Chapter 3

The old street by Zollseen Road felt its best at dusk.

Lights flicked on one by one. Thin smoke curled out of chimneys. The air smelled like grilled hot dogs, warm and a little salty.

Benjamin pulled over at the mouth of the alley and got out with Sylvie.

He slowed down without making a show of it, matching her pace.

Sylvie walked fast, like a tiny adult hurrying off to something important. But her steps were short, and if he walked the way he usually did, she couldn't keep up.

So he adjusted. For every one of his steps, he took two smaller ones.

Sylvie glanced up at him. She didn't say anything, but her smile grew just a little.

The hot dog stand looked worn, its sign faded from years in the sun.

Behind the counter stood a woman in her sixties, tapping numbers into a calculator. She looked up, and the second she saw Benjamin, her whole face lit up. "Benjamin! Haven't seen you in ages. Working late again?"

"Jaylee. Long time no see," he said, then glanced down at Sylvie.

Jaylee followed his gaze. Her eyes widened. "Wait. Is this your daughter?"

"Yeah," Benjamin said. The word felt strange coming out, like pressing a puzzle piece into place and realizing it actually fit.

Jaylee nearly dropped her calculator. "Oh my goodness. You're a dad now! And she's already this big. She's adorable. Looks just like you."

Sylvie gave a small, polite nod. "Thank you. Your hot dogs smell authentic. The bun is very soft. You cooked it at exactly the right temperature for the right amount of time."

Jaylee blinked, then turned to Benjamin. "How could she tell that?"

Benjamin didn't even change his expression. "She can tell from the smell."

"From the smell?" Jaylee was stunned.

"She's a little different," Benjamin said. He led Sylvie to a small table by the window and sat down.

She climbed onto the chair across from him, rested her chin in her hands, and studied the menu with a serious, focused look.

She looked at the plastic-covered menu for all of three seconds.

"I'll have a hot dog with ketchup and a Coke," she said, looking up at him. "What about you?"

"Same for me," Benjamin replied.

She turned to the waiter. "Two hot dogs with ketchup and two Cokes. Thank you."

The waiter, a guy in his early twenties, walked off, clearly trying not to laugh.

While they waited, Sylvie pulled a tablet out of her small canvas bag.

The bag had the Mona Lisa printed on it, except someone had drawn a pair of sunglasses on her face. It was definitely Sylvie's work.

"May I take care of something quickly?" she asked, polite as ever.

Benjamin raised an eyebrow. "What could a five-year-old possibly need to take care of?"

She didn't answer. She just turned on the tablet and opened a page.

He glanced over. It was a business banking site for a bank in Maltowel.

"What are you doing?" Benjamin asked.

"Transferring money," Sylvie said, not looking up. "I used Mom's spare credit card to pay for the plane tickets and the hotel. When she gets back, she'll see the charge.

"So I need to transfer money from my account back to her card. That way, her final statement will show it as a refund from the seller. She won't get suspicious."

Benjamin stared at her in silence for five full seconds. "You have your own bank account, huh?"

Sylvie nodded. "Mm-hmm. My grandma helped me open it when I was three. She used to be a university professor. She thinks it's important to learn about money early."

"How much is in it?" he asked.

Sylvie hesitated, like she was deciding whether to be honest. "Around forty-seven thousand dollars."

"You're only five."

"I know," she said calmly. "It's from my allowance, money my mom saves for me, money from my grandma, and some small investments I've made."

"What kind of investments?" Benjamin asked.

Sylvie finally looked up, studying him for a second like she was checking if he was serious. "Bitcoin. I bought some when it dropped to sixteen thousand dollars.

"I sold part of it last year when it hit sixty-nine thousand dollars. But I wouldn't buy it now if I were you. It's too risky at this price."

Benjamin picked up his coffee and drank the whole cup in one go.

He needed something stronger, like whiskey. But coffee was all he had.

The hot dogs arrived.

Sylvie set her tablet aside. She picked up her hot dog carefully, took a small bite from the edge, blew on it, then followed with a proper bite.

Her movements were neat and calm, not a trace of the chaos that most five-year-olds would make with a hot dog.

Benjamin watched her for a moment, then said, almost without thinking, "You eat just like your mother."

Sylvie chewed, swallowed, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. "When you talk about my mom, your voice gets very soft. You care about her."

Benjamin didn't answer.

He picked up a hot dog and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.

He immediately burned himself.

Sylvie looked at him with a calm, I-saw-that-coming expression.

"I knew you'd do that," she said, handing him a glass of cold water. "You burned yourself the same way five years ago, didn't you?

"My mom wrote 'don't stuff the hot dog all in' on the back of the note. But she never gave it to you. She thought it was too embarrassing."

Benjamin froze, his hand stopping mid-reach as he took the glass. "That note..."

"Yes," Sylvie said. "It was written on the back. She crossed it out, but you can still read it. When I was little and bored, I used to shade over the paper with a pencil. The crossed-out words show up that way."

Benjamin set the glass down and looked at Sylvie, his expression turning serious. "Just how smart are you, exactly?"

Sylvie thought about it for a moment, like she wanted to answer him properly. "I took an IQ test once. But it only went up to 160, and my score was higher than that. So I don't really know how smart I am.

"But I finished the original version of The Little Prince when I was three. I taught myself calculus at four. And now, at five, I'm reading about game theory and cognitive psychology."

She added after a beat, "I read them in two languages, side by side. Some ideas don't translate very well. The original wording makes more sense."

Benjamin was silent for a long moment. "Does your mom know all this?"

Sylvie nodded. "She does. She took me to see a few child psychologists. They all said I'm gifted. They suggested homeschooling with a custom learning plan, so I never went to kindergarten.

"I study at home. My mom hired teachers, but most of the time, I just teach myself."

"Don't you feel lonely?" Benjamin asked.

That question caught Sylvie off guard.

For the first time, something uncertain flickered across her face. She hesitated and said, "I don't know. My mom says I have an old soul. She thinks I don't really need friends my own age.

"Sometimes, what other kids talk about feels boring. And they don't understand what I'm talking about. So..."

Her voice faded, and she didn't finish. She just poked at the last half of her hot dog.

Benjamin watched her, his eyes settling on the top of her head. Her two little buns had come a bit loose, soft strands of hair slipping out.

He spoke slowly, like he was choosing every word. "So you didn't come all this way just to get your mom and me back together."

Sylvie's hand paused mid-motion.

"You also wanted to see what kind of man your father is," he continued.

Sylvie kept her head down.

"And you wanted to make sure you really had a father," Benjamin said, his voice lower now. "That he wasn't just someone from your mom's stories."

Sylvie's shoulders trembled slightly.

A second later, she lifted her head. Her eyes were red, but she was holding it together, biting her lip like she refused to cry.

"My mom never talks about you," she said. Her voice shook a little, but every word was clear. "I'm five years old, and she has never—not once—talked about you.

"I found you on my own, from the little clues she left behind. Her old phone. A note in a drawer. Your notes in her worn copy of Poor Charlie's Almanack. And a picture of you, cut out from a magazine, hidden in her diary."

"She keeps a diary?" Benjamin's voice came out rough.

"Yeah." Sylvie nodded. "There's a lot in it. But she wrote it in Franluconian, and she used an old kind of code. It took me four months to figure it out.

"After that, I learned what happened between you two. You broke up the day you met. It wasn't because she didn't love you. She did. She just thought she wasn't good enough."

Benjamin's head snapped up. "What exactly did she write?"

Sylvie said carefully, word for word, "She said you were meant to go out and see the world, and at the time, she had just lost everything. She didn't want to be the weight that held you back.

"Back then, she had just lost her father. Her architecture firm went under. She had a lot of debt. She felt like a failure. She really believed she wasn't good enough for you."

Benjamin's grip tightened around his cup. "So she left."

"So she left," Sylvie said, nodding. "She didn't want to hold you back."

"She's such a fool," Benjamin muttered through clenched teeth.

A tear finally slipped down Sylvie's cheek. She wiped it away quickly with her sleeve, like she didn't want anyone to notice.

"I didn't just come here for myself," she said. "I came for my mom. These past five years have been really hard on her.

"She raised me on her own. She paid off all her debt and started over. Now she's one of the top architects in Maltowel. But she's never dated anyone since."

"Not even once?" Benjamin asked, a bit surprised.

Sylvie shook her head. "Not once. Men asked her out, but she said no. People tried to set her up, but she said she wasn't interested.

"Every night, when she's at her desk drawing, that copy of Poor Charlie's Almanack is right there next to her."

Benjamin closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, something had settled inside him.

"Are you staying at the Silvermoon Hotel?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sylvie replied.

"When does your mom get to Winmere City?" Benjamin asked.

Sylvie blinked. The tears still clung to her lashes, but her expression sharpened as she thought it through. "After she lands in Maltowel and realizes I'm not at the hotel, she'll check my card history.

"She'll see the plane ticket and the hotel booking here. Then she'll book the next flight to Winmere City. So..."

She glanced at the time on her tablet. "She should be in the Silvermoon Hotel lobby around two tomorrow afternoon."

Benjamin checked his watch. "So we've got about twenty hours."

"Yeah," Sylvie replied.

"That's enough," Benjamin said.

Sylvie frowned slightly. "Enough for what?"

Benjamin looked at her and smiled, his first real smile all night. "Enough time to get a few things ready."

Sylvie tilted her head, curiosity lighting up her eyes—the same eyes as Belle's. "What are you going to do?"

"Finish your hot dog first," he said, pointing at the cold half still sitting in front of her. "Then I'll take you back to the hotel. After that, I've got a few calls to make."

"What kind of calls?" Sylvie asked.

"Adult calls," Benjamin replied.

Sylvie pouted a little, but she didn't argue. She finished the rest of her hot dog, took a few more sips of Coke, wiped her mouth neatly with a napkin, then stacked the dishes and pushed her chair back in place.

Benjamin noticed all of it. Belle had raised her well.

And all of a sudden, he wanted to see Belle more than anything. He missed her.

It wasn't new. That feeling had been there since that winter night five years ago. He'd told himself he'd moved on, that it was over.

Now he knew the truth. He hadn't. Not even close.