1
Warner
“Well?” I pivot slowly to face him, leaning one shoulder against a cold concrete wall. “Can you sense anything?”
Adam takes a tight breath.
“I don’t know, man,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head, exhaling. “I might need another minute. Something feels off.”
I watch him shift his weight as his eyes track the vast window, assessing the stark scene beyond: Rosabelle Wolff is seated at a metal chair, unmoving, stiff as a stake in the ground as her estranged father, Hugo, attempts another ill-fated interrogation.
“Rosa,” Hugo says desperately, his voice pitching higher. “Please—why won’t you speak to me—?”
Every day has been a failure.
Every day Hugo’s panic rises as the hours progress, his emotional instability spiking to near hysteria as Rosabelle grows only more remote. I’ve encouraged him several times to abandon the assignment, but now that he’s seen her again after so many years apart, he’s lost all objectivity. He’s frantic for a spark of recognition—a moment of redemption—and he won’t relent. I’d hoped his determination to connect with his daughter would give us a much-needed psychological advantage, but the unfortunate truth is that Hugo has become aliability. Worse, he’s costing us time. Most days these sessions end in tears.
His, not hers.
I do my best, every day, to dissociate from his pain.
More concerning is that I haven’t been able to get a read on Rosabelle in over a week. Her eyes are vacant, her energy cold. I’ve grown so accustomed to being flattened by the psychic torrent of other people that it’s nearly disorienting to be confronted by her style of silence.
Rosabelle’s emotional response is nonexistent.
In my life I’ve encountered one other person whose emotional state I couldn’t fathom—and he’s standing right next to me. My half brother Adam Kent Anderson. Only a year apart, we’d grown up never knowing the truth about each other or our family. For so long Adam and I had jettisoned our father’s name from our lives;Andersonhad once torn us apart. Our father had intentionally pit us against each other; in fact, we once sought to kill each other. But over the past decade we’ve learned to reclaim our shared name, slowly suturing ourselves back together. Me and my brothers, finally united under the same banner.
It was Ella who inspired this. Ella, who refused to be broken or branded by the story once written for her. It’s what she taught me was possible when she took back the name Juliette.
She’s known to the world as Juliette Ferrars.
She’ll always be Ella to me.
I experience a stab of pain at the thought of her, tensing even as I try to ignore the blade of fear that’s lately lodged itself between my lungs. A quickening in my blood chasesevery unguarded beat of my heart these days; my own feelings are so unstable I can’t allow myself to experience them in full. The thought of losing her—or our unborn child—is more than my paper soul can survive. Even now I feel an encroaching tremor animate my body and I clench my fists in concert with my jaw, compartmentalizing my life the way I always do.
The way I have to.
“Hey,” says Adam suddenly.
I realize only then, meeting his eyes, that he’s been watching me.
“You okay?”
The lie comes out fast. “Yes.”
“You sure?”
Adam’s concern continues to surprise and disarm me, despite its consistency.
“I’m sure,” I say, turning away, struggling to rebuild the walls in my mind.
“Hey,” he says again. “Look at me for a second.”
When I look up I feel the spike in his sympathy. More than that, I see it in the way he studies my face, then scans the rest of me, as if searching for open wounds.
“You want me to ask Alia to check on her?”
These words deliver me a disorienting injury.
