The fear approach did not work, but I have to acknowledge, she has some fire.
“There is one other way to find out I’d like to try,” says Kat, pushing herself off the counter. “It will also reveal if she has empathy or is a cold-blooded liar.”
“I’m listening,” I say, slightly annoyed.
“We use her friend, Luisa. I could create a deep fake from a few video sequences from her socials and make it look like a surveillance video of her being tortured. We could use something intense, a threat of murder or rape, and see what Sophie does when she sees it.”
My eyes narrow.
“Or we could just grab that Luisa and have Adria have some fun with her?—“
“Rose, she is an innocent bystander,” Kat says with a harsh undertone. “I am all in for getting you your revenge, but not the innocent ones.”
My girl has grown into a wonderful woman I am very proud of, and I cannot disagree with her.
“Do it, but do it quickly,” I tell her. She understands I am in a mood, yet she also knows her capabilities.
Kat nods and gets to work.
I walk up and down over the tiles. I am restless. I desire clarification. I desire revenge. Equalising. Now.
“If you don’t stop pacing or put off your heels, I am going to murder you,” says Kat at some point, eying me angrily.
I pour myself another whiskey and kick my heels off my feet.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’m almost done, it’s a bit more complicated than I expected, because that Luisa has not a single full face photo on her profile.”
Half an hour later, she shows me a to me very convincing video of the girl’s friend being threatened, hit, shot in the leg, undressed, touched, and a man jerking off his disgusting penis.
I have seen the video before, only with a different woman.
“You replaced it with her,” I say. “It’s from what you took from that drive from the Moretti’s in 2018.”
“It is,” she says. “I had to recreate half of her face with AI because I couldn’t get a real shot, but I blurred it like a surveillance feed—it’ll suffice with what I got from her phone.”
“What did you find there?” I ask.
“Nothing of relevance to us. But she mustn’t know that,” says Kat as she gets up, taking her laptop with her.
She freezes halfway to the downstairs door and spins around.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Ian Onto is Antonio,” says Kat. “It’s an anagram.”
I look at her as my mind switches the letters.
Why have I never seen it before?
5
SOPHIE
PLAYLIST: PRISONER – RAPHAEL LAKE AARON LEVY, DANIE RYAN MURPHY
“Iadvise you to choose your words very carefully,” says the woman who took me suddenly. I didn’t even hear her come in. Was her name Kat?
My mind is so mushy.
