AllFreeNovel
Share Us
RIA
Forest arrived back from the meeting with his brothers a bit tense, but he shrugged it off and started chopping vegetables for tomorrow’s meals. I left him to it. I didn’t need a sixth sense to discern when someone doesn’t want to talk about something.
By the next morning, his tension had mostly cleared.
I’d woken up with terrible morning sickness and he’d caught me eating a plain biscuit in bed to try and stave off the nausea. He had laughed at me, but fondly, as if it was a funny little habit of mine and not a way to cover up my secret pregnancy that he didn’t know about. A stab of guilt in my already churning stomach.
At least he really did seem to be relaxed in my family’s home.
I was rolling out of bed when the burner phone Helli had given me lit up. It was a phone call. I scrambled to answer it, raising my finger to my lips in the direction of Forest.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Ria Moon?”
“This is she.”
“You have a meeting with Apollo today. Afterwards, tell him you need to buy some groceries in town and you’ll get the bus home. Then meet me at the location I’ll text you.”
“Er. Sure, okay.”
The phone clicked off, no goodbye. It was Helli, for sure. I’d recognise that voice, so similar to Jenni’s, anywhere.
I turned to Forest. “Helli wants to meet with me in private after my meeting with Apollo.”
Forest nodded. “It could be a trap. I’ll get some security together. Where’s the meeting?”
“She’s going to text me the location.”
I showered and dressed, staring at myself in the mirror as I did so. Was I starting to show? I wasn’t even sure when I was supposed to. I’d had barely any time to think about what was happening inside my body, never mind research it. There would be time, I presumed, to do all that later.
In the meantime, I’d already noticed some changes. Changes which Forest was thankfully oblivious to. The obvious worship with which he regarded my body when we were intimate must have overridden any concerns of detail.
But at some point, it was going to become obvious. I needed to tell Forest before it reached that point.
At the end of my meeting with Apollo, he surprised me with a question. “Ria, do you love Forest?”
I blinked. I did.
And yet I couldn’t admit it to Apollo – not when he knew my other secret.
I looked him dead in the eyes as confidently as I could. “He can be good company. But it’s not real. I know the difference between real feelings and pretend ones. I could never love him, not when I knew I’d been sent by you to... spend time with him.” A half-truth was still a lie but could be masked with enough genuineness as to make it seem real.
Apollo nodded wisely, as if he thought himself a sage elder. “Sensible girl. Well, I’ll arrange for the paternity test to be conducted at your home, if your Grandmother is unwell.”
Sensible... indeed.
After the meeting, I made my excuses as per Helli’s request – that I wanted to pick up some groceries in town – and walked to the location she’d picked out. I’d been instructed to go to an actual grocery store and ask for ‘Monica’. I felt like a total fool doing so, but sure enough, I was handed a key for the back room of the grocery store.
And there was Jenni’s twin, eerily Jenni-like when removed from the oppressive atmosphere of the Brock Industries reception.
“Were you followed?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “How am I supposed to know? I’m not a spy.”
Helli raised an eyebrow. She was sitting on a chair with its back against a stack of chip boxes. “You aren’t? I thought you were Apollo’s spy.”
“Not a trained one.”
