FRACTURED TRUST
JODY'S POV
The manila envelope containing photos of my grandmother burned against my textbooks as I climbed the stairs to Alex's dormitory. Twenty-four hours had passed since the Circle meeting, twenty-four hours of sleepless analysis of every conversation, every touch, every moment that had felt genuine between us.
The photos were tucked inside my chemistry notebook now, hidden beneath molecular diagrams and failed equations. Evidence of surveillance that stretched beyond campus, beyond me, into the life of the only person who'd ever believed in my dreams unconditionally.
I found Alex's door slightly ajar, voices carrying through the gap—his voice and another, older, more commanding.
"—cannot afford emotional complications at this stage," the stranger was saying. "Your handler status depends on maintaining professional detachment."
"I understand the parameters." Alex's voice was tight, strained in a way I'd never heard before.
"Do you? Because the reports suggest otherwise. Dr. Powell is concerned about your... investment in this particular subject."
"Her name is Jody."
"Her name is irrelevant. She's a research asset, nothing more. If you cannot maintain that perspective, we'll reassign her to someone who can."
Something crashed—glass against wall, the sharp sound of expensive crystal meeting stone. "Don't threaten me."
"I'm not threatening, Alexander. I'm reminding you of your obligations to this family. Your grandfather didn't build this empire so you could develop feelings for scholarship trash."
The silence stretched like a held breath, and I pressed myself against the corridor wall, torn between fleeing and confronting the truth I'd been avoiding.
"Get out." Alex's voice was deadly quiet. "Now."
"This conversation isn't over."
"It is in my room."
Footsteps approached the door, and I ducked into an alcove as a man in an expensive suit emerged—silver-haired, ice-blue eyes, the kind of predatory elegance that suggested power measured in generations rather than years. He walked past without seeing me, but his cologne lingered, expensive and suffocating.
I waited until the corridor fell silent before approaching Alex's door. This time I knocked.
"I said get—" The door swung open, and Alex stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. His hair was disheveled, his usually perfect shirt wrinkled, and there were cuts on his knuckles that hadn't been there yesterday. "Jody. What are you doing here?"
"We need to talk."
He stepped aside without argument, and I entered a room that belonged in a luxury hotel rather than student housing. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the campus, Persian rugs covered hardwood floors, and original artwork lined the walls. The remains of what looked like a crystal decanter sparkled on the floor near the fireplace.
"Family disagreement?" I asked, nodding toward the broken glass.
"Something like that." Alex moved to clean up the mess, but I caught his wrist, studying the fresh cuts.
"These look painful."
"They'll heal." He tried to pull away, but I held on, my thumb tracing the edge of a deeper cut. His skin was warm, familiar, and for a moment I almost forgot why I'd come here.
"I saw the photos, Alex."
His hand stilled in mine. "What photos?"
I released him and pulled the manila envelope from my bag, spreading the surveillance pictures across his antique desk. My face stared back from dozens of angles—walking to class, studying in the library, buying groceries with careful attention to prices. All timestamped weeks before our first conversation.
"These were at the Circle meeting last night. Along with my psychological profile and behavioral assessment." I watched his face, searching for surprise, denial, anything that might suggest innocence. "They called you my handler."
Alex stared at the photos for a long moment, his expression unreadable. When he finally looked up, something had shifted in his eyes—a wall coming down, or maybe going up.
"You weren't supposed to see those."
"That's your response? Not 'I can explain' or 'this isn't what it looks like'? Just that I wasn't supposed to find out?"
"Would you prefer I lie to you?"
The question hit like a physical blow. "I'd prefer the truth. All of it."
Alex moved to the window, his back to me, shoulders rigid with tension. "The truth is complicated."
"Try me."
"My family has been part of the Circle for three generations. My grandfather helped establish the program after the war, my father expanded it, and I..." He turned to face me, and the pain in his eyes looked genuine. "I was raised to see it as duty. Service to something greater than myself."
"Service." I tasted the word like poison. "Is that what you call psychological manipulation? Preying on desperate students?"
"That's not how it started." His voice cracked. "Originally, it was about identifying promising individuals and providing them with opportunities. Real opportunities."
"And what is it now?"
Silence stretched between us, filled with the weight of everything unsaid. Finally, Alex moved to his desk, pulling out his phone with hands that trembled slightly.
"See for yourself."
The screen showed files, dozens of them, each labeled with a female name. I recognized several—Emma from my chemistry class, Charlotte from the Circle meeting, Grace who lived on my floor. My own name sat at the top of the list, marked with today's date and the status "PHASE 2 - INTIMACY PROTOCOLS."
I opened Grace's file with numb fingers. Her photograph stared back at me—beautiful, confident Grace who always seemed to have everything together. Below her picture, clinical notes documented weeks of observation, psychological vulnerability assessments, and detailed plans for "behavioral modification through romantic manipulation."
Status: COMPLETED - SUBJECT RELOCATED TO FACILITY 7.
"She's been gone for two weeks," I whispered. "Her roommate said she transferred to another school."
"That's what they tell people."
"Where is she really?"
Alex's jaw worked silently for a moment. "I don't know. Different subjects go to different facilities based on their psychological profiles and intended applications."
"Applications." My stomach turned. "You're talking about human beings."
"I know that." The words came out fierce, desperate. "I know what this sounds like, what it looks like, but I never wanted—"
"What? You never wanted what? To follow through? To hurt me?" I scrolled through more files, seeing name after name of missing girls I'd attributed to academic stress and family problems. "Or did you just never want to get caught?"
"I never wanted to fall in love with you."
The admission hung in the air between us like a challenge. Alex stepped closer, and I could smell his cologne, see the gold flecks in his pale blue eyes, feel the warmth radiating from his skin.
"That's not how this was supposed to work," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. "You were supposed to be an assignment. A means to an end."
"And now?"
"Now I'm terrified of what they'll do to you if I don't deliver what they expect."
His hand reached for my face, fingers trailing along my cheekbone with devastating gentleness. Despite everything—the lies, the manipulation, the evidence of systematic abuse—my body betrayed me by leaning into his touch.
"Jody, I need you to trust me. Just a little longer."
"Trust you?" But even as I said it, I was moving closer, drawn by the pain in his eyes and the desperate honesty in his voice.
"I have a plan. A way to get you out of this safely."
"What about the others? Grace, Emma, all the girls in these files?"
"I'm working on that too. But right now, I need you to pretend everything is normal. Go to classes, act like the Circle meeting went well, let me handle the rest."
His thumb traced my lower lip, and I found myself caught between revulsion and desire. This man had been assigned to manipulate me, to study my psychological vulnerabilities and exploit them. But the way he was looking at me now, the tremor in his hands, the raw emotion in his voice—it felt real in a way that made my chest ache.
"How do I know this isn't part of the manipulation?" I whispered against his thumb.
"You don't." His forehead pressed against mine, his breath warm on my lips. "But I'm asking you to trust me anyway."
The space between us disappeared as his mouth found mine, and for a moment I let myself believe in the possibility of genuine feeling beneath all the calculated deception. His kiss was desperate, hungry, like he was trying to communicate something words couldn't express.
My phone buzzed against my hip, vibrating insistently until we broke apart. A text from an unknown number, but the message made my blood freeze:
Skylar Watson reported missing this morning. Last seen asking questions about student surveillance in library basement. Thought you should know. - Campus Security
"No." The word escaped as a whisper, then a wail. "No, no, no."
Alex read over my shoulder, his face paling. "When did you last see her?"
"Yesterday morning. She said she was going to do some research about the Circle after I told her about the meeting." My hands shook as I tried calling Skylar's number. It went straight to voicemail, her cheerful voice promising to call back soon.
We stood in Alex's luxury dormitory room, surrounded by evidence of generational wealth and institutional power, while somewhere my best friend was missing because I'd trusted the wrong person with the truth.
Another text arrived, this time from Skylar's phone:
Stop looking or you'll end up like me.