The office smelled faintly of leather and polished wood, the kind of smell that spoke of wealth and power, the kind of wealth you could only earn in decades, not in years. I stood in front of him, clutching the photo so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

“Please,” I said, my voice trembling, “just this afternoon… pretend you’re my dad.”

He looked at me like I had grown another head. The man before me wasn’t just any man—he was Daniel Whitmore, 61 years old, a millionaire whose name was whispered in high-rise boardrooms and featured in magazines. His tailored suit made him look untouchable, and his laughter… that booming, effortless laugh, rolled across the office and wrapped around me like a storm.

“I’m sorry,” he said between chuckles, leaning back in his leather chair. “Did you just ask me to pretend I’m your father?”

“Yes,” I said again, louder this time, because I needed him to understand. “Just for a few hours. Just this afternoon. I… I don’t have anyone, and I need…” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard and shoved the photo toward him.

The laughter stopped. The room went quiet. For the first time, his eyes flickered over the photo and something changed. He leaned forward, squinting, his fingers trembling slightly as they reached for the picture.

It was old, faded at the edges, creased across the middle. A family photo taken decades ago, of a younger man and woman holding a child. The child’s face—my face—stared back at him. My eyes, my nose, my crooked smile. Everything. He froze.

“Where… where did you get this?” His voice was low now, almost strangled.

I swallowed, my chest tightening. “I found it in my mother’s things,” I whispered. “It’s been hidden for five years. She… she never told me the truth.”

He leaned back slowly, blinking as if trying to process what he was seeing. “Five years,” he muttered, almost to himself. “How… how did you…” His hands shook as they hovered above the photo.

I took a deep breath, holding my own fear tightly in check. “I need to know,” I said. “I need to know if you… if you’re really my father. Please. Just for this afternoon, act like it. I need to feel it.”

He ran a hand over his face, a gesture I had seen in his interviews on television—the one he did when making impossible business decisions—but now it looked human. Vulnerable. Real.

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. I wanted to turn around, to flee, to run away from the possibility of being rejected, but something in his eyes—shock, recognition, something else I couldn’t name—kept me rooted to the spot.

Then he spoke, slowly, as if each word weighed a ton. “Do you… you really think I could be…?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I don’t know how, but… please. I need to see if there’s any truth. Just this afternoon.”

His chair creaked as he stood up, towering over me in the sunlight that streamed through the enormous windows of his penthouse office. He took the photo again, turning it this way and that. I saw the color drain from his face as he traced the outline of my features with a finger.

“I’ve… I’ve never seen this photo before,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction. His hands shook. “It’s… it’s impossible.”

I took a small step forward. “I know it sounds crazy. I know it might not make sense. But look at us. My eyes, my smile… it’s like looking in a mirror. There has to be something here, something you’ve kept secret for all these years.”

The room fell silent again. Outside, the city moved on, oblivious to the storm inside. And then, slowly, he lowered himself into the chair across from me, still holding the photo as if it were a fragile relic from another life.

“Five years,” he said again. “I… I thought she had destroyed everything. I thought…” His voice faltered, and for the first time I saw the man behind the public persona—the man who had built empires but had never faced this moment of truth.

I sat down across from him, holding my hands together so he could see I wasn’t lying. “I don’t want your money,” I said softly. “I don’t want anything. I just… I want to know you. Just for a little while. Just for this afternoon.”

He studied me in silence. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Just for this afternoon… I will pretend. I will try.”