Chapter 138 up
“You knew.”
The words left Nyla’s mouth calmly, almost gently, but they landed between them like a blade laid on a table.
Selena looked up from her glass of water. The afternoon light from the tall window cut across her face, catching the faint lines of exhaustion she never bothered to hide anymore. She did not flinch. She did not pretend.
She only set the glass down.
“I was wondering when you’d come,” Selena said.
Nyla closed the door behind her. The soft click echoed too loudly in the quiet room.
She didn’t sit.
She didn’t pace.
She stood there, spine straight, fingers curled tightly around the folder in her hand.
“I didn’t come to wonder,” Nyla said. “I came to end the pretending.”
Selena’s gaze flicked briefly to the folder, then back to Nyla’s face. Her lips curved—not into a smile, but something close to recognition.
“So,” Selena said softly. “You opened it.”
Nyla slid the folder onto the table between them.
Inside lay the DNA report. Clean. Clinical. Merciless.
Probability of maternity: 99.98%.
Selena didn’t reach for it.
She didn’t need to.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air felt heavy, thick with things that had been buried too long.
“You stole my child,” Nyla said.
Her voice did not rise.
That was what made it unbearable.
Selena inhaled slowly. “No,” she replied. “I moved him.”
Nyla laughed once—sharp, humorless. “You can change the verbs all you want. The truth doesn’t change shape.”
Selena leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. “Do you want the truth?” she asked. “Or do you want absolution?”
“I want you to look at me,” Nyla said. “And say it.”
Selena met her eyes.
“I knew Evan was yours.”
The words hung there, naked and irrevocable.
Nyla’s breath hitched despite herself. Her chest burned, as if something had finally torn open after years of pressure.
“And you watched me,” Nyla said quietly. “You watched me lose everything. My body. My memory. My child. And you said nothing.”
Selena’s jaw tightened.
“I watched you survive,” she said. “Barely. And I did what I thought was necessary.”
“For whom?” Nyla asked.
Selena didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze drifted to the window, to the city beyond it—orderly, indifferent, still standing.
“For him,” she said finally. “And for myself.”
Nyla stepped closer to the table. “You don’t get to hide behind practicality. Not now.”
Selena’s eyes hardened. “You think I wanted this?” she asked. “You think I enjoyed carrying that knowledge?”
“You enjoyed control,” Nyla shot back. “You always did.”
A flicker passed through Selena’s expression—anger, perhaps, or recognition.
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
The honesty was brutal.
“When the world decided I was expendable,” Selena continued, her voice low and even, “I learned something valuable. Power is the only language that doesn’t lie.”
Nyla’s hands trembled, but she kept them at her sides.
“So you took my child,” she said. “And told yourself it was strategy.”
“I kept him alive,” Selena replied. “I kept him protected. I kept him away from men who would have crushed him without a second thought.”
“You mean Clark,” Nyla said.
Selena’s lips pressed together. “I mean systems. Families. Legacies.”
“You mean you,” Nyla said.
Silence stretched between them again.
Then Nyla reached into the folder and pulled out a photograph.
Evan, asleep. One hand curled instinctively, as if holding onto something unseen.
Nyla placed it on the table.
“This is what you never calculated,” Nyla said. “You treated him like an asset. A liability. A chess piece.”
Selena’s gaze dropped to the photo despite herself.
“He is not your penance,” Nyla continued. “And he is not your shield.”
Selena looked away.
“You think I don’t know what I did?” she asked quietly. “You think I don’t wake up remembering your face when they took you in? When you were stripped of choice?”
Nyla stiffened.
“I remember signing the papers,” Selena went on. “I remember thinking—if I don’t act now, everything will collapse. His family. My future. Even yours.”
“Don’t,” Nyla said sharply. “Don’t rewrite this as mercy.”
Selena’s eyes glistened, just slightly. “I never asked you to forgive me.”
“No,” Nyla said. “You asked yourself.”
Selena straightened. “Forgiveness is a luxury for people who get to keep their hands clean.”
Nyla stared at her, something cold and steady settling into her bones.
“You’re right about one thing,” Nyla said. “You didn’t ask for forgiveness.”
She stepped closer, placing both palms flat on the table, leaning in until they were eye to eye.
“But you don’t get to decide what a mother deserves.”
Selena swallowed.
“You decided for me,” Nyla continued. “You decided I didn’t deserve to remember my pregnancy. That I didn’t deserve to hold my child. That I didn’t deserve grief, or joy, or truth.”
Her voice wavered now, just slightly.
“You decided I could live without him.”
Selena’s composure cracked—not visibly, not dramatically, but enough.
“And what if you couldn’t?” Selena asked. “What if knowing would have destroyed you?”
Nyla’s eyes burned. “It did destroy me,” she said. “Just slowly. Quietly. In ways you didn’t have to watch.”
Selena looked down at her hands.
“I thought,” she said, almost to herself, “that if you forgot… if the pain dulled… you’d be free.”
Nyla straightened.
“You don’t erase a mother and call it freedom.”
The words landed harder than any accusation.
Selena exhaled shakily. “I didn’t think of you as a mother anymore.”
There it was.
The final cruelty.
Nyla closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, something inside her had shifted completely.
“That was your mistake,” she said.
She gathered the folder and tucked it under her arm.
“I’m not here to punish you,” Nyla went on. “And I’m not here to beg.”
Selena looked up sharply. “Then why are you here?”
Nyla met her gaze, steady and unyielding.
“To take back what you never had the right to manage.”
Selena’s lips parted, as if to speak, but Nyla continued.
“You built your life on the idea that control equals safety. That if you move the pieces fast enough, no one bleeds.”
She shook her head.
“But blood remembers.”
Selena stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. “If you expose this,” she said, the edge finally breaking through, “everything comes down. Courts. Media. Evan—”
“—will have a mother who chooses him,” Nyla interrupted.
Silence.
Nyla stepped back, moving toward the door.
“You didn’t ask for forgiveness,” she said over her shoulder. “Good.”
Her hand paused on the handle.
“Because I’m not offering it.”
Selena’s voice followed her, quiet but strained.
“What will you do?”
Nyla didn’t turn around.
“I’ll do what you never did,” she said. “I’ll choose him without conditions.”
She opened the door.
“And Selena?”
“Yes?”
Nyla looked back one last time, her eyes clear, resolute, unbroken.
“You may have decided my past,” she said. “But you don’t get to write my ending.”