Genevieve
I'M LOST IN THE ILLUSION.
Rushing to get out of the house, I'm at my Toyota within seconds after having managed to evade everyone in the house. The tears burn at my eyes as the pressure mounts, and I don't even collapse into the seat before they start to leak. Sobs wrack my body, but I'm gunning the engine and hightailing it off the property so I can pull over somewhere else.
As I wait for the electronic gate to open, my vision blurs. I barely make it ten yards out of the gate before I'm pulling along the sidewalk, surrendering to my emotions.
For me it feels like a lifetime has passed—or at least a season—before I manage to calm down enough that the tears have ceased, and my body convulses with every laboured breath. My head pounds, but I feel frazzled more than anything. I feel betrayed and heartbroken, and I need proper answers.
My phone suddenly trills from my pocket. Swiping at it, I glance at the screen to find an unfamiliar number stamped there. For a rational moment, I think about declining the call, but my gut tells me that it's something I can't miss. And for that reason, as dread settles in my body, I accept the call.
"Hello," I greet warily.
"Genevieve McGuire?" I wince, hardly registering the unfamiliar male voice. "This is Detective Needham. Ford Brody gave me your number. I think we have some explaining to do. You're owed answers. Could you get down to the station? Everything you want to know, we'll answer it."
There's no trace of hostility in his voice, and with the gentleness, it makes me feel less like suspect. It sounds ridiculous, but what if they believe I'm hiding something about my true life? That I've known all along and been in cahoots with my parents this entire fucking time? It seems wildly inappropriate, but I accept Detective Needham's proposal anyway.
"When?" I ask meekly.
"How about now?"
"Sure. I'll be there as soon as I can."
"When you arrive, just ask for me at the desk. I won't keep you waiting long."
"Okay. I'll be fifteen minutes."
"That's fine." He pauses slightly. "I appreciate this, Genevieve."
He doesn't even let me correct him on the name before he's hanging up, and I'm left to gawp at my phone. He knows every single detail of this investigation, including the one that entails my true identity being Coralee Grace Winters—how could 'my parents' keep my middle name so authentic of my true life?—and he still has the audacity to call me Genevieve.
My head's all over the place as I drive to the police station. As much as I crave the answers from—I can't even call them my parents anymore, I can't call them anything, for fuck sake—I know they'll be hard-pressed to reveal them. The bit that's most intriguing is confirming Ford's suspicions on why Jeanette Somerby has been kept alive all these years, despite Chasity and her parents—my biological parents—being slaughtered.
My heart clenches.
Ford.
It physically pains me that he thought he could keep something so damaging of a secret like this from me and assume our relationship would remain just as stable. It seems like hefty naïveté that he thought I'd remain as his girlfriend, and that thought alone is staggering, given the character that is Ford fucking Brody.
When I park up outside the police station, I roughly wipe at my tear-stained cheeks and check my eyes in my mirror. They're bloodshot to hell—reminding me too painfully of the memories of when Ford drugged me with Bullet—and I sigh softly. But before I can dwell on it for too long, I'm climbing out of the car and striding purposefully into the police station, executing the orders from Detective Needham.
