Chapter 130 up
“Mom, can you check this file again?”
The voice pulled Nyla back to the present, but only partially. Her eyes stayed on the spreadsheet glowing on her laptop, numbers blurring into meaningless columns. The office around her hummed—keyboards clicking, phones vibrating—but her mind was somewhere else entirely.
“Sure,” she replied automatically, fingers moving out of habit.
Yet even as she worked, a name echoed faintly in her head.
Evan.
It had been doing that all morning. All night, if she was honest.
After the meeting, after Evan had fallen asleep against her shoulder with a trust that felt undeserved and overwhelming, Nyla had gone home and stared at the ceiling until dawn. Sleep came in fragments—thin, shallow pieces—each interrupted by memories she hadn’t invited.
Now, in the harsh clarity of daylight, she tried to be rational.
She had to be.
This doesn’t mean anything, she told herself. Children attach. It happens. You’re projecting.
But the words felt hollow.
When her colleague left, Nyla closed her laptop slowly. The silence felt heavy, almost accusatory. She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone, opening her calendar—not the work one, but the personal archive she rarely touched. Old notes. Dates. Hospital visits. Legal appointments.
Her life, reduced to timestamps.
She scrolled back.
Five years.
Six.
Seven.
Her breath slowed as she began to count—not days, but absences.
There had been a stretch she rarely thought about. A blurred period where her life had narrowed into survival. Courtrooms. Cold hallways. Documents she was told to sign without explanation. Threats wrapped in professional language. Silence enforced by fear.
And loss.
She swallowed.
I remember losing things, she thought. But did I ever ask what, exactly?
Nyla leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Images rose unbidden.
A sterile room that smelled of disinfectant. A ticking clock. A pen pressed into her hand.
Just routine, someone had said.
She had been exhausted. Numb. Angry in a way that hollowed her out rather than burned.
At the time, she hadn’t questioned it. She hadn’t had the strength.
Now, suddenly, strength felt like a cruel joke—arriving years too late.
Her phone vibrated.
A message from Selena.
Did you get home safely yesterday?
Nyla stared at the screen, a chill crawling up her spine. Selena had been hovering lately—watchful, measured, too careful. As if waiting for something to click.
Nyla didn’t reply.
Instead, she opened her notes app and began writing dates.
Her arrest.
The temporary detention.
The legal limbo.
Her release.
What came after.
She paused, finger hovering.
Was there… anything missing?
Her chest tightened.
She remembered being sick. Weak. Losing weight rapidly. Doctors attributing it to stress. Trauma. Shock.
Had anyone run tests?
Had she ever asked?
Her mind resisted the direction her thoughts were going, pushing back hard.
No, she thought. This is irrational. Trauma creates false patterns.
But even as she told herself that, Evan’s face appeared in her memory—not smiling this time, but serious, intent.
Why does my chest feel warm when I look at you?
The memory hit her like a physical blow.
Nyla pressed a hand to her sternum, breathing carefully.
Coincidence, she insisted. Emotional transference.
Yet the name—
Evan.
It didn’t feel neutral. It felt… familiar.
As if it had once belonged somewhere else before being placed here.
She stood abruptly, pacing the room.
“Get a grip,” she muttered aloud.
Her voice sounded thin.
She went to the window, staring down at the city far below. People moved like pieces on a board, each convinced of their own autonomy.
Had she ever really had that?
Or had entire decisions been made for her—quietly, efficiently, without her consent?
Her phone buzzed again.
This time, it was Clark.
We need to talk.
Nyla laughed softly, the sound sharp and humorless.
Do we? she typed, then deleted it.
She didn’t respond.
Instead, she pulled up an old email archive—legal correspondence she had avoided revisiting for years. Her fingers trembled slightly as she searched keywords.
“Temporary custody.”
Nothing.
“Medical.”
Nothing.
“Minor.”
Still nothing.
Too clean.
The absence itself felt deliberate.
Her heart began to pound harder, faster, as if her body had reached the conclusion before her mind dared to.
She remembered Selena’s earlier words, spoken carefully, almost gently.
Some stories are erased not because they are untrue… but because they are inconvenient.
At the time, Nyla had thought Selena was speaking only of power and reputation.
Now, the words rearranged themselves into something far more personal.
She sat back down slowly.
What if… something happened while I was powerless?
The thought terrified her—not because it seemed impossible, but because it explained too much.
Why certain memories felt amputated.
Why she reacted so violently to injustice involving women and children.
Why Evan’s presence didn’t feel new—but recovered.
Her throat tightened painfully.
“No,” she whispered. “This is madness.”
She forced herself to stand, to breathe, to ground herself in the room.
The desk. The chair. The light.
But grounding failed when she remembered one last thing—small, almost laughable.
Years ago, after her release, she had asked a nurse for her personal effects.
Everything was returned.
Except a bracelet she swore she had worn.
The nurse had frowned, checked again.
It wasn’t listed, she’d said.
Nyla had been too tired to argue.
Now, her hands curled into fists.
That bracelet had been given to her by her mother.
Engraved with a single name.
She had always assumed she’d lost it.
Her breath caught sharply.
“What if,” she whispered into the empty room, “I didn’t lose it at all?”
Her phone vibrated again—this time with a photo notification.
Someone had tagged Evan in a company charity post.
The image loaded slowly.
Evan sat on a bench, legs swinging, expression peaceful.
Nyla stared at his face.
At his eyes.
The angle of his brows.
The way his mouth softened when relaxed.
Something inside her broke—not loudly, but cleanly.
A fracture she could no longer ignore.
Her rational mind screamed for restraint.
For evidence.
For caution.
But another part of her—the quieter, older part—was already asking the question that should have been asked long ago.
Not who is Evan?
But—
Who was I not allowed to be?
Tears blurred her vision, but she didn’t wipe them away.
She let them fall, one by one, onto the screen of her phone.
And in the silence that followed, Nyla finally allowed herself to ask the question she had avoided with every ounce of her strength:
“Is it possible… someone stole a chapter of my life?”