Chapter 23 - Brianna’s Price
Brianna agreed to speak only with Mia.
They sat across from each other inside a secure interview room while Reed and Nora watched through the glass.
Brianna’s confidence had weakened since the hearing, but resentment still shaped every word.
“You finally came.”
“You sent three requests.”
“I have information.”
“You want something.”
“A recommendation that I cooperated.”
“That depends on whether you tell the truth.”
Brianna leaned back.
“You always thought morality made you stronger than us.”
“No. I thought family meant people did not steal your identity.”
“That was never what our family meant.”
Mia placed the photograph from the empty grave on the table.
Her thirteen-year-old face had been circled in black.
Wrong daughter.
“Who wrote this?”
“Kyle.”
“Why?”
“He believed Lorraine had been paid to watch the wrong twin.”
Mia kept her expression still.
“You knew about Eva?”
“I saw her once at the lake house. We were teenagers. Lorraine told me she was an actress helping with an insurance matter.”
“And you believed her?”
“I believed what benefited me.”
It was the first honest thing Brianna had said.
“Why keep me worried about money?”
“Kyle needed samples.”
“Samples of what?”
“Your voice. Your signature. Your spending patterns. Sunday dinners were recorded. Every bill they gave you created another decision for the verification system to study.”
Mia remembered Kyle’s photographs on the wall beneath the lake house.
They had not only been watching her.
They had been building a copy of her.
“The blue room,” Mia said.
Brianna’s eyes moved toward the observation window.
“It has no windows. Kyle used it for identity interviews.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know the address. But the entrance is beneath a property registered to Adrian Bell.”
“The dealership?”
“Not the dealership. His private records company.”
Brianna pushed a small numbered key across the table.
“Kyle gave me that in case he disappeared.”
Mia did not touch it.
“What does it open?”
“The room containing the final ledger.”
Mia stood.
Brianna called after her.
“One more thing.”
Mia stopped.
“Kyle is not holding Eva.”
“Then why was she with him?”
May you like
Brianna smiled faintly.
“Because Eva is holding Kyle.”
