Daniels took a steady breath.
“What you did last night,” he said, meeting Jax’s gaze, “you saved my baby.”
The room fell silent.
“Your baby?” I asked.
He nodded.
“That newborn the EMTs took… he’s my son.”
Jax’s eyes widened.
“Wait,” he said. “Why was he even out there?”
Daniels swallowed hard.
“My wife passed away three weeks ago,” he said quietly. “There were complications after the birth. It’s just me and him now.”
My grip tightened on the doorframe.
“I had to return to work,” he continued. “I left him with my neighbor. She’s reliable. But her teenage daughter was watching him while she stepped out.”
His expression tightened.
“He started crying. She panicked,” he said. “She took him outside to ‘show a friend.’ It was colder than she realized. He kept crying, and she got scared. She left him on that bench and ran home to get her mom.”
“She left him?” I whispered. “Out there?”
“She’s 14,” he said. “It was a terrible, reckless mistake. My neighbor realized immediately, but by the time they got back… he was gone.”
He looked at Jax again.
“You had him,” he said. “You’d already wrapped him in your jacket. The doctors said another ten minutes in that cold… and it could’ve ended very differently.”
I had to steady myself against a chair.
