Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story

- Text Size +

Disclaimer is I don’t own them and don’t “pretend” to.




The Truth Hurts
Part 1

by N.R. Levy





“First one to the answers wins.” Wasn’t that what he’d said? Well, Parker thought, she had won. And God, how she wished she hadn’t.

She lay on a concrete slab, her wrists and ankles shackled into place by an old yet menacing set of manacles. Somehow, it didn’t surprise her that such a thing existed inside the monolithic Scottish castle in which she’d found all of her answers.

Their answers, Parker corrected herself, her mind turning back to Jarod.

She didn’t know what to expect next. They wouldn’t kill her, she knew that now. The evidence she’d found made it clear that Parker was far too valuable to the Centre’s founding members for them to kill her. But they would do something.

A shiver ran through Parker’s body as she waited in the darkened silence of the little room where she was being held. Then the eyes of the woman who now was her worst enemy formed in Parker’s mind, and she began to fixate on building the face, making it come into sharp focus so that she could direct all of her anger and fear and pain at that one image.

Damn her. Damn her for what she had done to all of them, and mostly damn her for what the truth would do to Jarod.

Despite her precarious situation, Parker couldn’t regret that it was she who now faced the horror of their pasts alone. If he had seen those journals...just imaging the heartbreak he would go through...no, heartbreak was an understatement, and even their fledgling new relationship might not be enough to help him survive the shattering reality of who had constructed the nightmare his life had been.

Parker took a deep breath and forced the terrible woman’s image from her mind’s eye, instead focusing on an image of Jarod. The last few months—them working together and learning to trust each other again—they had been a gift to her she had never imagined possible. That their newfound camaraderie had turned to passion had surprised them both, and yet it seemed in some ways the path they had always been meant to take.

‘It was.’

The voice inside of Parker’s head reminded her that even her memory of her time with Jarod was now tainted by the terrible reality of truth. The journals had made it clear, hadn’t they? Genetic construction...emotional manipulation...she and Jarod had been bred to be a couple, a couple who would rule the Centre together. Only it wasn’t, as Parker might have assumed, with Jarod at the helm and she by his side. No, as it turned out the joke was on her. Jarod’s escape, her pursuit, it had all been a test...one set in motion to determine if she was ready to assume her place at the helm of the Centre.

Parker had failed. She didn’t care. She only cared that her mother’s innocence had been corrupted by a friend she had so trusted, and that that one single betrayal had led to her mother’s downfall as well as, it seemed, to Parker’s own. And still those tragedies would pale in comparison to the pain Jarod would feel if he ever found out the truth.

A set of heels clicked on the floor outside, indicating that someone was approaching. Parker wondered if the sound of her own heels on the floors of the Centre had caused the same reaction in others as these made in her—a mixture of fear and hatred she could barely control.

The door opened, and she knew from the scent of jasmine that the woman had entered the room. Parker felt her stomach tighten into a tight ball.

“You realize that you know too much. You know things I can’t allow you to tell Jarod, ever.”

Parker turned, glaring at her with eyes so full of rage that the woman actually felt the heat of it. Good. That spirit was what Miss Parker had been bred for, and she was pleased to see it still intact despite the revelations she had come to discover in the castle’s safe.

“You won’t kill me.” The younger woman’s voice rang out, and her visitor stepped closer, her once blond hair, now tainted with gray, falling slightly on her face.

“No, I’d never kill you. But I’m afraid I’ll have to make certain you can’t share that information. You’re not ready to take your place yet. Once you are, I’ll give you all of your memories back, don’t worry.”

That got Parker’s attention, and she looked up, her eyes burning with curiosity.

“What are you talking about?”

The woman smiled and stepped still closer.

“You know. You’ve been dreaming about it, haven’t you? Something since you and Jarod have been back together...it doesn’t seem right. And the dream explains it, but you don’t want to believe it, do you?”

Parker felt her blood run cold as she remembered the dream that had plagued her since the first night she and Jarod had spent together. It had seemed a memory, yet it was an impossible one...she and Jarod, together, dancing in her old office at Corporate as if they were celebrating something. A normal couple, enjoying a happy moment, but that could never have happened, could it? And if it had, then how could this bitch know about it?

“I was watching you.” The cold voice of her new enemy drew Parker’s attention back to the present, and she leveled her blue eyes on her nemesis once again. “I heard you describe the dream to Jarod. Only it wasn’t a dream, Miss Parker. And your gift, your ‘inner sense’, is telling you that.”

“Jarod and I were never together before the last few weeks, not like that.”

“Oh, but you were. We wanted to see what would happen if we simply allowed your relationship to take its natural course. So we “freed” Jarod, and the two of you found each other so quickly it was almost funny. It proved to us that all we had done to pave the way had been effective. Still, it didn’t answer the quintessential question – could you destroy that which you had loved more than life itself? When you could, you would be ready to take your place.”

“You wanted me to kill him?” The shock in Parker’s voice hung there in the room like a dead weight until the woman spoke again.

“No, we would have stopped you from killing him. The point was to see if you would be willing to. You see, I learned that to have true power, you have to be willing to sacrifice that which you love. It is something you still have to learn, my darling. But you will. For now, I’m afraid it’s time for you to go to sleep for a while.”

Parker’s eyes locked with hers as understanding dawned on the younger woman. If they had been able to steal a whole relationship with Jarod, replace it with the rage she had felt toward him these past five years...

“What are you going to do? Margaret? Margaret!”

Hearing her name, Jarod’s mother stopped and turned to face the woman who carried the face of her long-dead best friend, a friend whose dream she had stolen and corrupted in order to build the dynasty that would one day belong to their two amazing children.

“You’ll have him back again, someday.”

With that, Margaret stepped into the shadows of the hallway, and a team of doctors entered the room, undeterred in their mission by the screams of the terrified young woman. Margaret kept walking until she had reached her private rooms, Miss Parker’s screams left behind in the recesses of the castle.

Carefully, she selected a dress and sweater to wear out, and she brushed her hair into what she’d consider an appropriately motherly-style. It was time for her to put her true face, that of the Centre’s Founding Chairman, to rest and instead put on the mask of Margaret Russell, hapless mother of kidnapped children. She had tracks to cover, and perhaps a brief sighting of his missing mommy would keep Jarod distracted long enough to complete Miss Parker’s re-education.

Yes, she thought, just enough time to bury the past again.









You must login (register) to review.