Uncovering You 7: Resurrection (5 page)

“This is crazy,” I murmur.

“Is it?” Jeremy asks. He crosses his arms and looks me up and down. “I think you’ve just had a long couple of days. I told you before what can happen when you internalize too much. There’s pressure building inside you, Lilly. Even if you can’t see it, I can. It’s taking hold of you. You mustn’t let it. You mustn’t let it consume you. You’re stronger than that, I know.

“But you can’t do it on your own. You need my help. You need to tell me what’s really wrong. You need to
trust
me. These fits of hysteria are not you. They are not the woman I fell in love with.”

“Don’t!
” I jab an angry finger at him. My world feels like it’s collapsing on all sides. “Don’t say that! Remember your promise to me!”

Jeremy holds his hands up, palms facing me, in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. That was a slip…intentional, perhaps, but a slip nonetheless. But why am I so bound to my word, when you so easily disregard yours?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“About the
truth
,” he emphasizes. “You still have not told me where you learned that name. Blackthorne.”

“I did—“

“You did
not
!” he snaps. “I’ve given you chances, Lilly, time and time again.
Still
you insist on perpetrating the lie. Look at your phone.”

“What?”

“Look at your fucking phone!”

I cower back. With trembling hands I take out my cell phone.

“It’s still routed to mine,” Jeremy says. “Every text you receive, every call you make, I see. I may have lifted your restrictions, Lilly, but I am no fool. I know there are times when you still need to be watched.

“Turn it on,” he demands. “The last text you got, from your friend Fey. Open it, and tell me what it says. Read it out to me, Lilly. There’s no more hiding, for you.”

My fingers fumble over the touch screen. I manage to pull up the messaging app.

There’s a text, sitting there, marked as ‘read’. From Fey. But I have no recollection of ever opening it. Of even receiving it.

It consists of a single line:

Jeremy’s father: Hugh Blackthorne.

Chapter Six

The ride back to the mansion is long and silent.

Jeremy sits across from me in the back. He stares out the window the whole time, lost in deep contemplation.

Something far worse than mere tension pervades the car. It’s almost as if Jeremy is just as aware of my crumbling sanity as I am. It feels like we’re both in mourning. Mourning what, I don’t know: perhaps a loss of the woman I am supposed to be.

But something doesn’t
feel
right. It’s not just the tingling discomfort from knowing what I thought I experienced and what actually occurred were two disparate things.

Does an insane woman realize that she’s insane? Or is it like Jeremy told me: more of a gradual build-up, like a festering disease inside you? Manifested in episodes such as the one I’ve just had that come up without warning?

Mentally, I keep going over everything that happened after I felt that tug on my elbow. I’ve done it so many times, and considered what the tape showed so many times, that the two occurrences are starting to blur. The video tells me that one set of events happened. My memory tells me something else.

It feels like I’m lost in a lucid dream. But I’m only barely aware whether I am dreaming or not. Physical things—the car seat against my back, the purse under my legs—feel like they might evaporate at a single touch.

It’s almost like I’m floating. Going through the motions, affecting a normal exterior, but inside?

Inside, I’m drowning.

It’s not because of Jeremy, either. Other than that outburst in the surveillance room, the worst I’ve gotten from him is silence.

I look at him surreptitiously. What must he think of me right now? That I’m a liar and a fraud, that’s what. That the strength he found so alluring was nothing more than an illusion. A façade. A charade. That he made a mistake bringing me into his company. That he made a mistake setting me
free
.

My thoughts, right now, are far worse. I can’t get over the crushing feeling that I’ve blundered badly and lost my chance. One week was all I had to worm my way into Stonehart Industries, and I screwed it up.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Jeremy to inform me that somebody of my limited mental capacity does not belong in his company. For him to simply burn my employment contract the way he did my surety one.

We arrive at the mansion. I haven’t been here for so long that it feels like I’m a stranger. Jeremy opens the door for me, still silent, still brooding. The tension grows.

I can smell food aromas from the dining room. They make my mouth water and I realize I haven’t eaten all day. Maybe it’s lack of nourishment that’s playing tricks with my mind.

Then again: no. I know it’s not. I’ve been hungry before. I’ve been
starved
before. All at the hands of the man I’m now trailing, entirely of my own free will, through his mansion.

We sit at the table and eat. All through the silence, I can feel Jeremy’s eyes on me. Weighing. Considering. Deliberating.

I can’t take it anymore. “Where’s Rose?” I blurt out suddenly. She and I still have unfinished business from way back when.

“I sent Rose and Charles home so that we wouldn’t be bothered when we returned,” Jeremy tells me. “I didn’t want you to feel the added pressure of dealing with Rose in your current…” His lips twist in slight distaste. “…
Fragility
.”

The urge to disagree, to protest that I’m not ‘fragile’, surges up inside of me. I almost act on it, too, before letting it fall by the wayside.

I let it go because I haven’t a clue of what’s going on. I thought that when I was released from the contract, I’d be free, but now I find myself in shackles much worse: I am a prisoner of my own mind.

“Hmm,” Jeremy intones, in thought. Maybe his comment was meant as a provocation. Maybe he was
trying
to get a rise out of me.

Whatever. I can’t read into what he wants. Not when I harbor so much uncertainty about my own judgment.

We finish eating. He stands. I do the same.

Without a word, he starts toward the stairs. I get there before him. They are closer to me, from my side of the table.

Just as I place my foot on the first step, I feel Jeremy pause.

“I have to do work,” he says. “I won’t be coming up. Sleep. Get some rest. I can tell that you need it.”

He reaches up, and places one hand on my shoulder in an uncomfortably father-like gesture of compassion. He pats the spot.

“Don’t worry about what happened,” he says. “Tomorrow is a new day. I’m sure you’ll be up to par once more when the sun rises.”

And then he turns and walks away. I’m left standing, alone and dazed, looking after him.

Chapter Seven

Nightmares fill my sleep.

All of them center around the collar, and Hugh. Then my father comes up, too. I dream it’s Paul sitting across from me at the table, that it’s Paul who offers the collar to me.

Is what I experienced the first step into his mental state of being? Is the delusion I saw and confused for reality the same as what he sees, when he plays with his imaginary tea sets?

Am I breaking because of external circumstances…or am I breaking simply because I am his daughter, and thus predisposed to it?

I wake up in a cold sweat. The rest of the night passes in thin, uneasy rest.

***

I open my eyes to bright sunlight flooding the room.

“Shit!” I curse, bolting up in bed. I overslept. What time is it? How late am I?

I start to scramble out of the sheets, when a familiar-though-unexpected voice greets me.

“You can relax, Miss Ryder. Mr. Stonehart took the courtesy of giving you a day off.”

My heart stops in my chest.
Rose!

“He also told me,” she continues calmly, though clearly struggling to contain her distaste, “that I was to spend the day at your disposal, in order for us to work out—” She takes a deep, shuddery breath, “—lingering u
npleasantness
that I may have introduced into our relationship.”

I turn to her. She’s looking out the window as she speaks. “You hold the keys to the castle now. So to speak,” she tells me. “Although I obey only Mr. Stonehart, I cannot deny your new position of power in his home.”

“Are you going to tell me who you are, then?” I ask. “How you came to work for Jere—”

“Mr. Stonehart!” she hisses.

I raise my chin. “He’s Jeremy to me,” I proclaim. “If you still have a problem with that, then we have a long way to go.”

Rose sniffs.

I get out of bed, head held high, and regally walk to the bathroom. “I want to shower, first,” I announce. “Rose, I’m going to need a robe.”

I hold out one arm, not looking at her, either. A few seconds later, I feel the heavy wool deposited into my hand.

“Thank you,” I say formally. “You may wait in the kitchen for me. I’d like a fresh-brewed coffee when I come down.”

“Certainly, Miss Ryder,” Rose says, all-too-sweetly.

“Oh, and Rose?” I add before she leaves. “When I’m done, I expect to hear a full explanation of your behavior last time we saw each other. You’ve had enough time and space to consider what happened. I want to know the extent of your involvement in bringing me to Jeremy’s home.”

With that, I walk into the bathroom and close the door, not waiting for her reply.

***

I take an extra-hot, extra-long shower. I’d like to think I do it to give Rose the courtesy to prepare, but I think the truth is: I’m just stalling.

A part of it is that I’m afraid. I’m afraid of finding out Rose’s true involvement in what’s happened to me. I’m afraid because if things are as I suspect—if she knew about what Jeremy was doing while he was still Stonehart—that it gives very little credit to my ability to make judgment calls about people. If she duped me—and I think she did—how can I trust my ability to get revenge?

Does it also mean that I have
two
people whom I must hold accountable for all the horrible things that I’ve experienced?

But worse than that—more frightening than all that—is where I stand in regards to…

Myself.

Jeremy obviously deems me incapable of returning to work. I hope the day off does not transition into two days, then three, then a week. I
need
to be within Stonehart Industries. I
need
to be there, to ingratiate myself into the company. I need to prove to Jeremy that I am strong, that I am capable, that he can trust me…

But, how many steps did I take back yesterday? He wouldn’t even speak to me after we left the office! The text from Fey, the one I have no recollection of getting, is the final, tangible bit of proof that whatever I think happened—as opposed to what actually happened—were two very, very different things.

Why would she text me that? After the way we left things, I doubted she would want to speak to me again. Besides, what difference does it make what Jeremy’s father’s name is? How would she even know that
I
didn’t know it?

Am I still meant to be her bridesmaid?
Hah!
I snort a laugh. That should be the absolute last concern on my mind.

The only semi-logical explanation I can come up with, regarding what happened to me yesterday, involves a toxic mix slowly building up inside me.

Stress and nerves were the first ingredients. I did not react well to Fey’s revelation on the phone Friday night. Jeremy was right: I internalized it. I spent the weekend locked away, refusing to acknowledge the implications of what I’d learned. Okay, so I was the victim of a revenge plot. The worst had already been done to me. Jeremy and I have moved on from there. Knowing the reason
why
I was taken did not have the effect I thought it would, back when I was first released from the dark. It did not make me hate Jeremy any more.

In fact, it did not influence my feelings toward him in any way. Neither positive, nor negative. I already knew that Jeremy Stonehart was vindictive. I knew that his life had been built around revenge. Knowing that I was targeted because of some type of manifestation of that came as no great surprise. I’d already assumed as much.

Still. Still, maybe because I refused to let the new information affect me or my feelings toward Jeremy, my subconscious protested. That bit of news was another drop into the festering bucket of filth that has taken residence in my soul. Maybe it was enough to make some spill over. Maybe that was the second ingredient.

Or maybe, regret over how I dealt with Fey over the phone Sunday night was what pushed me over the edge.

The workday was rough, but no more so than usual. Of course there is pressure to deal with on the job. The IPO keeps looming in the background, and almost every day as many negative stories break about Stonehart Industries as positive ones. I dove in head-first yesterday, forgetting everything else, surrounding myself only by concerns related to the job.

That got me to 5 p. m. After the workday was over, things become hazy. That is where reality starts to blur.

Trying to reconcile my memories with the video brings me to this:

Sometime after five, probably just before Simon tapped my arm, I got that text from Fey. I read it, and—for one reason or another that I absolutely cannot discern—my mind protested. It retreated.

It retreated, and made up the fantasy that I saw afterward. The specter of Jeremy’s father. The illusion of the collar. The extra photographs contained within the envelope.

That explanation makes me extremely uncomfortable. It does not sit well with me.

But for the moment, it’s the only one I’ve got.

I step out of the shower and look at myself in the mirror. It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to do so with the cameras off.

I thought I’d gotten used to them—tucked their presence away in some forgotten corner of my mind. I realize now that they were always weighing on me. Now that I’m free to do whatever I want without fear of Jeremy watching, it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.