Page 35 of Her Dark Lies
Women Become
The week after Claire met Jack, she made an appointment to start laser surgery to remove the ill-advised tattoos on her ankle, shoulders, and lower back—especially focused on the tramp stamp she’d gotten to defy her mother and cover her surgery scars. That tattoo wasn’t the best artwork money could buy anyway.
A month after they began dating, Claire took out all her extra piercings—her nose, her septum, her belly button, her left nipple—leaving just the two main earring holes and a double piercing on the left.
Three months in, she dyed her didn’t-pay-for-it ombré hair back to her normal dusky blond and had it properly highlighted, with sun-kissed bits bright around her face. The money piece, the hairdresser called it. How very appropriate. The woman also trimmed Claire’s shaggy Medusa mop into a sleek bob that she straightened to swing below her chin. The keratin treatment cost a fortune, but it was worth it, for the time it lasted.
Jack came home from an exceptionally long trip to Africa and she was changed. Altered. He was traveling a lot those first several months, so whenever he made it home, and she was a slightly fresher, sterilized version of her old self, he simply kissed her and told her she was beautiful no matter what and took her to bed.
He pretended not to mind her transformation, but I could tell he hated it. The way his jaw tightened when he saw her as a regular girl was a dead giveaway. I never thought he’d go for that kind of thing—the external evidence of internal pain and punishment—but with her, he lapped it up. She was his little artist girl, his artiste, his dark and broody girl, spending her days with the oils and adulations and her nights with his cock in her mouth. And here she was, his dirty little girl, scrubbing herself clean for him.
Claire’s mother, Trisha, enjoyed the changes. She came for tea, nodding approvingly at the state of the house’s renovation,love love lovingthe paint colors, the exposed beams, the gray kitchen cabinets, the Carrara marble single-sheet backsplash and the champagne brass finishes. She approved of the woman Claire was turning into, becoming such a grown-up. She approved of Jack. Approved of his family, especially. Who doesn’t want their kid marrying into wealth and privilege?
Katie, though, questioned every step vociferously. Oh, the fights they had. She accused Claire of trying to fake her way into his family.Why don’t you let them judge you for who you are? Why do you have to conform to some ideal you think they’re looking for? And what happens when he dumps you for the real deal?
Do you blame her? Claire spent years layering on a disguise and Katie understood her like that, understood her motivations. Katie couldn’t fathom why Claire would want to fling back the curtains and let the world see everything. It was the ultimate betrayal. Conformity was a sick disease in her mind. Katie was a free spirit, a daredevil. She resisted the idea that Claire wanted a different kind of normalcy.
Jack was Claire’s salvation, and she was wise enough to leap on the opportunity.
By the time Jack took Claire to New York to deliver the promised canvases to Ana and Brice, she had completely reverted to her preteen self, the one who existed before her father died. Blond hair, green eyes, creamy skin and subtle gold hoops in her ears. She was demure. Feminine. Adoring.
They loved her transformation.
They had no idea she felt like a fraud.
Claire wanted to change for this man. She wanted him to see her as she was meant to be, not how she’d changed, altered, punished herself. She wanted him to think she was a typical, normal woman, not understanding there is no such thing as normal. And there was no way to erase the slices to her soul that drove her to the artistic path in the first place. She was doomed to repeat them.
But that’s what true love does, right? It opens you to the possibility of who you were meant to be. Like raindrops in a thirsty garden, you open, you flower, you become.
Some women become more than others.
Some don’t.
21
Server Down, Server Down
Jack no longer thinks there is any sort of coincidence in the past few days’ events. Someone is after the family. After him, and after Claire. The only questions that still lingers—who, and why now?
Though the latter is easy enough to answer. With the entire family on the island, they are vulnerable. They are stuck here, being lashed by the storms, soon to be without recourse to leave, to defend themselves. He needs to get Claire by herself, now, tell her everything, and find a way to keep her safe.
“We need to coordinate,” Jack says. “We need to make sure everyone’s safe. Whoever is after us, they have an ax to grind.”
Elliot throws his phone on the table, though Brice is still talking. “Why is someone after us, Jack? What’s going on?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“Well, I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to confess. Fuck, man. Our personal servers are gone. Deleted. The corporation’s systems are untouched, it is only the private servers.”
“How is that even possible?” Jack asks. “Who even knows about our servers? They’re only for the family.”
“And yet, someone very talented has managed to slip inside our family’s wards, Jackson. Someone with the means, and the desire, to bring us down. Why do you think that is?”
Jack leans forward, fingers curling on both hands. He is lit with white-hot rage at his brother’s tone.
“Elliot, what the hell are you saying?”
“Everything was going just fine until you started lusting after that woman.”
