Lucy
The thing about Brielle was that she used to be easy.
She used to be so easy to predict. You could count on her to react emotionally, to trust too quickly, and even feel guilty about things that weren't even her fault. All you had to do was pull the right string and she'd move in whatever direction you needed.
I'd been doing it for years. Exploiting and manipulating her required very little effort.
This Brielle was different, and I'd spent the last few weeks trying to figure out exactly how different she was now, because knowing how to pinpoint the exact problem was the first step to solving it.
She didn't react to guilt anymore. I'd tested it twice with small things that weren’t obvious, and both times she'd just looked at me with a flat, calm expression, said something pleasant
