Chapter 16 – Chrissy
Chapter
Sixteen
CHRISSY
Every time I blinked, I thought about the rules again.
You have one goal: survive the week without breaking the most important rule. Don’t fall in love with the wrong person.
The Game didn’t say what happened if you broke it.
It didn’t need to. I could feel the threat in the empty space where an explanation should’ve been, humming under my skin like static.
By the time maids unlocked each of our doors and Henry’s booming voice called us all down to the main hall for the day’s first challenge, my nerves felt raw, like someone had taken sandpaper to them in my sleep.
Assuming I’d slept, of course.
I tugged at the hem of the dress I’d grabbed from my wardrobe this morning, a deep emerald velvet number that skimmed my hips and hit just above my knees.
It was more expensive than everything I owned put together, and still somehow not warm enough.
The lodge was cold in a way that sank into my bones.
Alabama winter, with its wet chill, had a special way of burrowing into your core and not letting go.
I smoothed my palms down my thighs, more to give my hands something to do than because the dress needed it, then forced myself to turn the knob and open my bedroom door.
The hallway outside buzzed with quiet tension and too-strong perfume.
Other women filed out of their rooms one by one, dressed like they were heading to a photoshoot instead of walking into a ten-day-long psychological experiment.
Nerves pulled their shoulders tight, and sharpened their voices into quick, breathy laughs that didn’t sound real.
“Good morning, ladies,” Henry called from the far end of the corridor, his posture straight as a steel beam. “Please make your way downstairs to the east sitting room. The first challenge awaits you.”
The first challenge. Like everything that happened to me last night somehow didn’t count as a challenge.
Heat flashed across my cheeks at the memory. The feel of his hand on my ass. The way his voice had wrapped around my spine, low and icy and smug.
You’re going to take your punishment for fraternizing with the help, and if you take it well, I’ll let you stay in my Game.
Mr. Stonewood — whoever he really was — had sounded disgusted with me for giving Jacob the time of day, but underneath the disgust there’d been something else… something darker and hungrier.
I still didn’t know what unsettled me more: that he’d punished me… or that he’d rewarded me afterward.
I slipped into the moving stream of contestants, clutching the carved banister to steady myself as we descended the grand staircase.
Red and green and gold garlands wound around the railing like something out of a Christmas movie.
The massive tree that had been erected and decorated in the foyer overnight glittered with ornaments, crystal icicles, and twinkling lights. It should’ve felt magical.
Instead, it felt like a very pretty trap.
We veered right this time, instead of gathering in the main foyer like we had last night.
The east sitting room lived up to its name, all soft upholstered furniture, pale blue walls, and tall windows overlooking a stretch of winter-brown woods and gray sky.
A fire crackled in the huge stone hearth, but it still didn’t cut all the cold.
The air carried that same damp bite as outside.
What stole everyone’s breath, though, wasn’t the fireplace or the view, it was the table in the middle of the room.
A long antique table ran nearly the full length of the room, draped with white linen and lined with rows upon rows of ring boxes.
Hundreds of them, it felt like, each one opened to display something sparkling inside.
Diamonds. Sapphires. Rubies. Gold bands crusted with stones so big they almost looked fake.
Even from a distance, the wealth on that table buzzed like a live wire.
I swallowed, my throat tight. My whole life could change drastically if I sold just one of the rings sitting on that damn table.
It could cover Granny’s care, not to mention the debt I had that never seemed to shrink no matter how many bills I paid.
With the money from selling just one of those obscenely opulent rings, I could become a version of myself that didn’t have to watch every dollar and wonder what would happen when my money and my luck both finally ran out.
“Ladies,” Henry said, his voice smooth as he stepped in front of the table. “Welcome to your first official challenge of the Game.”
The room quieted instantly. A few of the women straightened their spines like their posture could make them more deserving, somehow.
“As you know,” he continued, “our host is searching for more than surface-level attraction. He’s looking for a partner. A wife. Someone who understands that marriage is both a promise and a choice.” He gestured toward the array of rings. “Today is about that choice.”
My palms grew damp and I scrubbed the clamminess off on the skirt of my dress.
“In a few minutes, your partners will join us.” The potential Bens, and Jacob, too. My heart stuttered at the thought. “But first, each of you is going to step forward and select a ring from this table. Any ring you want. Later today, your partner will propose to you with the ring you chose.”
A hush swept through the room, electric and almost greedy.
My stomach swooped.
A proposal? I hadn’t let myself think that far ahead. I’d been stuck on the number — seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars — and the most important rule.
Don’t fall in love with the wrong person.
Henry clasped his hands behind his back.
“Choose wisely. What you pick will say as much about you as your answer to your partner’s proposal does.”
He stepped aside.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then one of the women — Number Ten, tall and sleek and made of sharp perfume and sharper cheekbones — stepped forward with the confidence of someone who’d never questioned whether she deserved nice things.
“After you,” one of the others muttered, sarcasm curling the edges of her voice.
Ten pretended not to hear. She prowled along the table, glossy hair swinging, pausing thoughtfully over each ring like she was contemplating a business acquisition.
She finally plucked up a massive pear-cut diamond flanked by two smaller stones and held it up for everyone to see, her smile bright and victorious.
Of course.
That seemed to break the spell. The room dissolved into motion as the other women surged forward, voices rising in overlapping commentary.
“Oh my God, look at this one—”
“I need at least three carats, minimum—”
“Is that a pink diamond?”
I stayed where I was, fingers tightening on the back of the nearest armchair.
My chest felt like an iron band had wrapped around it and someone was ratcheting it tighter and tighter around me with each breath I took.
There were so many fucking rings… so much money glittering under the light from the tall windows and the crystal chandelier.
Granny Irene’s laugh floated through my mind, the good version of her, the one from before Alzheimer’s chewed holes in her memories.
It’s not the stone that matters, baby girl. It’s the hand that puts it on you.
My throat burned.
“Are you going?” The question came from my left. One of the other contestants, Number Sixteen, gave me a sideways look. “If you wait too long, all the best ones’ll be gone.”
I forced a smile I didn’t feel.
“I’m not worried. I’m sure there’s something for everybody.”
The lie tasted chalky on my tongue. I wasn’t worried about picking the biggest or the rarest ring. I was worried about what my choice would say about me. What would my choice tell Mr. Stonewood, and was I prepared for the consequences that might arise from it?
Henry’s gaze brushed over me from where he stood, his gray eyes unreadable. I squared my shoulders and stepped away from the safety of the chair.
The closer I got to the table, the more surreal it felt. Light from the tall windows caught on facet after facet, throwing little prismatic sparks across the white tablecloth. The women clustered around the flashiest pieces, cooing and comparing.
I slipped around them, drifting toward the far end of the table where it was quieter. The rings over here were no less beautiful, but they were… simpler. Less like billboards, and more like secrets.
My hand hovered over one with a square-cut diamond in a delicate halo setting. Another with an oval gem the color of ocean water. They were stunning. They also didn’t feel like me.
My gaze snagged on something tucked between two velvet ring stands.
It was small, modest, and easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
A slim silver band cradled a single green stone, oval and just big enough to catch the light. Not emerald, not really. The color was a shade off, a little too bright, like costume jewelry. It should’ve looked cheap next to the others.
It didn’t. It looked like it had been well-loved by someone, for many years.
My fingertips tingled. I reached out before I could talk myself out of it.
The band was cool against my skin when I picked it up. I turned it between my fingers, the stone winking softly. It didn’t scream wealth. It whispered something else… history and sentiment and something else I couldn’t quite define.
It felt like Granny’s old ‘costume jewelry from the fifties’ drawer, pieces she’d kept not because they were worth money, but because they were wrapped up in beautiful memories. First dates. Dancing in kitchens. A husband who’d adored her and thought she hung the moon.
“You sure about that one?”
The question came from behind me, laced with amusement. I turned to find Number Thirteen watching me with a perfectly sculpted brow raised. Her ring finger already sported something that could’ve paid off my car and probably half of Granny’s medical debt.
I lifted my chin.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
Her gaze flicked from the ring in my hand back to my face, like she was trying to figure out what that meant. After a second, she shrugged and drifted away, more interested in comparing stone size with someone else than in my weird, sentimental choice.
I exhaled slowly and slipped the ring into the little black velvet box sitting in front of its stand. My hands shook just enough that I hoped no one could see.
Henry’s voice rose again.
“Once you’ve chosen, please take your ring and step back to the carpet and wait.”
I did as instructed, retreating to the edge of the thick rug with my box cradled in both hands. One by one, the other women finished their selections and joined me. Some held their boxes like trophies while others clutched them like lifelines.
I wasn’t sure which one I looked like.
“All right, ladies.” Henry’s smile was polite, almost warm, but there was steel in his eyes. “You’ve made your choices. Now it’s time to see how they fit.”
The doors at the far end of the room opened.
A line of men entered, each guided into place by one of the staff.
The ‘potential Bens’. They all looked like they’d been stamped from the same mold, all tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome in a catalog kind of way.
All of them in domino masks and tailored suits, all of them carrying themselves like they’d practiced this in a mirror.
Except one.
My breath hitched.
Jacob stepped into the room dressed in black slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. No jacket.
No tie. No attempt to hide the thick scars that crawled up the side of his neck and disappeared into his jawline.
His dark hair was slicked back from his face, just like the other Bens, leaving every jagged line of damage on his face visible until they disappeared behind his domino mask.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not like this.
Last night, when my original partner had been eliminated and Henry announced that if I didn’t have a partner, I would be eliminated, Jacob had stepped forward without hesitation, his blue eyes locked steady on mine. I’d thought it was a kindness, a way to give me a chance and keep me in the Game.
Seeing him now, standing among the other glossy, perfect potential Bens, one of whom had done unspeakable things to me last night while I was blindfolded, my heart understood it as something else.
It was a threat, a temptation, and a test… one I was terrified I wasn’t going to pass.