I was Jacob on the outside, and Ben on the inside.
Number One’s outburst replayed in my head as I walked.Pet project. Rigged. Staff-boy.The exact language we’d agreed he would use.
He’d done so well.
He’d made Chrissy feel the weight of what was supposedly hanging over Jacob’s head, and what was really hanging over hers. Was it deceptive and misleading? Absolutely. Was it necessary? Yes, for both of us and our future. One had framed her as a threat to the others just enough to paint a target on her back, and then Henry had stepped in and made an example of One and Twelve instead.
Lesson delivered: This game could take your future away in an instant.
Lesson two was coming within an hour.
I cut through the servants’ corridor, past the security closet where the monitors hummed softly behind a locked door. I didn’t go in. I didn’t need to see her on a screen right now. If I did, I’d spend the next hour watching her pace her room, reading and rereading that card, touching the blindfold like it might bite her.
I already knew what she looked like when she was scared. I wanted to see what she’d do when she thought she was alone with a rich and powerful stranger in the dark.
Would she posture? Would she flirt? Would she lie to protect herself or ‘Jacob’ or both?
Or would the girl who nearly bent a fork in half under her fingers at dinner finally snap and tell the truth to a man she thought she’d have to spend the rest of her life with if she won, consequences be damned?
By the time I reached the end of the hallway and started down the back stairs, my palms had stopped itching to touch her andstarted itching to tear the whole house apart if she couldn’t handle what I’d built for us.
I wanted to kiss her again so badly it sat in my chest like shrapnel, but I wanted to know what she was really made of even more.
If she passed tonight’s test… if she waited for me in that room blindfolded, sat across from me, and didn’t crumble under my punishment, then she’d survive the rest of it, I was sure.
If she didn’t…
I couldn’t finish that thought, couldn’t picture her leaving this house without feeling something inside me go with her. If that happened, I knew I’d never get that piece of me back.
At the bottom of the stairs, I straightened my shoulders, rolled the tension out of my neck, and shoved Ben Stonewood back behind Jacob’s tired eyes and rough voice.
The interview was coming, and for the first time in years, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was testing Chrissy Jones… or whether she was testing me.
Chapter
Thirteen
CHRISSY
I slumped backagainst the door of my room and exhaled, sharp and shallow.
What the hell was that?
Jacob wasn’t just the man who’d changed my tire anymore. He wasn’t just the man who’d kissed me in a moment that never should’ve happened. Somehow, Jacob kept looking at me like he already knew the shape of my choices, even the ones I hadn’t made yet, and my god… being seen like that did things to me. He was the man who’d stepped between me and elimination, the man who’d put his whole livelihood on the line for me, the man who kept looking at me like he knew a thousand things about me I didn’t know yet.
And now we were bound together in a game I didn’t fully understand, and his entire future hinged on my performance.
The guilt hit like a punch, hot and sickening.
Had I messed up the Game already? Had I jeopardized everything just by letting him get too close?
I ran a hand through my hair, still trembling. I pushed off the door and kicked off my heels one at a time, the soft thump of them hitting the rug louder than it should’ve been in the cavernous silence. My toes sank into the carpet, but it didn’t ground me. Nothing could.
I paced the length of the room — three steps to the bed, three steps back to the door — trying to find enough oxygen to make my brain work.
Jacob’s warning replayed in my head like a movie reel stuck on loop.
Be careful. The boss is a jealous man.
