Missing Piece

Six years ago, Aaliyah Beckwood carried a stranger's child for money.

Six weeks ago, she learned that decision cost her far more than it paid.

Aaliyah drifts through Barcelona as an industrious ghost, working, breathing, existing. Never living. Then she meets Lu‑lu, the precocious boy whose eyes mirror her own. One look shatters her self‑imposed numbness and tells her what her life has lacked: the child she once surrendered.

Claiming a place in Lu‑lu's world means standing before his father. At first, Aaliyah sees Brandon as an obstacle between her and her son. Brandon sees her as a threat to the quiet order that protects the boy. Yet every shared meal, every late‑night story at Lu‑lu's bedside, draws two guarded souls into reluctant orbit.

Love enters on silent feet. In the kitchen over burnt toast, in the schoolyard beneath summer sunlight, in the hush after a child's laughter fades, Aaliyah and Brandon discover that the missing piece each of them has hunted lives inside the other. And that family is a choice made, not a fate endured.