Uncovering You 3: Resistance Read Free Page B

knew the woman I first met was still in there, somewhere. Excellent. You’re exactly right. And the sooner both of us acknowledge the need for this type of pretense, the sooner we can move past it.”
    “I don’t understand,” I say. “I’m your— employee .” The word feels dirty on my tongue. “I signed a contract that you drafted and I am bound to it.”
    “Correct,” he says.
    “Then I don’t see that there is anything for us to move past.” My hand twitches up to touch my collar. Halfway there, I transition the motion into an awkward sweeping of hair away from my forehead. “I’m fulfilling my obligation to you. That’s all you can expect from me.”
    Stonehart’s eyes glitter. “Really, Lilly?” he asks softly. “You truly think that is all I am expecting from you?”
    “It’s all you’ve made me privy to. Are you insinuating that there’s something more?”
    “There’s always something more,” he murmurs. “In everything we do. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”
    I choke on the water I’m sipping. Matters of the heart ?
    “A figure of speech, Lilly.” Stonehart chuckles when he sees my reaction. “Not to be taken literally. Although it’s refreshing to see that I can still provoke that kind of response from you.”
    “Yes, well…” I sputter, feeling decidedly off-balance for the first time during this whole dinner.
    “No matter,” he says. “There are more important things for us to discuss. Getting back to the first topic of conversation: Why is it that you are here, and not somebody else?”
    “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself the whole time,” I mutter under my breath.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Nothing.” I clear my throat. “I don’t know. Luck?”
    Without warning, Stonehart throws his head back and starts to laugh.
    It offends me.
    “Luck?” he chortles. “Luck? No, Lilly, it wasn’t luck, although I can see how it might look that way to you. Bad luck for you, and good luck for me. Is that it?”
    I press my lips together and don’t answer. We’ve never addressed the topic of my capture. No matter my new resolve, I feel like it’s a dangerous topic to bring up.
    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