9. Inheritance Patterns #2
He was responsible.
Hadn’t he threatened to do this very thing?
Dr. Hauser watched me for another long moment, then softened, her voice dropping a notch. “Sam, I know this is a setback. But it’s not permanent. As soon as my funding is reinstated, you’ll be back in my lab, no question.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
She smiled, the first time in this meeting. “You’re a good scientist. Don’t let this stop you.”
I stood, folder in hand. “I won’t.”
Outside her office, I walked the corridor in a straight line, barely seeing the world around me. All I could think was, This is Tobias. This is Tobias, and this is how he plays dirty. If you won’t take the carrot, he’ll take the stick to everyone you care about .
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Tobias’s threat had been surgical, precise.
He didn’t even have to pull Kristiansen funding from the department, that would reveal him as the puppet master behind the scenes.
He only needed to request a review of funding, not just from my position, but from anyone who he thought might help me.
He’d cut off my way forward, and now, if I wanted to finish my PhD within the next decade, he thought I’d have to play by his rules.
The rage was slow and cold, like dry ice. It spread from the base of my skull to the tips of my fingers. I could feel my pulse in my teeth.
If this is how Tobias wants to do things, then I will teach him the definition of playing dirty.
Not only would I allow Andreas to adopt me, and thereby I would inherit the controlling shares in Genetix, I would uncover Tobias’s role in framing my father fifteen years ago. I would dig up every single piece of dirt on that asshole and ensure he rotted in prison for the rest of his life.
High on rage, I took out my phone and found Andreas’s number.
Samantha : I agree. Let’s meet ASAP.
Andreas’s response was almost instantaneous.
Andreas: Name the place.
I stared at the screen, my anger settling into a sickly sort of vindication. I would gladly sleepwalk for the rest of my life if it meant exacting revenge on Tobias, Henrik, and Oskar and their accomplices. My subconscious could go take a flying leap.
Tobias didn’t want me around Andreas? Fine. Not only would I destroy Tobias, I would strut around with Andreas like a friggin’ male peacock, shoving our renewed relationship in that mayonnaise-colored dipshit’s face.
Samantha: Text me your address. I’ll come over tonight.
A moment later, Andreas’s address came through.
I put my phone away and walked to the women’s bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and sat on the closed lid.
I didn’t cry, because I’d stopped crying years ago.
Instead, I replayed my conversation with Tobias last week over and over, studying all his threats, analyzing each statement for a potential weakness.
When I finished with him, he’d wish he’d never been born.
This was it. This was the moment.
I flushed the empty toilet, left the stall, washed my hands, and went to work.
* * *
If you ever want to know what it feels like to operate your own body on autopilot while your brain runs a continuous background loop of wrath, try waking up to the knowledge that your entire life has been puppeted by two generations of sociopaths, and that your only way out involves being adopted by your former childhood best friend.
I got through the rest of that day like a woman possessed.
Task list: pulverized.
Experimental run: so flawless, I double-checked the calibration because I suspected a supernatural intervention. I’d removed my makeup so I could enter the lab because I had a feeling today was the day those little bastards bent to my will.
Nieminen’s hand on my thigh during our “transition review” meeting: ignored. (I set a personal record for not cringing. If this had been the Olympics, I would’ve gold medaled in Disassociation in a Professional Setting.)
I even survived Dmitry’s worried hovering at lunch, where he watched me eat a granola bar in clinical silence and finally asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “Never been better.”
He frowned, then returned to his quinoa salad, occasionally shooting me glances as though he expected me to mutate at any moment.
I should’ve won a fucking Oscar for my portrayal of World’s Most Unbothered Grad Student Whose Funding Has Abruptly Ended and Who Has Been Forced to Work for a Sleezy Professor Who Won’t Stop Touching Her.
By 5:01 PM, I’d finished my work, closed out my samples, and actually left the building at closing time, a feat unheard of in my department.
As I walked down the steps into the blue evening chill, my phone vibrated with an automated reminder that my monthly health insurance payment was due. I ignored it and focused on the plan.
Step one: cash withdrawal.
I hit the ATM, yanking three crisp hundreds from my grandmother’s account.
I tried not to think about the promise I’d made her (“Don’t use this money for anything stupid or self-destructive, like revenge”) as I pocketed the bills.
Given the events of this morning and the level of Tobias’s evilness, I would gladly break this promise.
And part of me hoped Grandma would understand.
Even if she didn’t, nothing would stop me now.
Step two: outfit.
I walked thirty blocks east to a store whose name I will not mention, because it was a discount luxury boutique that only locals know about.
The store catered to online influencers and women who had never paid full price for anything, ever.
I fit right in, in my faded black jeans and a hoodie that said “I HAVE BACTERIA ON MY MIND.” Nobody looked at me twice.
There, I bought a little black dress so tight it looked vacuum sealed, a set of thigh-high stockings in a shade called raven, and a jewelry set composed of black glass drops and gold.
The saleswoman said, “Excellent choices,” in the dry tone of a former Soviet judge, but she gift wrapped the lot and even threw in a lipstick sample.
Step three: transformation.
Back at my apartment, I locked myself in the bathroom and stared in the mirror for a long time, memorizing my own face. I’d lost weight this semester, and with the way my cheekbones now jutted, I looked faintly starved. I need to eat more nutritious foods.
I wiped the remains of the day off my skin, then spent the next forty-five minutes blow-drying my hair, taming it into a glossy, brown-goldish sweep. I applied two layers of makeup. One to erase, and one to repaint. When I zipped myself into the dress, I felt like a different person.
I dug through my closet for my favorite stilettos, the pair I’d bought for a law firm interview and never worn. They were black leather, with a single, elegant ankle strap. I put them on, wobbled once, and then remembered how to walk in three-inch heels.
I added the new jewelry, the shiny drops cold against my collarbone.
For the finishing touch, I draped my long, black wool overcoat across my shoulders—open at the front, I didn’t want the dress to go unnoticed—and wrapped my grandmother’s red-and-pink silk scarf from Paris around my neck for courage.
Staring at myself in the full-length mirror by the door, I didn’t recognize the woman who stared back. It was a former version of me, one I thought I’d—sadly—left behind in undergrad. I loved her then, I loved her now, but I’d thought I didn’t have much time for her these days.
That changed now.
I wished I could claim that I did this all for myself. I wished this was—at least in part—a way to pamper and take loving care of Samantha Sylvia Jarlston. But this was not the case. I knew I was being watched, and that was both the point and the reason for this costume change.
It was all for Tobias Kristiansen. For Henrik. For Oskar, even if the old man was probably hooked up to life support. I wanted them to see me—the version who would walk into their world and burn it down with her bare hands, or at least in heels—and continue to underestimate me.
With one last look in the mirror, I grabbed my clutch (which I’d emptied of everything but an ID, keys, some cash, and a lipstick), and walked out the door.
It was only a fifteen-minute walk to the address Andreas had texted, but the heels made every step feel like a conscious act of defiance.
The city was dark now, the wind biting, but I didn’t feel cold.
In my mind, I pictured the way Tobias would react when he got the report that I’d arrived at Andreas’s apartment at this hour despite him cutting my funding.
That thought kept me warm all the way to Andreas’s building.
The doorman was a thin man with perfect posture, and when I approached he looked me over once, then gave a tiny, involuntary-looking bow.
“Good evening, miss. May I help you?”
I set my jaw and said, “I’m here to see Andreas Kristiansen.”
The man’s eyes flickered—maybe at the fact that I didn’t introduce myself—but he didn’t lose his composure.
He held the door for me. I entered. Once inside, he picked up a corded phone, dialed an extension, then spoke in a low, respectful voice. “I believe the guest you’ve been expecting, Ms. Jarlston, is here.”
The doorman listened, then nodded, then hung up. “He’s expecting you. The elevator will take you to the top floor. Straight ahead, then right.”
I thanked him, giving the lobby a cursory, but shallow, inspection.
The marble glowed gold, and the crystal chandeliers shone in the mirrored paneling like the inside of a jewelry box.
The elevator was also mirrored, and as I rode up, I caught myself rehearsing the conversation in my head, rapid-fire, like a verbal chess game.
What was I supposed to say in greeting when I saw Andreas? Maybe, “Hi. Let’s destroy your family,” or “Welcome to the revenge zone!”
The elevator doors opened into a private vestibule, dimly lit and silent. I took a breath, then walked down the hallway, my heels sharp on the marble.
At the end of the hall, a pair of double doors. I rang the bell.
It took maybe ten seconds for the lock to click and the right door to open.
Andreas stood in the entry, backlit by warm light, wearing a light gray dress shirt and a pair of black slacks that probably cost more than my laptop.
His hair was damp, as though he’d just showered, and his feet were covered in black socks on the wood floor.
The contrast made him look both absurdly formal and completely unguarded.
He looked at me. For a moment, there was nothing else in the world. His eyes—grayish green in the overhead light—swept over me from my hair to my heavy makeup to the open lapels of my coat hinting at the dress beneath to my shoes, then back again.
His lips parted. His eyebrows pulled together. He said nothing, just stared like he’d never seen me before. Or maybe like he was seeing me for the first time.
“May I come in?” I smiled, stepping over the threshold before he could answer. Tugging the scarf from my neck, I rolled it up and stuffed it inside my coat pocket.
“Of course.” He closed the door behind me, then stood awkwardly, perhaps unsure what to do next.
From what I could see, the apartment was vast, every visible wall covered in paintings and polished wood and midcentury modern—probably Danish—walnut-and-white furniture and antique dark red, hand-knotted rugs.
It was exceedingly stylish, and if an apartment could be described as sexy, it was that too.
But I fought a smirk because a baby would totally trash this place with their sticky fingers.
Can you imagine? A white couch and a toddler? Yikes.
There were no visible photos, and nothing I recognized that he might’ve inherited from his family.
But there was a chessboard on a big, black, round wooden table.
The entire wall of the living room beyond the entry was floor-to-ceiling glass, and the city sprawled outside, an infinite grid of lights.
He offered to take my coat. I shrugged it off, and when he saw the rest of the dress underneath, he made a short sound. When I turned over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of his wide eyes before he looked away so quickly I almost laughed.
Andreas hung the coat neatly in a closet and returned slowly, standing a polite distance away with his hands shoved in his pockets, his gaze never settling on me for long.
I stared at him, letting him stew in whatever emotion had him looking so entirely disconcerted. He needed to get used to this version of Samantha, because she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
His cheeks had turned an adorable shade of pink and his mouth formed a flat, determined line. But then, jaw tight, his eyes finally met and held mine, and only then did I speak.
“Let’s get down to business.”