“And?” I whispered, gripping the edge of the counter.
“I found his older sister, Maya. She replied this morning.”
Leo handed me his phone with trembling hands.
I sat down at the kitchen table and started reading.
---
**Maya’s first message:**
“Leo, I can’t believe this is real. I had no idea Andrew had a son. I’m so sorry. There’s so much you don’t know.”
---
What followed was a story that made the room spin.
According to Maya, the day I told Andrew I was pregnant, he was overjoyed but terrified. He wanted to step up. But his family had dark secrets I never knew about.
Andrew’s father was deep in debt to some very dangerous people — loan sharks involved in drugs and extortion in our county. When Andrew told his parents about the pregnancy, his father panicked. He was already using Andrew’s basketball scholarship as collateral for loans. They saw the baby as another mouth to feed and another weakness.
They gave Andrew an ultimatum: leave me and the baby, or they would make sure “something bad happened” to us.
Andrew refused at first.
So they did something worse.
