Chapter 2: I Have A Deal For You

Xena.

Was Hannah drunk?

I stood there waiting for the punchline. April Fools was months away but maybe someone had lost track of the calendar. Maybe this was some elaborate Yale family bit that I hadn't been briefed on. Maybe —

Adrian crossed the room to stand beside her.

"It's true." He turned to face the crowd. "We found her barely alive around a week ago. Locked in a cargo house."

He looked at me.

"For three years, you kept her hidden away from the world."

I stared at him.

This was a joke. This was genuinely, actually, a joke. They definitely couldn't be serious.

Adrian Yale was standing in front of Chicago's finest in a room that cost more per hour than most people made in a month, and he was —

""What the hell are you----" 

He shoved his phone against my face and tapped a button. And the video nearly left me dumbstruck..

I was in it, forcing Hannah into an abandoned car while she screamed and cried for help. 

The only issue was I knew that wasn't me. But the aristocrats weren't going to believe that.

How did Adrian manage to get this? It has to be AI generated. 

Before I could say a word, the video appeared on everyone else's phones simultaneously.

I watched the room turn.

People who had greeted me an hour ago with both hands now looked at me like I was something that had crawled in from outside. The shift was immediate and somehow more nauseating than the video itself.

"Do you have any last words before you pay for your crimes?"

Speak. My mouth didn't move. There was nothing I could say in this room right now that anyone would believe. 

I knew it, and Adrian knew I knew it, and the slight satisfaction on his face confirmed he had built this entire evening around exactly that.

I looked at Hannah.

She met my eyes without flinching.

They framed me.

Three years I had covered for this family, I held their fucking marriage together so they couldn't face any sort of scandal. 

And this is what they did with it.

The guards reached me before I could finish the thought, dragging me out the gala. 

~~~

The interrogation room was cold and honestly if I had my way, I'd rather be elsewhere.

But here I was hand cuffed sitting across a detective who to be honest was pretty intense.

He opened a folder. Looked at me then back at the folder.

"So." He laced his fingers together. "Hannah Cross, your sister. Missing for three years." He tilted his head. "Want to tell me where she's been?"

"I don't know anything about it."

"You don't know anything."

"That's what I said."

He nodded slowly. "In three years, there was no contact or sighting. And you, living in the same house as the family that reported her missing, had absolutely nothing to do with it."

"Correct."

He laughed but I could tell that he was unimpressed with my answer. He reached into the folder and slid a printed still from the video across the table.

"Then explain this."

I looked at the still containing my face, Hannah's face and the car.

"It's AI generated."

He stared at me.

"Excuse me?"

"The video is AI generated," I said. "Deepfake. Whatever you want to call it. That is not me. You can run it through any detection software and it will tell you the same thing. The lighting on the face doesn't match the ambient light in the background, the — "

"Ma'am."

"The movement doesn't —"

"Ma'am." He held up one hand. "Are you genuinely sitting in this room, with this evidence, and telling me that a Yale family member fabricated a deepfake video to frame you at a public event?"

I looked at him.

These people. Honest to God. A room full of some of the wealthiest, most connected families in Chicago and not one of them had the critical thinking to question a video that conveniently appeared on every phone in the building at the exact same moment. Aristocrats and billionaires with more money than sense, and apparently the police weren't far behind.

"Yes," I said. "That is exactly what I'm telling you."

He closed the folder. "Alright. Since you're not interested in cooperating —" He looked past me at the officers by the door. "Take her to —"

The door opened.

Both officers snapped upright so fast I actually turned to look. The man who walked in wasn't in uniform. He was in a suit, older than the detective, and he moved through the room with the particular ease of someone who had never once needed to announce their authority out loud. He glanced at the officers, tilted his head toward the hallway.

They left without a word.

The detective gathered his folder and followed.

The door closed.

I turned back around.

What now?

The suited man — the chief, clearly — stepped aside. And the person who walked in behind him was not what I was expecting.

He was broad and younger than the chief but I could tell he was somewhere in his early fifties maybe. He had a strong jaw and dark eyes that seemed to pierce into your soul. The kind of build that made you aware of the dimensions of the room in a way you hadn't been a second ago.

I felt a shiver run through my body and a tingle between my thighs.

Oh.

I blinked and an obscene thought crossed my mind. 

No. No, I am literally sitting in a police interrogation room about to go to jail. Absolutely not.

I cleared my throat internally and shoved that thought into a drawer.

The chief left without a word, pulling the door behind him.

The man sat down across from me, completely unhurried. He seemed so at ease in a room that was specifically designed to make people feel the opposite.

He looked at me for a moment.

"Xena, right?"

I nodded, trying my best to not show him the satisfaction of seeing how tightly I was holding everything together right now.

He leaned back. And then slowly, he smiled.

"My name is Dante Yale," he said. "And I have a deal for you."