With a bag over my head and a rope around my wrists, I’m thrown into a van. I scream, but the gag they stuffed in my mouth prevents the sound from traveling anywhere. No one can hear me. No one will come and save me. It’s happening all over again, and I can’t stop it.
Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them back, as crying won’t help me now.
More noise follows. Someone’s thrown into the back of the van with me. “Hello?” I say, but I doubt it sounds like anything more than random gurgles.
“It’s me,” Noah whispers. “Don’t scream. Keep your head down.”
“Fuck you!” I hiss through the gag, but it’s no use since anything I say gets distorted.
I try to spit it out, but it won’t budge either.
“They’re taking us back,” Noah says.
“Be quiet!” someone barks. It sounds like the president, but I can’t see a thing through this
hood. “You’ve already wasted enough of my time. Let’s go.”
The car begins to drive, and I scream, to no avail.
I’m going back there to that hellhole, to that place I vowed never to go back to.
Adrenaline rushes through my veins, and I immediately start kicking and fighting, trying to get out.
“Calm down!” Noah says.
I keep kicking the doors and the windows, hoping they might break so I can jump out. Even though the car is driving and it might kill me, the need to control the situation consumes me.
I can’t handle knowing that I’m going back there … and that I’m now pregnant too.
This baby deserves better.
And it’s all because Noah dared to come and find me.
Because he’s so obsessed with me that he can’t let me live in peace.
And if he orchestrated this, I’ll never forgive him.
As he tries to hold me down, I punch him in the gut with what little strength I have.
He groans, and I move away toward some of the windows, where I press as many buttons as I can find.
“Do something,” the president barks at someone.
Within ten seconds, a painful jab hits my neck.
A needle?
Shit.
I grunt in pain and feel my strength fading.
Without wanting to, I slump over, unable to move, and within seconds, my eyes close … and my mind drifts off to nowhere.
Noah
I flick the needle out of the elder’s hand. “How dare you drug my wife!”
“I … uh … Sorry, patriarch, but—”
“Don’t apologize,” the president says. “It was my call to make.” He glares at me now. “You’d better calm down before I do something you’ll regret.”
That was a threat, and I won’t take it lightly. I know he has the power to kill me if he wanted to. All that’s needed is a snap of the finger and they’d hang me by the gates as a warning to others; defy the president and you die.
It’s plain and simple. He makes the rules … and he can break them too.
My wife is his daughter, and he’ll rein her in whenever he wants to.
But fuck him for laying a hand on her.
“You might be her husband, but she is my daughter,” he says. “Do you have a death wish?”
“No, president,” I reply, averting my eyes.
“I think you do,” he muses, a devilish smile forming on his lips. “I think you knew exactly what you were doing when you failed to disclose to me that you found her and brought her back to the community … and then you let her run off.”
“I—”
He raises his hand. “I don’t want to hear it now. First, we go home.”
He immediately presses a button that closes the window between the front section of the car and the back, blocking any form of conversation on purpose. But I know my reckoning is coming … all I have to do is wait.
I tug at the hem of my shirt, feeling nauseous all of the sudden.
I never intended for any of this to happen, and now that it has, I don’t know how to fix it.
My entire plan, all the pawns I put into place, all of it … gone … wiped off the board in one fell swoop.
My fists ball, and I struggle not to slam the windows with my own bare hands and jump out with my wife in my arms. I should … but they’d chase after us, and there’s no running from a car.
I should’ve left with her when I had the chance. After my partner stole Emmy without talking to me about it first, I should’ve acted right away. He must’ve told the president where Natalie was staying. How else would they have known about the location? That … or maybe it was my father.
My teeth grind together. He was the only one who knew what I was doing, where I was … and that she was pregnant.
But how did the president find out she was his daughter?
I didn’t tell a soul. Not even my father or the guy who grabbed Emmy.
None of this makes any sense.
I sigh to myself and gaze out the window.
Natalie is convinced I did all of this, that I persuaded her to come and when she didn’t, her father pulled up to get her anyhow.
How am I going to fix this?
How am I going to make her believe me when all I did was lie?
Trust is hard to win back when you’ve already lost it once …
But I won’t stop.
Not now.
Not ever.
And this bold move by the president to come out here on his own doesn’t make me despair … it makes me all fired up.
She knows the truth now.
She knows what choice she has to make.
And I know she’ll make the right one … for her future … for our baby … for us.
It takes them hours to get us all back to the community, but the time spent traveling doesn’t quench my rage. I should’ve known not to trust my father every time I spoke to him on the phone. Every sentence uttered was one too many. I’m sure he used every bit of information I told him and played it through to the president. I didn’t tell the partner about my wife being pregnant, so it had to have been my father.
Which means he betrayed me.
I clench my fists as I walk up the stairs of the temple and storm into his room.
“You did this!” I yell.
He’s standing near his window, glaring outside at the people. “Ah, there you are,” he muses, as he turns around. “I was waiting for you.”
Of course he’d be watching for when I’d return so he can gloat on his victory.
“You told him about Natalie, didn’t you?”
He frowns. “About what exactly?”
“Don’t play games with me!” I yell. “He knew about her pregnancy. I didn’t tell a fucking soul. But you knew, you saw the stick.”
He folds his arms behind his back and casually strolls my way. “Don’t swear, Noah, it doesn’t behoove you.”
“I don’t fucking care!” I stomp my hand against the door to close it. “She’s my fucking wife! You had no right!”
“Yes, she is, and had you taken better care of her, we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.”
My eyes narrow. “I never thought I’d say this to your face, but I always wished you were dead.”
He stops in his tracks, and a smile briefly appears, then fades away. “You wouldn’t be my son if you didn’t.”
What kind of a man says that? No wonder our family is so fucked up.
He pours himself a drink from the table. “Want one too?”
“No, I want answers,” I say through gritted teeth.
He clears his throat, and says, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have them for you.”
My brows furrow. “Stop lying to me.”
He takes a painfully slow sip of his drink, and then says, “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not the one who told President Lawrence she was pregnant. What reasons could I ever have?”
“To bring them back quicker,” I growl.
He snorts and points at me with his glass. “That was your job.”
“And you inserted yourself into my job, like you always do,” I snap.
“No, I gave you guidance. This was all on you.”
“Then who told the president if it wasn’t you?”
He shrugs. “It’s not my problem, Noah.”
“Yes, it is. Your grandchild is now in danger, thanks to you,” I say, folding my arms.
I can barely contain my anger. I want to lash out, smash his face into the mirror, and make him bleed until the walls are covered in his entrails.
But I can’t do that. The other patriarchs would kill me.
“No thanks to you,” he retorts. “I told you to get her back straight away, but you wouldn’t listen, and the longer it went on, the more in danger she got.”
“She was safe there. I had it under control,” I reply.
“Clearly not,” he says, “since you were both escorted back by the president’s private guards.”
He throws me an unimpressed look. “Your wife was out of order. She fled the community. You know the rules. You’re lucky she’s still alive.”
“She’s his daughter, so of course he’d keep her alive,” I retort. “Actually, I want to know. How did he know she was his daughter?”
He pauses and stares straight at me. “I don’t know.” He raises a brow. “Maybe you should ask her mother?”
My eyes widen. No. She wouldn’t. She’d never …
“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
He shrugs. “Women do strange things for their children.”
“No, she wanted to keep Natalie safe,” I snap.
“I think you should be more worried about what this is going to do to your reputation.” His face darkens. “You lied to the president.”
“I didn’t lie,” I retort.
“You omitted the truth. That’s worse than lying. Did you or did you not know she was his daughter when you brought her back from our little trip?”
My nostrils flare.
“Thought so.” He puts down his drink and stares at me in that same judgmental way he always does. “Do you know how hard I’ve fought to keep the president from hanging you?”
I gulp and have to stop myself from reaching for my throat.
“He was this close.” He puts his fingers together. “All it took was one bad word about you, and he would’ve done it,” he adds, and he walks toward me. “Lucky for you, you have a father who wants to keep both his son and his daughter-in-law alive, so I put in a good word for you.”
“I didn’t need your help,” I say, feeling bitter from being on the president’s bad side now. “All I needed was time to convince her.”
“To do what?” He snorts and lights a cigar. “Women don’t ever listen. It’s futile to even try.”
“Stop,” I say.
I hate it when he talks about women as if they mean nothing to him.
He takes a drag and blows out the smoke in my face. “You should’ve grabbed her and taken her when you had the chance. You should’ve fucked her and locked her up in her room just as I did with your mother.”
The mere mention of her makes me stiffen.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother,” I growl, fuming. “I gave my wife an option so she wouldn’t turn into her mother. So she wouldn’t turn into mine. Dead. In the ground.” I pause for a moment. “I’m not you.”
I refuse to ever be like him.
“No, if you were, none of this would’ve happened. At least then you would’ve stayed in the president’s grace,” my father barks as if he’s actually proud of all the things he did. “Look at you now, locked up in the temple like some prisoner.”
It stings when he says it like that. I haven’t thought about it since I came back, but I know guards follow me everywhere now, and they don’t answer to me.
I doubt they’d let me leave the community again.
“You’re not allowed to walk out onto your own property, let alone wipe your own ass without someone watching. This isn’t the son I raised,” he continues.
He puts the cigar down and waves me off. “Get out. I’m not listening to this bullshit anymore. Be grateful you’re alive.”
He turns around and walks back into his bathroom, shutting the door behind him as if I had any inclination to go after him. Fuck that. Fuck him and fuck the president.
They deserve all the hatred I have for them.
