he watched as his hands, steady yet unfamiliar in their borrowed strength, gently placed the baby girl into her crib. her tiny chest rose and fell, the rhythm fragile, perfect. she had fought sleep for hours tonight, her cries piercing through the walls, through him, as though she knew. as though her instinct—untouched by the complexities of adult logic—could sense what you had only begun to suspect.

he stepped back, the soft glow of moonlight casting sharp edges on his face, a face he had come to wear as his own. it had been a month since he had arrived in this life, stepping into the absence he had created. a rough day at work, he’d said that night, the excuse slipping easily from lips that weren’t truly his. it had worked well enough. it always worked, at least in the beginning.

but the cracks were showing. you were starting to notice.

he had underestimated you, underestimated how closely you watched him, how deeply you remembered every glance, every word, every rhythm of the life you had shared before he had taken it. the original miguel. the one who belonged here. he had been careful, but not careful enough. the little things slipped through his fingers like sand—the way this miguel folded his shirts, the phrases he used when talking to you, the lullaby he should have known by heart.

he told himself it was worth it. this was the life he deserved, the one that had been torn from him when his own world collapsed, leaving nothing but ashes. a wife who smiled at him like he was her safe place, a child who trusted him implicitly, reaching for him with tiny hands that didn’t yet know betrayal.

he could feel your suspicion in the way your eyes lingered on him when you thought he wasn’t looking, the quiet hesitations before you spoke. you were trying to piece it together, though you didn’t know what you were searching for. not yet.

the paranoia was eating at him. every question you asked felt like a trap, every silence an accusation.

“she’s down.” he said, turning to you.