Boardroom and bedroom

Emily 's Obsession

After that nasty confrontation with Jack's ex Emily I figured that would be the end of her venomous behaviour towards me. I hoped she just needed to get all that pent-up bitterness out of her system with those cruel insults, and then she'd disappear out of our lives as quickly as she barged in.

Boy, was I wrong about that!

If anything, Emily seemed to make it her deranged new mission to torment me and Jack at every possible turn after that. It was like she just could not handle the fact that Jack had moved on by marrying someone else, despite how vitriolic she acted about it.

At first, her interference was just a nuisance. Like, she started showing up at our home unannounced and uninvited constantly, brushing past the staff before anyone could stop her. Sometimes she'd linger for hours, pacing the halls and grounds in this total zoned-out state, almost like she was waiting for Jack to appear.

When he inevitably did run into her, she'd instantly turn on this saccharine-sweet fake politeness, batting her eyelashes and asking him to reconsider leaving her for "this situation." Coded talk for me, his wife. Every time, Jack would reject her advances and make it crystal clear we were happily married. But she just would not take the hint!

I couldn't understand what her deal was. Sienna was obviously still carrying a torch for Jack in a big way, unable to let go of their past romance. But why couldn't she move on? She was stunning, wealthy, could have any man she wanted. Yet she stayed fixated and obsessed over my husband to an unsettling degree.

On the rare occasions she'd actually acknowledge my existence, Emily would lay on the sugary-sweet fakeness even thicker with me. Calling me "girlfriend" and acting like we were just two gal pals bonding over our mutual devotion to Jack.

"We simply must get our nails done together sometime soon, girlfriend," she'd say with a plastic smile while aggressively rubbing my shoulders. "Share all our tricks for keeping our man perfectly satisfied!"

I could never tell if she was just deluding herself into thinking she could wiggle her way back into Jack's life, or if she knew her efforts were futile and derived some twisted satisfaction from taunting me. Probably some combination of both.

But the constant encroachment into our home life definitely struck a nerve. It made me feel violated, unsafe and mistrustful every time Emily would just waltz through those doors uninvited. Like she still assumed she had some deranged ownership over Jack and our property. It set my teeth on edge.

Things only escalated further when I started to notice strange little details around the mansion after her surprise visits... Like, pictures gone missing from displays or rearranged in weird ways. Articles of Jack's clothing scattered around rooms or shoved under furniture. Finding his hairbrush or cologne bottles stashed in odd nooks, like she'd been clutching them close.

At first, I wondered if it was just an oversight with the staff and their cleaning. But then I also started noticing new things cropping up, too. Photos that clearly weren't ours. Tufts of long dark hair on pillows or in bathroom drains. Belongings I didn't recognize left in random drawers and cabinets.

The more bizarre discoveries I'd make, the deeper my gut instinct told me what was happening: Emily was breaking into the mansion whenever she could, while no one was around during the day. And it sure seemed like she was making herself quietly at home...in an extremely unsettling, unhinged way.

Maybe she was craving reminders of the past she shared with Jack. Maybe she derived some dark thrill from infiltrating our home and personal spaces. Whatever her twisted motive, it infuriated me that she felt so emboldened to violate our boundaries and privacy like this.

I raged to Jack about my suspicions, but he seemed dismissive, even impatient, like this was all an insane overreaction on my part. No matter how much evidence I gathered, he refused to hear it.

"Emily may behave erratically at times," he'd say with a careless shrug. "But she's certainly not unhinged enough to be sneaking around and defiling our home behind our backs. Don't be so quick to irrationality, Amy."

He started growing exasperated whenever I'd broach the subject, like I was some paranoid basket case. Before long, I found myself stopped just shy of hiring a freaking private investigator to secretly stake out the mansion during those vacant hours. Just to prove to Jack I wasn't imagining things!

But when I finally reached that level of desperation, a much bigger event occurred one fateful weekend that finally blew the deranged truth wide open...

It started out like any other evening. Jack was off working late at his office downtown, expectedly. And as usual when he wasn't around, I settled in for a quiet night reading and decompressing. I even set up a cozy fire in the master bedroom's fireplace and pampered myself with a luxurious bubble bath in our en-suite.

When I finally emerged from the steamy bathroom, hair still wrapped in a towel, there was Sienna.

Standing frozen like a deer in the headlights, right there in Jack's walking closet down the hall.

I'll never forget the utterly unsettling sight of her - silky night robe hanging open to expose casual lingerie, one of Jack's suit jackets half pulled over her shoulders like she'd been cuddling and nuzzling the fabric against her cheek. In her other hand, she clutched one of his old hairbrushes tightly.

My heart just about stopped at the blatant eerie scene playing out before me. This wasn't some misunderstood series of strange events...this was stalker behavior, clear as day. Suddenly, every unnerving little discovery of Emily's made sense. She really had been prowling around behind our backs like a deranged, obsessive squatter.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke or moved. We just stared at each other, expressions mirrored in shock and bizarre vulnerability.

Then without warning, Emily burst into loud, wailing sobs that echoed through the entire bedroom suite. She crumpled to the floor in a heap of chic satin and designer lingerie. Her cries were raw, guttural, inhuman even.

"J-Jaaack...oh, my Jack, my Jack...why did you leave me? Why did you abandon me for this soulless nobody?" she howled between gasps, clutching his belongings to her desperately. "Don't you remember all we had? How perfectly matched we were? How could you trade that for...for this tepid, empty existence?"

I could only gape in stunned revulsion at the display unfolding before me. Never in my life had I witnessed someone unraveling into such unrestrained psychosis right in front of me. Here was Emily, Jack's former lover, utterly shattered and coming undone before my very eyes.

As the hysteria poured forth unchecked, she began clawing her own perfectly made-up face, scratching and tearing at herself in her frenzy. Dark streaks of mascara soon stained her cheeks as her voice reached bone-chilling screeching registers of grief.

"Why does some worthless, common gutter-rat get to possess you now? She'll never appreciate the precious jewel you are, Jack - never! Return to me, my perfect Match, where you belong!"

She rocked and wailed and thrashed on the floor like a woman possessed, shattering my core with the sheer insanity of her outburst. This was more than just a vindictive ex out for petty revenge or old wounds reopened. Emily had clearly fractured into paranoid, hellish delusions over her obsession with Jack. She was utterly, frighteningly unhinged.

I stood there frozen and wordless, watching in sheer horror as the shocking truth I'd tried so hard to warn Jack about laid itself bare. Part of me almost expected the bedroom door to shatter inward at any second, my husband rushing through to find this phantasmic nightmare come to life in our most intimate sanctuary.

But the incoherent shrieking and deranged lamentations just wailed on, echoing endlessly and unanswered. It felt like a glimpse into the face of madness itself, contorted before me without barriers or veneers to hide behind any longer.