“Cells do not merely endure stress; under repeated pressure, they learn to organize survival around it.”
The sentence followed me everywhere. Into the shower. Into the lab. Into the quiet moments before sleep, when my mind refused to settle. For the first time, I wondered if Katherine had been trying to explain herself all along, and I had been too busy stealing from her to listen properly. Or maybe she had been trying to explain me.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I stared at the screen until it went dark. Miss Astoria jumped onto my stomach with the full weight of her tiny, expensive body, and I made a small, undignified sound.
“You are not petite; stop doing that,” I told her.
She ignored me and settled in like she owned the place.
The phone rang again. Same number.
This time, something cold moved under my skin, slow and heavy.
I picked up the phone and let it ring twice more before I answered.
“Hello?”
For a second, there was only static. Then a man breathed into the line. My hand tightened around the phone until the edges bit into my palm.
“Selena?”
The room disappeared. It simply moved farther away, as if someone had pulled me backwards from my own body and left me sitting somewhere behind my ribs, watching myself remain perfectly still. Miss Astoria stopped purring. The man laughed softly, but there was nothing warm in it.
“Look at that. Still know your old name, don’t you?”
I could not speak. I knew that voice. Older now, rougher, damaged by cigarettes and alcohol and years of believing the world owed him something for surviving badly. But beneath all of that, I knew the rhythm. The slow pull around certain words. The faint accusation that turned even my name into something I had done wrong.
My father had found me.
“Who is this?” I asked.
The lie came out steady.
Another laugh.
“Oh, don’t do that. Don’t go all fancy on me now.”
My mouth had gone dry. Miss Astoria pressed one paw against my thigh, claws catching lightly through my pajama pants. I sat up slowly, careful not to make the bed creak.
“How did you get this number?”
“That’s what you want to ask your father after all these years?”
I closed my eyes.
Father.
The word did not belong to him anymore, if it ever had. Fathers were supposed to be something solid. Something that stood between you and the dark. Daniel Martin had been the dark. He had been the slammed door, the sour smell of beer, the hole punched through drywall that my mother covered with a calendar because we could not afford repairs.
I opened my eyes again.
“What do you want?”
He made a disappointed sound.
