Chapter 165 up
Selena had always believed that patience was a weapon.
Not the soft, passive kind people praised in self-help books, but the disciplined, sharpened patience of someone who knew how to wait until the board aligned itself. She had waited through contracts, courtrooms, sealed envelopes, and silent nights. She had waited while others panicked, cried, broke.
Waiting had made her powerful.
Until now.
The first crack appeared as a tremor in her hand.
She noticed it while holding her phone, standing alone in the glass-walled study of the Clark estate. Outside, the manicured garden lay untouched, immaculate to the point of sterility. Every leaf trimmed. Every stone placed with intention. Order everywhere—except inside her chest.
Her thumb hovered over Evan’s name.
She had told herself she wouldn’t do this. She had told herself that direct contact was unnecessary, even dangerous. The system was already in motion. The court was sealed. Nyla was gagged by law. Clark was desperate. Elara was unstable.
Everything was unfolding exactly as planned.
So why did her heart feel like it was pounding against a locked door?
Selena inhaled sharply, forcing air into lungs that suddenly felt too small.
He’s still a variable, she told herself. Variables require management.
She pressed call.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
Each ring echoed too loudly in the quiet room.
When the line finally connected, Selena straightened her posture automatically, smoothing her voice into something gentle, something safe.
“Evan,” she said. “It’s me.”
There was silence on the other end.
Not the empty silence of a dropped call, but the deliberate stillness of a child deciding whether or not to exist in that moment.
Selena’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“Evan?” she tried again, softer. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Evan said at last.
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
Selena felt a flicker of irritation, quickly buried beneath a practiced smile he couldn’t see.
“I just wanted to check on you,” she said. “I heard things have been… confusing lately.”
Another pause.
“I’m fine,” Evan replied.
The words were polite. Controlled. Adult in a way that made Selena’s stomach twist.
“I miss you,” Selena said, abandoning subtlety. “Don’t you miss me?”
On the other end of the line, Evan sat on the edge of Nyla’s couch, his feet dangling above the floor. Nyla was in the kitchen, speaking quietly on the phone with her lawyer, unaware of the conversation unfolding inches away.
Evan stared at the wall as if the answer were written there.
“I miss when things were quiet,” he said finally.
Selena’s jaw tightened.
“They can be quiet again,” she said quickly. “You just have to remember who’s always been there for you.”
“I remember,” Evan said.
Relief surged through Selena—brief, intoxicating.
“And?” she prompted.
“And I remember being moved,” Evan continued. “I remember being told not to ask questions. I remember people saying it was for my own good.”
Selena’s breath hitched.
“Evan,” she said, sharper now. “You’re getting confused. Adults sometimes make mistakes when they explain things.”
“No,” Evan said softly. “You make mistakes when you don’t explain them.”
The words struck deeper than Selena expected.
She felt heat rise in her chest—anger, fear, something dangerously close to panic.
“You’re being influenced,” she snapped. “Someone is putting ideas in your head.”
There it was.
The shift.
The moment when control slipped and emotion rushed in to fill the gap.
Evan’s grip tightened around the phone.
“I don’t like how you talk,” he said. “You sound like the gray room.”
Selena’s composure cracked.
“The gray room exists to help you,” she said, her voice no longer smooth. “You don’t understand how fragile things are right now.”
“I understand enough,” Evan replied.
Selena took a step forward, as if distance itself could be crossed by will.
“Evan,” she said, forcing calm back into her tone, “listen to me carefully. What you’re feeling will pass. Nyla won’t always be there. People leave. I stayed.”
That was the mistake.
The moment she crossed from strategy into confession.
On the couch, Evan’s eyes filled—not with tears, but with something harder.
Certainty.
He stood up.
“I didn’t ask you to stay,” he said.
Selena froze.
“You stayed because you wanted control,” Evan continued, his small voice steady. “Nyla stays because she listens.”
Silence swallowed the line.
Selena felt it then—the unfamiliar, terrifying sensation of losing ground.
“Evan,” she said, her voice trembling despite herself, “don’t hang up. We’re not done talking.”
Evan closed his eyes.
“Please don’t call me again,” he said.
And then—
The line went dead.
The phone slipped from Selena’s hand and hit the marble floor with a sharp, echoing crack.
She didn’t move.
For several seconds, she simply stared at the dark screen, as if it might light up again, as if Evan’s voice might return and undo what had just happened.
It didn’t.
Something inside her fractured.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
But irreversibly.
Selena sank into the chair behind her, her breath coming too fast, too shallow. Her carefully constructed world—built on leverage, timing, influence—had been breached by a single sentence from a child who no longer feared her.
Please don’t call me again.
The words replayed in her mind, each repetition stripping away another layer of illusion.
She had lost access.
Not legally.
Not temporarily.
But emotionally.
And emotional access was the one thing no court order could restore.
Across the city, Evan handed the phone to Nyla without a word.
Nyla looked at the screen.
Selena’s name.
Her jaw tightened.
“Did she say something that upset you?” Nyla asked carefully.
Evan shook his head.
“I told her to stop calling,” he said.
Nyla stilled.
“You did?”
He nodded. “My chest felt tight when she talked. It doesn’t feel like that with you.”
Nyla pulled him into her arms, her heart aching with pride and sorrow all at once.
“That was very brave,” she said quietly.
“Was it mean?” Evan asked.
“No,” Nyla replied. “It was honest.”
Evan leaned into her, resting his head against her shoulder.
“I don’t want to be managed anymore,” he murmured.