"Daddy!"
I ran toward him, grinning, the soles of my shoes slapping the pavement as his car rolled to a stop. His face split into those same warm smiles whenever he saw me — his favorite person, no question. He opened his arms and I flew into them. We crashed together against his chest and didn't care that we were noisy or careless.
"My baby girl!" he laughed, lifting me and spinning me through the air until my stomach knotted with dizzy delight. When he finally set me down he crouched, cupped my face, and pinched my cheek until I squealed.
"You happy now? Do you have something to tell Dad?" he asked, eyebrows raised in that way that always made me smile wider. I nodded, then held up both hands to show the stars I'd earned in class.
"Seven stars, Daddy!" I announced, puffed with pride. He ruffed my hair and smiled — that smile I lived for: the small, easy joy that made the world right.
"You did great, Sheii. You made Daddy so proud," he said, kissing my left cheek until I giggled.
"That's all for you, Daddy. You're the best Daddy in the whole world!" I crowed, drawing a big circle in the air to emphasize it. He laughed and pinched my small hands.
"…And you're the most beautiful and the cleverest child in the world, Sheii. You're my everything." He squeezed my hands again.
"I love you, Daddy."
"I love you too, baby. Let's go home. I asked Manang Grace to cook your favorite spaghetti."
"Yay!"
He opened the car door and helped me in, then climbed into the driver's seat. The city washed past in familiar shapes as he drove.
"Dad, do you think Mom would be proud of me if she were still alive?" I asked suddenly into the quiet hum of the engine.
He glanced at me, slow as if the question landed hard. "Of course, baby. Your mom would be so proud. You're beautiful like her, smart like her — she'd be so happy to have you." He said it with a softness that made me smile, but whenever the conversation turned to Mom it spun out into other questions.
"Do I look like her?" I asked.
He nodded and gave a small, sad smile. I loved his happy face even when a sting of sorrow rode it. His laughter and his joy were the things I treasured most. I promised myself I'd protect that smile.
He fell quiet. Then — like a crack splitting a calm lake — his eyes shifted. The steering wheel jerked left. Headlights flared. I saw a trailer truck where there should have been empty road. Time fell away.
We slammed. The world became the smell of crushed metal and the scream of shattering glass. My head hit the window. Everything went bright and wrong.
When my eyes opened, the world tilted. "Dad," I tried to say, but my voice was a dry thing. Broken glass, blood, and the ache of my own body were all I knew. I turned my head and felt the hot, sticky summer of my tears as they hit his unmoving face.
"Dad," I whispered again, the word a rasp. A single tear fell and he didn't move. I called his name louder, then louder still. "Dad!"
I woke with a gasp, sitting upright in my bed, heart pounding, blanket tangled around my legs. I clutched the covers like an anchor. "I'm dreaming again," I told the dark.
My hair stuck to my forehead with sweat. I shoved the blanket off, reached for my phone — 2:27 a.m. — then tossed it aside. I wrapped my hands and went outside to my therapy: kickboxing. It's what I did when memory turned knives in my head and sleep betrayed me.
Sweat ran down my back but exhaustion hadn't found me. I fixed my eyes on the hanging bag and unleashed fists and feet until the world narrowed to impact and sound. Each blow carried a hatred so old it tasted like iron. I kicked, punched, kicked again. My breath was heavy and hot as the anger that filled my chest.
"You can't kill me," I muttered between strikes.
The bag absorbed my fury, but in my head I saw someone else — Damian Fontanilla — and the blows accelerated, harder, sharper. My father's smiling face from the dream haunted every strike, a needle through bone.
"I'll make you suffer, you old piece of—" I ground out, voice ragged. Tears streaked my face; sadness and rage braided into a cold resolve. I wanted him to feel everything I felt. I wanted blood for blood.
My fists finally gave out. I folded myself onto the floor and let the sobs come, raw and uncontrollable. My hands throbbed, knuckles bruised, but that hurt was bearable. Nothing cut like the hollow left by Dad.
Ten years. Ten years of living inside a hollow that used to be a life. They stole ten years of his happiness. Those ten years were enough to break him. I remembered what Dad taught me: survival rules, small and blunt, born of a man who'd known danger.
"Never tell anyone you're my daughter. Don't give your name to strangers. It could be an enemy," he'd said. "It will protect you even when I'm gone."
"Never tell anyone," I repeated to the dark.
I am not Lebrina Sheii Jaranilla, I told myself. At least I couldn't recall being her. The accident took everything. I'd told Damian that, the day he took me. He was my father's enemy — why, I didn't know. I was ten when he kidnapped me and tried to make murder into spectacle. That day turned color into ash; the cheerful child I had been was shoved into a cold pit and left to grow claws.
Remembering those nights made blood boil in my veins.
—TEN YEARS AGO—
A man about thirty, maybe older, yanked the blindfold from my eyes. He smiled like someone who liked the feel of other people's fear. He grabbed my chin and forced my face toward his. My hands and feet were still bound. I was a small thing, shaking with terror.
Armed men ringed the room. "Look at that," one said, mocking. "Artemis's beloved princess…"
His words were a blade. My throat tightened. A camera on a tripod pointed at me, lens hungry, like it wanted to remember the moment of my end. The men treated it like a photoshoot. I begged, sobbing, the sound raw and animal. "Please, don't kill me."
"Why not, princess?" he replied, as if killing were a small hobby. He laughed at my fear the way people laugh at ants. My voice came out a stammer as panic made my tongue thick: "I don't know Artemis. I don't remember—"
A slap cut the air; pain flared across my cheek. He yanked me by the hair and made me face him. I cried and pleaded harder.
"Lying?" he sneered. He stood and cocked a gun at my forehead. "Fine. Prove you've lost your memory." He tossed the gun to me and banged it against my knee. One of his men shoved me until the metal hit bone.
"Pick up the gun. Kill someone here and I'll believe you." His command had no heat. The other men inhaled around the idea like sharks scenting blood.
"I— I won't," I whispered.
"Just pick it up!" he screamed.
I scrambled for it and gripped the cold steel. It felt too heavy for my small hands. He ordered me to point it at anyone. I looked around the room, my hands trembling. Every face was a mask of appetite, but one pair of eyes in a corner didn't show fear. A man sat there, steady, his gaze calm. He nodded once as if telling me it was okay. He looked… proud, like a father watching a child learn. I didn't know him, but a strange recognition warmed the panic for a second.
"Pull the trigger," someone urged.
I looked at the man and then at the gun. He hadn't flinched. I didn't want to do it. But the man's steady look — the way he seemed to volunteer himself — made something inside me snap. Maybe it was survival. Maybe it was hatred turned sharp. I told myself I'd live, and punish whoever set this up.
"I'll do it," I said. "I'll kill him—" I lied, meaning the man beside me, not Artemis. I could never hurt Dad.
The trigger clicked. The shot tore the air. I dropped the gun and watched a bullet bite into the man's left thigh. He slumped against the wall, sweat beading on his brow. He looked at me, pale but still smiling through the pain.
"I did not expect this," he said, managing a breathless smile. "If you think Artemis isn't your father, can you kill him?" he asked. The implication was a blade and an offer.
I couldn't. I pretended to be the frightened child the kidnappers wanted, because survival is a liar that tells the truth. I straightened my face and answered with the lie they craved. Fear flared into something else: rage. They'd handed me a gun when I was a child and told me to hurt. I refused to be their instrument.
"Yes," I lied. "I'll kill him."
End of that night. I remember the weight of the gun and the sting of blood and the taste of lies.
—
I whispered to myself in the empty training room, kneeling on the cold floor, "Just wait, Dad. I'll point the gun at the man who taught me how to use it."
Minutes later someone moved in the doorway. I launched myself with a kick — he dodged easily. I swung again and again; each attack was parried. He closed the distance and crushed the barrel of a gun to my forehead, the metal cold and final.
We both panted. His mocking smile cut across his face. "Good morning, Xena," he said, like a threat wrapped in civility. "I'm bored. Can I kill you? I'm getting tired of looking at you every day."
I sneered. He'd said that a thousand times before. I'd never been able to kill him, even when he forced the gun into my hands. Maybe I was good, or maybe he was just weak.
I stepped forward until the gun kissed my skin. In one smooth motion I snagged it and the barrel snapped into my palm. Before he could react I shoved the muzzle against his temple.
"The feeling's mutual, Leo," I said.
I pulled the trigger three times into the floor. The shots echoed and nothing else seemed to move. Leo didn't flinch when I swung the butt of the gun at him with one hand; he simply watched. I let the weapon clang free and walked away, cold and steady.
"You can plant a bullet in my head while I sleep," I told him without turning. "Stop pretending it matters."