Denver was standing just beyond them holding a silver gun with a silencer on it. His eyes were flaming mad, and he looked like he was ready to strangle Felicia with his bare hand.
The man I now called husband was vibrating with anger, too. I could feel the muscles in his back bunching and relaxing.
“What the fuck happened?” Boone snarled.
“I…” Felicia started.
“She waited for you by the entrance. She said she wanted to talk to you. Congratulate you. But the moment you came out of that room, she pulled a gun from beneath her coat, raised it, and aimed it at you,” Denver said. “Was too far away to react.”
Felicia shifted.
“Did you check her for other guns?” Creed asked, eyes narrowed.
“We did,” Black said. “You’re under arrest for attempted murder.”
Felicia started to shake. “I had to. I had to. I had to.”
“You had to what?” Black scoffed. “You didn’t have to do shit. You chose to.”
“She made me!”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“Who made you?”
“My kidnapper.”
Everyone froze.
“Your kidnapper?”
“Gail.” Felicia sniffled. “She stole me from my mother when I was an infant. I finally found my mother five years ago, and Gail has spent the last five years blackmailing the both of us to get us to stay in line.”
“What the hell?” Eddy whispered.
“I swear. I have proof!” Felicia promised. “Text messages. Hundreds of them. She made me do it. I’m sorry, Boone. I’m sorry. But she forced me to. It’s either I kill Nettie, or she kills my mom! She’s already taken everything from her! Her livelihood. Her child. Her future. I didn’t know what else to do!”
This was the first time I’d ever seen Felicia actually passionate about someone other than herself.
It was weird…and convincing.
“You could’ve tried coming to us, Felicia.”
“Not Felicia,” Felicia whispered. “Karen.”
Oh, what the fuck.
I didn’t think that a name could get any worse and fit any better, but then she’d said “Karen.”
“Who the fuck is Karen?”
“Me,” Felicia answered. “That was what my mother named me before Gail stole me.”
Sawyer scrubbed at his face. “You could’ve gone about this a completely different way.”
“You were in on it, if you were about to tell me that I needed to come to you.”
“I wasn’t in on anything,” Sawyer snarled. “I’ve done nothing but support you for your entire life. Yet you’ve treated us all like garbage. I just thought you were just like her. I didn’t know that you weren’t mine until about a year ago.”
