We followed the advice until—late that night—Dominic laid down a new plan that felt like both madness and the kind of truth we’d been missing.
“We go human again,” he said. “One more time. Together. No lawyers in the room. I tell them who I was. You tell them who you are. We own every part of it.”
I watched him as he said it: the old soldier and the new father-to-be wrapped into one man who’d already burned too many rules to stop now. I wanted to say yes and no at once. The part of me still terrified of the fallout wanted to hide. The other part—angry, furious, fierce—wanted to shove the world a mirror and see if it could stare back.
We did it in the late hours while the house slept. It was smaller than the press conference: one phone, one warm lamp, two people who had been trying to sw
