Page 71 of Tricked By Jack

But the professional veneer feels hollow against the raw humanity captured in these images. If Jack painted these—and the evidence strongly suggests he did—then the man who locked me in a cage contains multitudes I haven’t accounted for.

The predator houses vulnerability beneath his armor, and I’m not sure if that makes him more or less dangerous.

As I carefully re-roll the canvases and begin studying others, I start noticing something that gives me pause. Before I know what my brain has picked up on, I carefully lay the canvases out on the dusty floor, arranging and rearranging them until they make sense.

“Holy shit,” I breathe when a pattern emerges.

Jack’s cleverly hidden words inside the paintings, and now that I have them side-by-side, they’re starting to make sense.

Three children born, only one survives.

This is the Knight pattern, the inheritance we cannot escape.

Mom died bringing Ruby into the world. First sacrifice.

Who will be second?

The devil always collects.

My brain immediately categorizes this magical thinking as another trauma response. The belief in a predetermined pattern of loss creates an illusion of order in chaos.

If deaths are fated, then no one bears responsibility. If sacrifice is inevitable, grief becomes a ritual rather than rupture.

As I try to process it all, the human part of me recognizes something deeper. Jack isn’t just cruel, he’s haunted. Death isn’t abstract to him—it’s familial.

The thoughts hidden in paint reveal a man grappling with mortality in the most intimate terms, a man who has felt his own heart stop and restart. Such an experience would fundamentally alter anyone’s relationship with mortality, with time itself.

Each day becomes borrowed. Each breath, a theft from whatever claimed you temporarily.

His obsession with me makes more sense viewed through this lens. I’m not just the woman who failed to save his sister—I’m the witness who chose not to intervene in death’s design.

In Jack’s fractured logic, I’m complicit. I don’t feel sorry for him. Understanding the architecture of someone’s pain doesn’t excuse the suffering they inflict.

But still, something in me itches to reach for him. Not to comfort, but to press harder, to provoke the ghost behind those predator eyes. Attraction isn’t supposed to feel this much like sabotage, is it?

As I gather the canvases, carefully rolling them up, I wonder if revealing my own past will help me reach the man hiding beneath the monster. If he thinks he has me figured out, he’s dead wrong.

My dad couldn’t ever figure me out, and most of the time, I don’t even feel like I fully know myself. Jack’s no different. I showed him pieces of me no one else has ever seen, and he still walked away. And why the fuck does it bother me that he left?

Finishing up, I wonder what Jack would do if he knew I’d seen this evidence of his humanity. Would he rage against the exposure? Or would part of him be relieved to be seen, finally, as something more complex than a monster?

The wind picks up outside, howling against the eaves like a creature denied entry. I replace everything exactly as I found it, erasing evidence of my investigation. Knowledge is power, especially when your opponent doesn’t realize you possess it.

I move toward the trapdoor; the chain scrapes ominously against the floor. My mind’s heavy with contradictions.

The Jack Knight who painted his dead mom’s eyes with such tenderness is the same man who marked me as property, who used my body to punish my mind.

Both versions are real. Both must be accounted for in whatever strategy I craft next.

Chapter 24

The Trickster

The ornate wooden floors creak beneath my restless pacing, each step echoing through the cavernous hall like a countdown. I’m already inside the old historic building on Governors Island, reserved for high-level functions like tonight’s board dinner.

Board members filter in slowly, nodding at me with wary respect, but I barely register their existence. My eyes keep darting to the arched doorway where she’ll appear, where Carolina will bring her. Where my wife will walk back into my gravity.

It’s been five days since I’ve seen her for more than a few stolen minutes while she slept—since I’ve touched her—and my skin feels too tight, like it’s shrinking around bones that won’t stop growing.