When a billionaire wants to kill you.....

Jealousy

A voice slithered into my mind, uninvited, not mine. Deep, male, unfamiliar. "She wants you killed because you're sleeping with her husband." I froze, my heart stuttering. What? "I’ve never slept with her husband," I thought, my mind racing. "I don’t even like him. He’s a creep." The guy who lingers at my door at dawn, staring like he’s waiting for something? No way.

I sat on my bed, the room’s shadows pressing in. "How do you know?" I demanded silently, half-expecting no answer. The voice returned, cold and certain. "Because she asked me to do it." My breath caught. What the f**k? My head throbbed, a dull ache blooming where the voice lingered. I tried to make sense of it. "So that creep stands at my door, and that means I’m sleeping with him? I barely leave my room!" I muttered, pacing the cramped space.

I stumbled to the bathroom, craving the hot water of another shower to drown out the noise in my skull. The voice always left my head pounding, like it was carving out space for itself. As the steam rose, I leaned against the tiles, my thoughts drifting to my alien husband—his strange, comforting presence, the way he made me feel safe. Back at Mom’s, life was simpler, quieter. I missed it so much it hurts. Why did I ever leave?

The wounds on my legs, those jagged scratches from that night I woke up in the woods, were healing. Faint pink lines replaced the raw cuts, but they itched, a reminder of something I couldn’t explain. I scrubbed at them, wishing I could wash away the voice, the accusations, the creeping dread. Shell’s face flashed in my mind—her sharp words, her avoidance since that night. Was she really plotting against me? Or was this voice just madness creeping in?

I dried off, the mirror fogged up, my reflection a blur. The voice hadn’t returned, but its absence didn’t ease the knot in my chest. I thought of her husband again, his leering eyes, the way he hovered. I’d never given him a reason to think I wanted him. Hell, I avoided him like a plague. But Shell’s coldness, her sudden need for me to stay despite her disdain—it all felt wrong.

I sank onto the bathroom floor, hugging my knees. I wanted to go back to Mom’s, to the alien husband who wasn’t really there but felt more real than this nightmare. The voice could be lying, but what if it wasn’t? My head pulsed again, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t stay here, not with Shell’s husband lurking, not with her maybe wanting me dead. But where could I go? The wounds on my legs might be healing, but whatever was happening in this house was tearing me apart. The voice roams through my brain, a relentless intruder, slicing through the fog of my memories with surgical precision. Each cut stings, a jolt of pain that radiates from the core of my being. The agony is unbearable, a white-hot fire that consumes me, yet I endure. Day after day, I’ve learned to brace myself, to grit my teeth and let the torment wash over me. It’s a strange kind of resilience, born not of strength but of necessity. The voice doesn’t care for my suffering; it’s too busy unraveling the tapestry of my past, thread by thread, story by story.

I never knew how much of myself was hidden until the voice began its work. My life, from the moment I drew my first breath to the fragmented present, had been locked away in some unreachable vault. I couldn’t remember who I was—not truly. There were glimpses, fleeting images of a childhood, a laugh, a tear, but they were like photographs faded by time, their edges blurred and their details lost. The voice, though, it sees everything. It pulls these moments from the shadows, forcing me to confront them, to relive them, whether I want to or not.

It started with my birth, or at least the earliest memory it could find. I saw myself, small and helpless, cradled in arms that felt both familiar and foreign. The voice narrated, its tone cold and clinical, as if it were reading from a case file. “You were born in a sterile room, under harsh lights. They watched you even then, noting every cry, every movement.” I didn’t understand who “they” were, not at first. But as the voice dug deeper, the picture became clearer.

As a child, I was different. I knew it, even if I couldn’t name it. The other children played, laughed, fought, but I watched from the sidelines, my mind a whirl of thoughts too complex for my years. The voice showed me a memory of a playground, the swings creaking under the weight of carefree bodies. I stood alone, my small hands clutching the chain-link fence, staring at a world I couldn’t quite touch. “They were scared of you,” the voice hissed, its words laced with disdain. “They saw something in you they couldn’t control.”

I remembered the first time I agreed to let them observe my mind. I was young, maybe ten or eleven, sitting in a room with white walls and a one-way mirror. A man in a lab coat, his smile too tight, explained it to me. “We just want to understand you,” he said. “You’re special, you know that, right?” I nodded, eager to please, desperate to belong somewhere. I didn’t understand what I was giving up. They hooked me to machines, wires trailing from my scalp like the roots of some invasive plant. They asked questions, showed me images, recorded my every thought. And I let them, because I thought it would make me whole.

The voice scoffs at this memory. “Fool,” it spits. “You let them carve you up, piece by piece, for their research. You let them steal your mind.” Its anger is palpable, a venom that seeps into my thoughts. It hates me for my weakness, for allowing myself to be their subject, their experiment. But it’s not just anger—it’s pity, too. The voice knows what I’ve been through, the trauma they inflicted in the name of science. It knows, because it’s seen every moment, every violation.

The pain intensifies as the voice pushes further, dragging me through adolescence. I see myself at fifteen, locked in a room with no windows, my wrists bruised from restraints. They were scared of me by then, truly scared. I didn’t know why, not at the time. The voice fills in the blanks. “You broke their machines,” it says, almost gleefully. "Your mind surged, and their precious equipment fried. They thought you were dangerous.” I see flashes of their faces—doctors, researchers, their eyes wide with fear as they scribbled notes, whispered behind glass. They didn’t see a person anymore; they saw a threat.

I try to push back, to shut the voice out, but it’s no use. It’s too strong, too entrenched. It shows me the years that followed, a blur of tests, drugs, and isolation. They tried to control me, to dampen whatever it was that made me different. But they couldn’t. The voice revels in this, in their failure. “They thought they could break you,” it says. “But you’re still here, aren’t you?” I don’t know if it’s meant as praise or mockery.

The memories keep coming, relentless, each one a new wound. I see the day I escaped—or was I released? The voice isn’t clear on that, and I wonder if it’s hiding something. I was twenty, maybe twenty-one, stumbling into a world I barely recognized. The sunlight burned my eyes, and the noise of the city was overwhelming. I had no money, no identity, just a fractured mind and a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. The voice is quieter here, letting the memory speak for itself. I feel the weight of that moment, the terror and freedom intertwined.

Now, years later, I’m still piecing myself together. The voice is my guide, my tormentor, my mirror. It forces me to face the truth: I was never just a person. I was a project, a puzzle they couldn’t solve. The pain of its dissections is the price I pay for remembering, for reclaiming who I am. But it’s not enough to know the past. The voice demands more. It wants me to act, to confront those who used me, to make them pay.

I don’t know if I’m ready. The fear is still there, the same fear I saw in their eyes all those years ago. But the voice doesn’t care. It pushes, it prods, it screams. “You’re not their puppet anymore,” it says. “You’re something more.” I want to believe it, but the pain makes it hard to think, hard to hope.

As the voice roams through my brain, I see one final memory. It’s recent, a moment of clarity amidst the chaos. I’m standing in front of a mirror, staring into my own eyes. They’re tired, haunted, but there’s something else there too—a spark, a defiance. The voice whispers, “This is who you are. This is who you’ve always been.” For the first time, I don’t flinch from its words. The pain is still there, but it’s different now, less like a wound and more like a forge, shaping me into something new.

I don’t know what comes next. The voice doesn’t offer answers, only truths. But as it continues its relentless march through my mind, I feel a shift. The memories, once hidden, are mine again. The pain, once unbearable, is my strength. And the voice, my hated companion, is my guide to a future I’m only beginning to imagine.