Page 23 of Carved

"I was naive," I say quietly. "I didn't understand how the world actually works."

"No," Aliyah speaks up, her voice carrying the kind of gentle authority that makes people stop and listen. "Youunderstood exactly how the world works. You just decided it was easier to join the darkness than keep fighting it."

The accusation hangs in the air between us, sharp and unforgiving. Because they're both right, in ways that make my chest tight with something that might be shame or might be rage.

I built this life—Dr. Lila North's life—as armor against the world that destroyed Delilah Jenkins. But somewhere along the way, the armor became a cage. The protection became isolation. The strength became numbness.

And now, for the first time in nine years, something has cracked that numbness open. Something has reminded me what it feels like to be truly alive.

"You don't understand," I say, standing abruptly from the table. "You can't understand. Both of you have each other, you have this beautiful relationship, you have support and love and all the things that make life worth living. You've never had to rebuild yourself from nothing."

"Haven't I?" Janine's voice is dangerously quiet. "You think watching your sister's baby girl get destroyed by her father's violence was easy for me? You think taking in a traumatized teenager and helping her heal didn't require me to rebuild parts of myself, too?"

The words hit like a slap. Because I had forgotten, in my self-absorbed spiral, that Janine's investment in my recovery wasn't purely altruistic. She'd lost her sister to him—to my father—to whatever darkness turned him into a monster so long ago.

"I'm sorry," I say, and mean it. "That was selfish."

"It was honest," Aliyah corrects. "And honesty is more than we've gotten from you in months."

She reaches across the table to take Janine's hand, their fingers intertwining with the unconscious ease of people who've learned to be each other's safe harbor. It's beautiful and painful to watch—this effortless intimacy, this assumption that they can weather any storm as long as they face it together.

I've never had that. Never even come close.

"We're worried about you," Janine says simply. "Not because you're failing or struggling, but because you're succeeding too well at becoming someone else entirely. The person sitting at this table isn't the girl I helped heal, and she isn't the woman you chose to become. She's someone harder. Someone colder."

"Someone scared," Aliyah adds quietly.

"I'm not scared," I protest, but the lie tastes bitter on my tongue.

"Then what are you?" Janine asks. "Because whatever it is, it's been getting worse. You cancel plans, you avoid calls, you disappear into your work for weeks at a time. And tonight…." She studies my face with uncomfortable intensity. "Tonight, you look like someone who's just discovered a secret. Something exciting and dangerous and probably stupid."

The accuracy of her observation makes my blood run cold. Because that's exactly what I look like. What I feel like. Someone who's just been handed the key to a door she thought was locked forever.

"There's no secret," I say, but even I can hear how unconvincing it sounds.

"Bullshit," Janine says again, standing to face me across the table. "I know you, Lila. Better than you know yourself sometimes. And right now, you're vibrating with the kind of energy that comes from dangerous possibilities."

She's right. I am vibrating with dangerous possibilities. The possibility that the careful life I've built is about to be turned upside down. The possibility that I might finally feel something other than numbness.

The possibility that I might not want to resist.

***

The silence that follows their departure feels different from my usual solitude. Instead of the careful quiet I've cultivated—the absence of distractions, the controlled environment where I can think and plan and maintain perfect order—this silence hums with electricity. With possibility.

I pour myself another glass of the expensive wine and stand at my living room window, watching the city lights blur into abstract patterns fifteen floors below. My apartment, so carefully curated to project success and stability, suddenly feels like what it's always been: a beautiful prison I've built for myself.

Janine's words echo in my mind with uncomfortable accuracy.Tonight, you look like someone who's just discovered a secret. Something exciting and dangerous and probably stupid.

She's not wrong. I have discovered a secret. Or rather, a secret has discovered me.

For so many years, I've lived with the assumption that my angel of darkness had forsaken me for good. I'd spitefully built an entire identity around being someone he could never find, someone he wouldn't even recognize if he saw her on the street.

But the initials on that cream-colored paper suggest otherwise. D.J. Not random letters, not coincidence. A messagemeant specifically for me, left at a crime scene that bears his unmistakable signature.

He remembers Delilah Jenkins.

The question is: What does he want?