

Alexander’s words were still hanging in the air when the side doors of the cathedral opened.

“The cars are ready,” his lawyer said.

“Contact the police,” I told him.

“I already did,” Alexander replied. “But I could not let them reach us before we did.”

“You are giving orders again.”

“Because we have no time now.”

Lily clung to my lap. Her little fingers gripped my wedding dress so tightly that they wrinkled the fabric.

For the first time I looked at Alexander as a man and not as a threat.

“If anything has happened to her, you will never forgive yourself.”

“Nor will I forgive myself.”

He said this and led us forward.

Three black cars stood behind the cathedral. The rain had already begun, and water ran down the windshields in white lines. When I got into the car, the bouquet fell from my hand. It fell to the ground, the white roses scattered in the mud, and the copper-colored ribbon caught on the tire.

I leaned back and picked up the ribbon.

“Do not leave this,” Alexander said.

“It belongs to my mother.”

“Then nothing should touch it.”

He himself handed me a clean napkin and wrapped my bleeding finger.

This small gesture turned out to be more moving than all his grand promises.

At the apartment on the other side of the city, two police cars were already standing. The door was open. A broken light flickered in the hallway.

“Lily will stay in the car,” Alexander said.

“No. She will be before my eyes.”

“Emma, it is dangerous there.”

“She is my daughter.”

Alexander watched me for several seconds, then nodded.

“Then you will walk beside me.”

As soon as I entered the apartment, I realized that something had changed. The drawers in the living room had been pulled out, torn papers lay on the floor, and the kitchen refrigerator door had been left open. The photograph of my family that hung on the wall lay on the floor, its glass broken.

Greg stood at the bedroom door.

His jacket was wet, and he no longer had the smile with which he had told Lily stories for eight months.

“Emma, listen to me,” he said.

“Where is the person who came in with you?”

“No one came in.”

Alexander signaled to the policeman standing behind him. The man searched the room and pulled a young man out of the closet. He was holding a small bag.

Greg lowered his head.

“He was only helping me.”

“Why was he in Lily’s room?” I asked.

“I was not planning to take her.”

“Then why did he have this bag?”

The policeman opened the bag. Inside were a copy of the child’s birth certificate, my passport, and Lily’s list of medicines.

I heard the sound of blood in my ears.

“You wanted to take her.”

“I only wanted you to come to your senses.”

“You left me at the altar so that I would come to my senses?”

Greg looked away.

“Everything was not planned this way.”

“But it was planned.”

Alexander placed the phone on the table.

“Tell her, Greg.”

“You should not be here.”

“This is her home.”

Alexander turned on the recording.

Greg’s voice sounded in the room again: “If Emma signs, I will take the girl and cover Volkov’s debt.”

Greg’s face became gray.

I listened to myself breathing. The voice that only a few hours earlier had stood beside him at the altar and waited for the future was now finally separating itself from this man.

“That is your voice,” I said.

“It was cut out of context.”

“Listen to it again.”

You played the recording to the end. Every word of Greg’s hung in the room.

“The child is the easiest leverage. Emma cannot give her up.”

Greg grabbed the chair.

“I had a debt.”

“So you sold my daughter?”

“Alexander decided to kill me.”

“No,” Alexander said calmly. “You yourself decided whom you would sacrifice.”

The policeman put handcuffs on Greg.

“You are under arrest for deception, forgery of documents, and an attempt to take a child illegally.”

Greg looked toward me.

“Emma, please. I love you.”

It was the first time I truly heard his voice and not merely the words.

“You loved the life you received from me,” I said. “Not me.”

He tried to resist, but the policeman twisted his arm. The door closed.

I did not follow him as he left.

Lily stood at my feet. Alexander remained at the other end of the room, as if waiting for permission from me.

“You are my father,” Lily said.

Alexander’s face tightened.

“That is how it appears, little one.”

“Then why didn’t you come to my birthday?”

The question hurt him more than any blow.

“Because I did not know where you were.”

“Now you know.”

“Now I know.”

Lily thought for a while, then walked toward him and held out her hand. Alexander knelt. The man whose sight made the whole city wary hugged my daughter as if he had found the breath lost five years ago.

I looked at the things remaining in the room. Lily’s bed was empty because she had come with me from the cathedral. On her pillow lay a small piece of paper—the drawing Greg had left. Our family was drawn on it: me, Lily, and Greg. Alexander stood behind a door in the drawing, without a face.

I put the drawing in my bag.

Then the weeks passed both quickly and slowly.

A case was opened against Greg. The court examined his forged signatures, bank records, and the recording. His debt was no longer my problem. Alexander’s lawyer officially confirmed that he would not put pressure on me and would build a relationship with Lily only with my consent.

At first I found this difficult to believe.

“You can leave,” I told him one evening, while Lily arranged colored pencils at the kitchen table.

“I know.”

“And yet you are still here.”

“Because for the first time in my life I want to do the right thing.”

“The right thing is to wait for my permission.”

“Then I will wait.”

It was the calmest promise I had ever received.

Three months later I moved to a small town where the sea was ten minutes from the house. I worked in a library. In the morning I took Lily to school, and in the evening I sat by the window and sorted books. I no longer checked my phone every five minutes. At night I no longer jumped at every sound of the door.

Lily drew a new picture.

This time no one stood behind the door. All three of us were sitting in one house, and snow was falling outside the window. Alexander turned out very tall in the picture, and he was holding Lily’s hand.

“Why are Dad’s legs so long?” I asked.

“Because he came late,” she answered.

I laughed.

But Alexander looked at the drawing silently for a long time.

Greg wrote to me one more time at last. The letter came when the first snow fell. It said that he regretted everything, that after getting out of prison he would begin a new life, and perhaps someday we would speak again.

I read the letter to the end.

Then I sent a short reply:

“After you, life is no longer an emptiness that you can fill by returning. I wish you peace with yourself, but do not return to my life.”

I closed the letter and placed it on the windowsill.

That evening Lily was decorating the Christmas tree. Alexander was awkwardly trying to make hot chocolate for her in the kitchen. The pot boiled over, Lily laughed, and for the first time I no longer felt that I was responsible for saving someone.

I was still wearing my mother’s copper-colored ribbon on my hand. After taking it out of the mud at the cathedral, I washed it and put it in a small frame. Now it hung by the window, beside the drawing in which no one stood behind the door.

The bells rang in the distance.

This time they no longer sounded like a sentence.

They sounded like returning home.