Part 1Spoilers Told Me Who Daddy Is

I’ve always been able to see the words. They hover in the air, glowing like neon dust, scrolling endlessly across my vision from the moment I first opened my eyes.

For a long time, I couldn't understand what those frantic, floating symbols meant.

Until the afternoon my mother suddenly collapsed beside her easel, her face draining to the color of crushed chalk.

In that terrifying instant, the phantom words snapping through the air sharpened into brutal clarity:

[CRITICAL WARNING! She’s been painting straight through the night for a week! Her heart is giving out!]

[Oh god, her four-year-old is just standing there... She doesn't know she's watching her mother miss the golden window for resuscitation...]

[By the time the neighbor finds them, it’ll be too late. Poor little Remi is going to end up in the foster system.]

[And Vaughn Croft? That visionary, untouchable Hollywood director will die never knowing Camille had his child. He’ll never know she literally worked herself to death trying to keep them afloat.]

I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks with the back of a paint-stained hand, a single, fierce thought anchoring me: I will not let my mother die. And I am not going to any place called a foster system.

You adults always try to bury the truth, hiding behind your pride and your secrets. This time, I was going to do the talking.

Three days later, amidst the chaotic, screaming throng of a major Los Angeles film set, I shoved my way through a sea of crew members. I stopped dead in front of a towering man glaring at a playback monitor.

Pulling every ounce of air into my tiny lungs, I screamed, "Daddy! Mommy is dying, and you have to save her right now!"

* * *

From a very young age, I knew my world was built differently from everyone else's.

Where other kids just saw a blue California sky, I saw a canvas layered with translucent, scrolling comment bubbles.

My mother, Camille, was a gentle, fiercely talented painter. She used to brush a thumb over my cheek and call me her perfect little muse. Whenever I zoned out, tracking the invisible text floating across the ceiling, she thought I was just lost in my own vivid imagination. She even painted me like that once—eyes wide, staring at a secret universe.

I was never daydreaming. I was just trying to decipher the noise.

Camille had taught me well; at four years old, I could already read far beyond my age.

Today, she wasn't herself. She was slumped against her heavy wooden easel, clutching her chest, her skin alarmingly ashen. I tugged at her paint-splattered jeans, begging her to lie down, but she just offered me a frail smile and stroked my hair.

"Just a little longer, Remi," she whispered, her breath shallow. "If I can just finish this commission, we can pay for your preschool tuition next season."

Right then, the pastel words floating above us turned a violently flashing crimson.

[Red alert! This is it! The female lead’s heart is failing from absolute exhaustion!]

[Look at her little girl... she has no idea what’s happening. This is shattering me.]

[Camille, drop the damn brush! Money isn't worth your life! Remi needs you!]

[Where the hell is the male lead? Oh, right. Two hours away in Burbank shooting his new blockbuster, drowning in awards, completely clueless that the love of his life is slipping away.]

Panic seized my throat. I grabbed the hem of her shirt, pulling hard. "Mommy, stop! I don't want to go to school! Go to sleep!"

Camille bent down, her eyes swimming with a hazy, terrifying tenderness. She opened her mouth to speak, but before the sound could form, her eyes rolled back. She folded in on herself, hitting the hardwood floor with a sickening thud.

"Mommy!"

I dropped to my knees, screaming, shaking her limp shoulders with all my meager strength. She didn't move. She didn't even twitch.

The blood-red text practically blinded me now.

[No, no, no... the tragedy arc is starting. Little Remi is going to sit with her mother's body until the neighbor walks in tomorrow.]

[This part of the story ruins me. Her only inheritance is going to be that hidden photograph. Camille dies without ever seeing him again.]

[I hate this! If Vaughn had just swallowed his pride and looked for her, Camille wouldn't be living in this rundown apartment!]

Vaughn?

The name rattled something loose in my memory.

Leaving my mother's side for only a second, I dragged a stepping stool to her nightstand. I reached for the polished walnut box she strictly forbade me from opening.

Inside lay a single photograph. The man in the picture was strikingly handsome, his jawline sharp, his dark eyes staring into the camera with an intense, unguarded warmth.

The invisible chorus supplied the context instantly:

[Yes! That’s him! Vaughn Croft! The prodigy director! Remi’s biological father!]

[Looks like a prince, acts like a coward. How could he let Camille suffer like this?]

[Look at him, Remi! Memorize that face! He is the only one who can pay those hospital bills!]

I stared at the photograph, burning every angle of his face into my mind.

Daddy.

If you had enough money to make movies, you had enough money to save my mother.