Page 86 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
She studies me for a long moment, then stands.
“We’ll come back to you.”
The cell feels smaller when they put me back in it.
The walls seem closer.
The vent hum seems louder.
My hands are shaking faintly, not from fear, not from pain, just from the residue of electricity still echoing through my nerves.
I pace the length of the cell three times, slow and controlled, until the tremor fades.
I sit on the slab.
Close my eyes.
And instead of counting clicks, I picture her hands.
Not her face.
Not the moment at the pod.
Her hands.
The way her fingers always fidgeted when she was thinking.
The scar across her knuckle she never remembered getting.
The way she pressed her thumb into my palm when she was nervous and didn’t want me to notice.
I flex my own hands slowly, one finger at a time, grounding myself in the sensation of skin and bone and movement.
They don’t get that from me.
They don’t get her.
Days blur.
Weeks.
Months.
Sometimes they leave me alone for long stretches, like they’re letting my mind rot in silence.
Sometimes they come every day.
New interrogators rotate in. New strategies.
One of them tries humor.
“You know,” he says one afternoon, leaning back in his chair, boots propped on the table, “most people break before year two. You’re kind of ruining our averages.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll try harder.”
He chuckles. “That’s the spirit.”
He shows me fabricated reports.
