I need to explain the shape of that need, because it is the thing that most people got wrong about me, and the thing Konstantin got most catastrophically wrong of all.

When you grow up the way I grew up — moved through paperwork as an infant, raised in a system that files children like inventory, believing yourself to belong to no one — you develop a very particular kind of hunger, and a very particular kind of fear that guards it.

The hunger is to be wanted.

The fear is that you will only ever be wanted for what you can provide.

Every foster placement I had ever known ran on that arithmetic: a child was a stipend, a helper, a box checked, and love, where it appeared at all, was provisional and could be withdrawn when the usefulness ran out.

So when a billionaire appeared with DNA results and a broken voice and said you are my daughter, I have been looking for you for twenty-six years, the hunger in me leapt toward him — and the fear slammed down over it like a gate.