Chapter 3

Jocelyn, of course, got sick. A fever raged through her body from sleeping in the wet, cold basement.

Andrew found her shivering on the cot, her face flushed and her lips blue. His guilt, which had been a dull ache, sharpened into a piercing pain. He carried her upstairs himself, put her in a proper guest room, and called the family doctor.

"This has gone too far, Matt," Andrew said, confronting his brother. "She's our sister."

"She's a problem," Matthew retorted, but his voice lacked its usual conviction. Jocelyn' s bizarre compliance had unsettled him deeply. He couldn't figure her out. Was she truly broken, or was this the most elaborate manipulation he had ever seen?

For weeks, he continued to test her.

He ordered her to polish the silver for a dinner party, a demeaning task for a family member. She did it without complaint, for hours, until her fingers were raw.

He instructed her to weed the vast gardens by hand in the hot sun. She worked until she was dizzy from the heat, never once stopping to rest until she was told to.

Each test she passed with the same blank obedience, and with each test, Matthew' s suspicion warred with a growing, horrifying thought: what if the damage they had inflicted on her was real? What if they had actually driven their own sister insane?

Stella saw the shift in Matthew. She saw his uncertainty and Andrew's open sympathy. She was losing her grip. She needed to remind them who Jocelyn really was.

She called for Peters, the head orderly.

"She's getting too comfortable," Stella told him in the privacy of the library. "They're starting to feel sorry for her. You need to remind her of her place. Scare her. Like you used to."

A cruel smile spread across Peters' face. He had enjoyed his time "disciplining" Jocelyn at the facility, a side job the Blakelys had paid him well for. Sleep deprivation, withholding food, the constant, quiet terror.

That night, Peters went down to the basement. Jocelyn had been moved back there after her fever broke.

He found her sitting on the edge of the cot, staring at the wall. He loomed over her, blocking the light from the single bulb.

"Remember me, princess?" he sneered, pulling a box cutter from his pocket and flicking the blade out. The sound echoed in the small room. "Remember how you'd cry for your mommy when we turned the lights off? Or how you'd beg for just a piece of bread?"

Jocelyn didn't look at him. Her eyes were unfocused. A voice echoed in her head, the calm, precise voice of her mentor from the facility, the man she called Dr. Qi.

"Rule Number Three, Jocelyn: The first principle of psychological warfare is to make your enemy believe they are in control. Let them make the first move. You cannot be the aggressor. You can only be the reactor. But when you react, it must be decisive."

She looked up at Peters, her expression shifting from vacant to confused. "Are you going to hit me?" she asked, her voice small.

Peters laughed. "I'm going to do more than that."

He lunged, grabbing her by the hair and raising the box cutter.

That was the first move.

The change was instantaneous. The vacant look vanished, replaced by a cold, predatory focus. In one fluid motion, she twisted, breaking his grip on her hair. She slammed the heel of her palm up under his nose, sending a jolt of blinding pain through his skull. As he staggered back, she grabbed the wrist holding the cutter, twisted it viciously until the bone snapped with a sickening crack.

The box cutter clattered to the floor. Peters screamed, a high, thin sound of agony and shock.

But Jocelyn wasn't finished. She kicked his legs out from under him, and as he fell, she was on him, her fists striking with brutal, efficient precision. She didn't hit his face. She hit his ribs, his kidneys, his solar plexus. It wasn't a brawl; it was a dismantling.

When he was a whimpering, broken mess on the concrete floor, she grabbed him by his collar and began to drag him. He was screaming, a raw, terrified sound that echoed up the basement stairs.

She dragged him through the pristine kitchen, past the polished marble countertops. She dragged him into the grand foyer, his blood smearing on the white Italian tile.

The brothers, drawn by the horrifying screams, ran downstairs to a scene from a nightmare.

Jocelyn was standing in the middle of the foyer, holding the broken, sobbing orderly by his shirt. Her knuckles were bloody, but her face was serene.

"He's too loud," she announced to them, her voice calm and conversational. "I need to find a chainsaw. To cut out his tongue."

Matthew and Andrew stared, frozen in horror. This wasn't the defiant girl they knew, or the broken doll she had been pretending to be. This was something else entirely. Something terrifying.

"Jocelyn," Andrew said, his voice shaking as he took a slow step forward. "Jocelyn, it's okay. We'll... we'll throw the noisy man out. You don't need a chainsaw."

Jocelyn looked at him, considered his words for a moment, and then nodded. "Okay."

She dropped Peters to the floor like a sack of garbage.

Then, she turned, walked back down the stairs to the basement, lay down on her cot, and went to sleep as if nothing had happened.