Jaxon shifted, pulling the blanket he sat on closer around his legs. “My mother was Mara Mirek. She died when I was small. The man she lived with afterward was not my father. When he threw me out last winter, I found an old box of her documents. There was my birth certificate. No father listed.” He paused, glancing up with uncertainty. “But there were photographs of her holding two infants. I always assumed one was me. Now I think they were both me and someone else.”

A cold prickle moved down Tobias’s spine. He remembered photos of his mother too. Photos she had kept in a floral album she never let anyone else touch. Two babies. One in her arms. One in a hospital cot beside her. August Rainer had told Tobias that one of the infants had died shortly after birth. That was all Tobias had ever known.

Jaxon continued in a low voice. “I tracked down people who once worked with her. At a diner near Midtown. They said she had been pregnant with twins before she left the city suddenly. They did not know what happened after that.”

Tobias’s stomach lurched. His father had never mentioned anything about an abandoned twin. He had never hinted at uncertainty. He had spoken only of a tragedy that had happened so early Tobias could not remember it.

“Do you know August Rainer,” Jaxon asked quietly.

Tobias’s breath caught. “He is my father.”

The flicker of fear and hope that crossed Jaxon’s face made Tobias’s legs unsteady. The world seemed to tilt slightly, like the city itself had shifted without asking permission.

They stood there for several long seconds. Two boys who had lived entirely separate lives, made of opposite circumstances, staring at each other as if both were seeing a missing chapter of their own stories.

Tobias finally said, “Come with me.”

He led Jaxon through the revolving doors of the Rainer Plaza. The guards did not speak but stared openly at the contrast. Tobias walked him to a secluded lounge with velvet chairs and soft lighting. Jaxon sat awkwardly at the edge of one, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Tobias ordered soup, bread, tea, and a clean blanket from room service. Jaxon accepted them with hesitant gratitude.

Tobias watched Jaxon eat, feeling a knot tighten in his chest. “I think we need to talk to my father.”

Jaxon shook his head almost violently. “If he did not want me back then, why would he want me now.”