Chapter 84

  VIV’S POV   “What’s taking them so long to begin this godforsaken interrogation?” I murmured to myself.   The detention room smelled like sterilized secrets and old betrayal.   Cold, too. Clinical.   The air-conditioning hummed with detached cruelty, as if reminding me this place had no warmth for me. I sat still, spine stiff, hands folded neatly in my lap, my wrists bare where a slim silver bracelet had once rested—confiscated the moment I walked in.   Or rather, was brought in almost forcefully.   Two agents sat across from me, not in suits, but in those awful business-casual shirts and slacks meant to appear unthreatening. They weren’t.   One tapped a pen against a notepad like it was a metronome keeping time until I snapped. The other stared at me with the unwavering focus of someone trying to dissect me cell by cell.   “Vivienne Prescott,” Pen-tapper began, “Can you explain how private visuals of President Kaelon Blackwood and your stepsister, Liv Bennet found its way online, or