Selena did not sleep.
She lay awake through most of the night listening to the quiet sounds of her apartment, the refrigerator hum, the distant passing of cars, the faint rattle of pipes in the walls, and tried not to replay what had happened outside the parking structure. When she closed her eyes she saw movement before memory, the precise angle of a wrist turning toward a trigger, the shift of weight that meant someone was about to fire, the calm certainty that had guided her body before her mind understood why.
She did not think about fear. Fear had come later.
What unsettled her was recognition.
Somewhere inside her there was knowledge she had never learned, reflex that did not belong to the life she remembered. She lay there tracing the ceiling with her eyes, counting cracks the way she had in the hospital, and told herself again and again that it was adrenaline, coincidence, survival instinct. But each time she tried to settle on that explanation something deeper resisted, like a truth pressing upward through water.
Morning came anyway.
She dressed slowly, choosing clothes that hid the scrape on her knee and the faint bruise on her wrist. She tied her hair back the way she always did and practiced her usual expression in the mirror, calm, unhurried, ordinary. She watched herself for a long moment, searching for something different in her face.
She saw nothing.
That frightened her more than anything else.
Rockwood Industries looked exactly the same as always when she arrived. Glass doors. Polished floors. The faint smell of coffee drifting from the break area. People walked past her with normal concerns and normal voices, complaining about deadlines and printers and traffic, and for a moment she felt ridiculous for thinking yesterday had changed anything.
Martha waved loudly from across the office, already mid story about a taxi driver who had fallen asleep at a red light. Freddy appeared beside Selena with two cups of coffee and an easy smile, asking if she had slept well, asking if she felt better, asking nothing she could not answer.
Selena let herself laugh.
It came easily, almost gratefully, as if her mind were desperate for something simple to hold on to. She sat down and opened her emails and forced herself to read slowly, carefully, focusing on each word as though attention alone could steady her thoughts.
But she noticed things.
Small things she had ignored before.
The way Adam's office door stayed closed longer than usual. The way security guards spoke quietly into radios when she entered the building. The way a car idled too long across the street before driving away.
She told herself she was imagining patterns.
Across the office Adam watched her without realizing he was watching.
He had been uneasy since the attack, angry that someone had tried to harm one of his employees so close to his own building, furious that his security had not prevented it, but his worry was simple, direct, and human. He saw Selena as someone he needed to protect, not someone he needed to suspect.
He noticed she looked tired.
He noticed she smiled anyway.
He noticed the way she pressed her fingers briefly against her temple when she thought no one was looking.
When he stepped out of his office, it was with a report in hand and an excuse that sounded practical even to himself. He asked Martha about deadlines, asked Freddy about scheduling, and stopped beside Selena's desk as if it were an afterthought.
"How are you feeling today," he asked quietly.
"Better," she said.
The word was careful.
Adam studied her face, looking for signs of fear or hesitation, but saw only composure and something else he could not name. He nodded once.
"If you need time off," he said, "take it."
"I do not," she replied gently.
He did not press.
Because to him the attack was simple. A rival family testing limits. A message sent badly. Something he could deal with through meetings and orders and quiet retaliation.
He did not see the war inside her.
That afternoon Selena found herself staring at a spreadsheet without understanding it. Numbers blurred together. Her head ached again, dull pressure behind her eyes, and when she blinked the screen seemed to tilt slightly before settling.
A memory flickered.
A hillside under grey sky. The smell of gun oil. A voice telling her to breathe slower.
She pressed her fingers against her temples until the image vanished.
Freddy noticed. He leaned closer, voice soft. "You okay."
"Just tired," she said.
He nodded, concern plain but gentle. He did not ask more.
Selena wondered suddenly what Freddy would think if he knew what she was beginning to suspect about herself. She pictured the way he smiled so easily, the quiet patience in his voice when he explained things, the gentle concern he tried to hide whenever she looked tired. Freddy saw her as something simple, someone ordinary who needed coffee and rest and maybe a friend to sit beside her while she figured out her place in a new job. He would not understand the certainty that had guided her body outside the parking structure, the calm that had settled into her bones when guns were pointed at her. He would try to protect her, and she would not know how to tell him that whatever she was, it was not someone who needed protecting.
Then she wondered what Adam would think.
The thought struck harder than it should have. Adam had looked at her with a kind of quiet care she had never learned how to accept, as though he trusted her without needing reasons. He had stood beside her hospital bed and said almost nothing, and that silence had meant more than words. If he knew she had moved like that, if he saw what she had done, would that trust disappear. Would the softness in his eyes become suspicion? Would he look at her the way he looked at people who had crossed him in meetings, calm and polite and utterly distant?
She pushed the thought away because it frightened her too much to hold.
***
Later, while Martha argued loudly about lunch plans and tried to convince everyone that reheated noodles were a reasonable culinary choice, Selena glanced toward Adam's office and felt a strange, hollow certainty settle quietly in her chest. It did not come with panic or shock. It came like something remembered rather than discovered, like a truth she had known once and forgotten. Something about Rockwood did not fit the life she remembered living. Something about the way decisions moved through the company without resistance, the way certain men lowered their voices when Adam passed, the way security guards stood a little straighter when he appeared.
She watched him through the glass wall and noticed details she had ignored before. The calm authority in his posture that felt less like management and more like command. The careful way people chose their words around him. The silence that sometimes fell when he entered a room, not respectful silence, but wary silence.
Fragments of memory stirred again.
Names she could not place surfaced and vanished like reflections on water. Faces almost familiar hovered just beyond recognition. Orders half remembered whispered at the edge of her thoughts, instructions delivered in voices she could not attach to anyone she knew. She felt cold as the sensation spread through her chest, a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning and everything to do with recognition she did not want.
She folded her arms tightly and tried to focus on Martha's ridiculous story about burning toast, but the laughter around her sounded distant, like noise heard through walls. Somewhere inside her something was rearranging itself, quietly, patiently, waiting for her to understand.
When Adam came out of his office again he found Selena watching him.
She did not realize she had been staring until his gaze met hers across the room. For a moment she forgot where she was. She saw him clearly, the way he moved through the office with quiet certainty, the way he spoke to people without raising his voice, the way he noticed everything.
She looked away quickly, pretending to read a document on her screen, her fingers hovering above the keyboard without moving. But Adam had seen the question in her eyes, something searching and uncertain and afraid, and it stayed with him for the rest of the day like a weight he could not name.
***
That evening Selena stayed late, pretending to finish work while her mind wandered through shadows she could not fully grasp. The office grew quiet around her. Lights turned off one by one. Martha left with exaggerated complaints about dinner. Freddy waved goodnight with a smile that lingered a moment too long. The cleaners moved through the hallways with soft footsteps.
Selena remained at her desk, staring at a spreadsheet she had already completed, trying to follow threads of memory that slipped away whenever she reached for them. She knew only that the attack had not been random. That someone had chosen her. That the calm she carried inside her came from somewhere she did not understand.
She thought about the way Adam spoke on the phone sometimes, voice low and firm, using names she had never heard before. She thought about the rumors she had ignored. She thought about the quiet fear she had noticed in other men's eyes.
As she finally shut down her computer and stood to leave, she glanced once more toward Adam's office.
He was on the phone, voice low, and expression serious, listening more than speaking. For a moment she saw him differently, not as the man who brought her coffee, not as the boss who watched her with quiet concern, but as someone whose life stretched beyond the walls of Rockwood into places she could not see.
For a moment she wondered who he really was.
For a moment she wondered who she was.
Then she turned away and walked into the hallway, her footsteps echoing softly, carrying questions that were only beginning to take shape inside her. She did not know where they would lead. She did not know what answers would cost her.
And somewhere beneath the surface of everything they had built together, beneath the laughter and quiet glances and careful kindness, a fault line widened slowly and silently, waiting for the day it would finally break.