Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) (25 page)

Better to avoid it completely, for now.

Stonehart brings his untouched wineglass to his lips. When he sets it down, he peers at me with a new intensity.

“Our lives are defined by our actions, Lilly. Luck is a fallacy for the weak of mind and will. Luck is what those people who cannot own their actions point to when considering the success or failure of their lives. It is what the
sheep
cling to when discussing the meteoric rise to power of people like me.

“No, Lilly, it was not
luck
that brought you here.” He sneers when he emphasizes the word. “It was concentrated effort and pure power of will. Think back to the circumstances that brought you to California. Think, and tell me how you ended up in my home.”

Think.
Well, it all started with the Barker Prize, didn’t it? That’s what got me the recognition needed for the consulting firms to start recruiting me.

Stonehart can’t be thinking of that. I’ve never told him, for one. It was also an award exclusive to Yale, for another. And he is a Wharton alumni—

Wait
. I’ve never considered it before. Wharton and Yale are both Ivy League schools. There is a connection there… a connection between our lives… that I hadn’t seen.

Could it be more than coincidence? Was there something more sinister at work when I got the prize?

Stonehart’s eyes are boring into me. Even though he’s all the way across the table, it makes me uncomfortable.

“You’re not answering, Lilly.”

“It was… a fluke,” I say. If I hadn’t written and thrown out that essay, if Robin hadn’t found it, I would have never been in a position for Stonehart to catch me.

“Really?” His voice lowers to a dangerous octave. “You really think it was
fluke
that brought you here? After everything I’ve just told you about luck?”

A most uncomfortable shiver runs down my spine. “Are you suggesting…” I begin, but choke on the words before I can continue. I clear my throat and try again. “Are you insinuating,” I manage in a whisper, “that you had something to do with it?”

The suggestion pleases him. He leans back in his seat and spreads his arms. “Of course I am,” he says, triumphant.

My heart locks up in my chest. For a few moments, it forgets to beat.

“It was you?” I muster.

“ZilTech is a subsidiary of Stonehart Industries, Lilly. Surely you know that. What you don’t know—what only a handful of people alive do—is that Stonehart Industries also owns Corfu Consulting.”

The room spins. All the objects in my vision swim around me with dizzying speed. I feel faint, like I’m on the verge of passing out.

Corfu Consulting
. Corfu Consulting was the boutique firm that hired me. They were the ones I flew out to California for. They’re the ones who offered me that life-changing contract that made me take a leave of absence from Yale.

They are the ones I thought would help me achieve true autonomy over my life.

“I see you’ve made the connection.” Stonehart’s soft voice pulls me back to the present. I look at him, unbelievably flustered, and for the worst kind of reasons.

“How?” I whisper. “How?” All sorts of new feelings burst to life inside me, all directed at the man dominating my vision. They are punctuated by a new breed of loathing, sprinkled with hate, and tinged by the dark currents of disbelief.

“Questions for another day, those,” he says nonchalantly, cutting into his steak. He brings a piece to his mouth and begins to chew. “You’re looking quite white, Lilly. I suggest some food. You’re going to need it for the activities I have planned for us tonight.”

Chapter Three

The rest of dinner passes in a flash. Stonehart does not attempt to make small talk, and I am fine with silence.

I need to think.

He’s lying
, the voice of reason whispers in my ear.
He doesn’t own Corfu Consulting. He’s just saying it to screw with your head
.

But what if he’s not
? A second, more sinister voice counters.
What if he’s actually telling the truth?

That’s the notion that frightens me. If Stonehart is telling the truth, it opens the door to a whole host of uncomfortable possibilities and questions.

For example:
How long has he been watching me?

His hints and suggestions make it seem like my kidnapping was not a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was something that has been in the works for a long time.

Again,
why
?
How
? What interest can I possibly hold for a man like Stonehart?

I won’t believe that I’m just a random girl he decided to do this to. I won’t. Not after his derisive dismissal of luck. Stonehart is not a man who leaves anything to chance.

I sneak a glance up at him. His jaw muscles tighten every time he bites down on his food. The sleeves of his crisp, white dress shirt are rolled up to reveal the powerful, dancing muscles of his forearms. He does not notice me looking. If he does, he chooses not to acknowledge it.

I look over the handsome features of his face.

Who could have imagined the type of monster that lurks beneath that mask?

He’s cold. Calculating. Power-hungry. Those are all the traits that have made him spectacularly successful in life.

They are also the traits that make him such a formidable opponent.

His eyes flash up. Immediately, I pull my gaze away.

Who is he? Who is Stonehart,
really
? His whole existence is shrouded in shadows and mystery. I haven’t come any closer to deciphering him now than I was the first day I woke up here.

I think I have a partial understanding of what he was like as a boy, though. He told me the story himself: He was neglected and ignored in favor of his brothers. He grew up loathing his father.

Is that the type of upbringing that gave birth to the monster? When he told me the story of his childhood, he made it sound like he did not have an iota of love directed at him.

In spite of myself—in spite of everything—my heart goes out to the small boy he’d once been. My own relationship with my mother fell apart a few years after she started drinking. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have any fond memories of her. We were always poor, always on the move, and yet, when I was just a little girl, we always had each other.

I remember her reading to me. Those are my favorite memories. I can still hear her gentle voice transporting me to a world far away. A world far from the environment of poverty in which we lived.

Without warning, I feel myself choking up. A sad tightness forms in my chest.

Will I ever see my mother again? For so many years, I blamed
her
for the breakdown of our relationship. I blamed
her
for everything that went wrong.

But I realize now I was just being selfish. I never took ownership of what happened. I was so focused on getting ahead in school and working hard to craft a life of my own that I forgot about her. I never thought of how difficult it must have been to be in her shoes: alone, with a little girl, and no education. She was always so eager to please that she became a doormat for all the horrible men who preyed on women with insecurities.

Paul was—it pains me to admit—probably the only one who
didn’t
treat her that way. I never had much affection for him because he just ignored me. But those first days in the dark made me remember the truth:
He
once saved me.

No wonder my mom was bitter after they broke up. I never found out the reason for the split. It caused her to start drinking, and opened the revolving door of all her loser boyfriends.

That’s when our relationship took a nosedive.

And yet, before that… she’d been a good mother. I never appreciated her the way I should have.

Now, I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.

The thought fills me with sadness. The last memory she has of me is the horrible fight that made me grab my bag and storm out of the house. It’s no solace that the writing had been on the wall for weeks. That’s why I kept the backpack ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

It’s been almost five years since I last spoke to her, hasn’t it? I suppress a sigh. It seems like a lifetime. And now, in my current predicament, it’ll be another five—at least—before I ever see her again.

If
Stonehart actually lets me out.

I come to with a jolt and stop myself from going down that path. Self-pity is not going to help now. I need to channel all my inner strength if I have any hope of truly extricating myself from this situation.

“Lilly.” Stonehart’s voice breaks me from my reverie. “You haven’t touched your food.”

“Oh?” I didn’t even realize it. There’s been too much on my mind. “I guess I’m just not very hungry.”

“Eat,” he says. “You remember the clause in the contract about body shape, don’t you?
Eat
.”

I pick up my fork and start pushing my food around. My appetite is non-existent, but I don’t think this is worth arguing over.

***

After dinner, I find myself in the tub, alone. Stonehart told me to go and wash up. I discovered the bathtub full of hot water when I returned from dinner, and settled in.

He said I’d have a few hours to myself before he’d come and, ahem,
visit
me.

I figure this is probably the best place to spend that time.

It’s weird, but I’ve started to think of the sunroom and all the connecting rooms as ‘mine.’ It’s not quite home, but somehow it feels less unsettling to spend time here than in any other place of Stonehart’s mansion.

My thoughts are still scattered. Today’s conversation at dinner didn’t present a revelation, but rather an uncomfortable possibility.

How long has Stonehart been guiding my life? Why?

There must be a reason beyond the man’s sadistic desires. If he truly planned the whole thing to get me to California, then I must be somebody important to him.

Right?

His secretary said as much. But,
who
?
Who
am I to Stonehart? I can’t imagine anybody going to this much effort for a complete stranger.

No matter how hard I try to think, no connection comes to mind. There’s no way Stonehart can possibly be linked to me.

Assuming Stonehart
does
own Corfu Consulting, the logical deduction is that all the events that brought me to California were manipulated by him.

Could that really be the case? Was this whole captivity thing in the works for such a long time?

It makes me uncomfortable to admit, but the more I think about it, the more reasonable it seems. The summer internship got me to leave New Haven. The year-long contract got me to take a leave of absence. ZilTech pulling out left me jobless and basically homeless.

In short, it was the perfect storm of events that allowed Stonehart to kidnap me.

If I were anybody else… if I had a family, a house, somebody to rely on… then this wouldn’t have worked.
Somebody
out there would be looking for me.

But I don’t have that somebody. Stonehart must have known that if I dropped off the face of the earth, nobody would come calling. That’s why I was the perfect victim.

It also means that he knows a hell of a lot more about me than I do about him. I’m not a random stranger. I am a specific target.

Again, the question I keep coming back to:
Why
? Why me? What made me so special that I came onto Stonehart’s radar? He is not some paranoid schizophrenic with no contact to the outside world. He is one of the most successful businessmen in the country.

You don’t get to his position by making mistakes. If anybody were to ever find out about me… it would ruin him. No doubt.

Yet, knowing that, he still drugged me, brought me here, and slapped the collar around my neck.

That means he’s confident that I won’t be found.

The thought scares me. I want to fight. But, how do you do battle against a foe from a position of ultimate weakness?

Everything that happens to me happens at Stonehart’s discretion. If he manipulated the strings that pulled me here, he did a masterful job of it. What did he say about luck? That it’s for the weak of mind and will? And he laughed at me when I suggested that it was
luck
that brought me here…

That’s the best confirmation I’m going to get. The man says he does not believe in luck and chides me for suggesting it. It must mean that he has been spinning his web for a very long time. It must mean I’ve been trapped in it for much longer than I imagined.

I notice the water becoming lukewarm. I look around the bathroom and find it empty. For a moment, I think I’ve dawdled too long. Stonehart did tell me to prepare myself for him. But if he had wanted me, he would have already come.