Christine’s grip tightened on Catherine’s sleeve. “What…?”
Lucas sucked in a ragged breath. “Years ago… my father thought she wasn’t good enough. He destroyed her career. He lied to me. He lied to her. I searched for her. I never found her. I never knew…” His voice cracked. “I never knew she was pregnant.”
Catherine’s stomach dropped.
“You’re saying…” Her voice came out as a whisper. “You’re our father?”
Lucas looked at them, grief and love and regret braided together so tightly he could barely breathe.
“I think I am,” he said. “I think I must be.”
He reached out, hands trembling, and touched their faces like he was afraid they were made of smoke.
“You have her eyes,” he whispered. “Her beautiful eyes.”
Catherine’s chest felt too small for her heart.
Lucas’s gaze lifted to the audience, and his voice sharpened, no longer gentle.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, standing, still holding the jacket around the girls. “You laughed at two starving children. You threw a bottle at them. You called them rats.”
Silence held the room by the throat.
Lucas turned to Jackson and Esther, and the temperature of the stage dropped.
“You,” Lucas said, “used your talent as an excuse to be cruel.”
Jackson stammered, “Sir, the audience was—”
“No,” Lucas cut in. “You were.”
He looked at the security guard. “And you.”
The guard’s face drained. He couldn’t speak.
Lucas’s voice softened as he looked back at Catherine and Christine. “You said you wanted to sing.”
Catherine’s lips trembled. “We… we can’t—”
“Yes, you can,” Lucas said, and something in his tone sounded like a vow. “Not for bread. Not as a joke. Because you deserve to be heard.”
He faced the audience again.
“I want you to meet my daughters,” Lucas said clearly. “Catherine and Christine.”
A collective inhale swept the seats.
Lucas guided the girls to the piano. Workers hurried to wipe the keys dry with cloths, hands shaking, eyes wet.
Christine leaned close, whispering, “Catherine… I’m scared.”
Catherine looked at her sister, then at Lucas, then at the audience that had laughed. Fear tried to rise, but beneath it, something new grew: the strange, fragile idea that maybe the world could change in one night.
Catherine sat.
Christine stood beside her.
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