TAKEN

CHAPTER 3

I’m watching her from my place at the table where Lucinda has insisted we play a card game to pass the time. The flight to Venice will take all night and part of the morning.

The girl has finally fallen asleep. For the first two hours, she kept her eyes locked on the window like she could chart the night sky, guess her destination.

Not that where we’re going is a secret. I just like f*****g with her more than I thought I would.

I didn’t want this at first. I didn’t like the whole idea of it, the tradition of essentially kidnapping a girl. But it is our tradition, and as the eldest, the duty falls on me.

And now, well, I look forward to having this pretty, willful Willow Girl to do with as I please. Because when all is said and done, I am a man.

And any man who says he doesn’t want a girl on her knees at his feet is a liar.

“Your turn, Sebastian,” Lucinda says.

She too gives the girl a sideways glance, but she’s more interested in my reactions to Helena. She’ll take her opportunities with the girl. I wonder which of us Helena will hate more.

“Hard to focus with a hard-on, huh, brother?” Ethan asks. “Why not wake her up? Initiate her in the bedroom? I would. I mean, she’s used goods anyway. You should have taken one of the others.”

I don’t react to his taunt. I’ve lived with his jealousy for more than twenty years of my life. From the moment he was born. Instead, I lay down my cards, winning this hand of Pinochle, a favorite game of Lucinda’s.

“There. How’s that?”

I stand and swallow the last of my whiskey before handing it to one of the two attendants for a refill.

When I take the seat beside Helena, she stirs, blinks her eyes open, and looks around her, startled.

I know the moment she remembers where she is. I see her throat work when she swallows and sits up in her seat.

The attendant hands me my drink, and I take a sip.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she says, not quite looking at me.

I rise to my feet.

It takes her a minute to unbuckle the seat belt, but she does the same.

I gesture for her to walk ahead of me to the door at the back, the greedy eyes of my family following us.

When we reach the door, I lean around her to open it, and she stops for a minute. I guess she’s not expecting a bedroom. Her face goes white as a ghost’s, and there’s only panic in her eyes when she turns to me.

“Bathroom’s in there.”

She doesn’t trust me, and she shouldn’t, but she walks into the room. I close the door behind us.

“There,” I say, pointing to the bathroom door.

She disappears behind it, and I sit down in the armchair to wait. I cross one leg over the other and check the time. We still have four hours to go, and I’m bored.

I set my drink down and roll up my shirt sleeves, listen to the toilet flush, hear the water at the sink go on, then off.

She doesn’t emerge right away, though, and I imagine her in there, giving herself a pep talk.

Ten minutes pass before the door opens, and she steps into the bedroom. She looks around. She takes in literally every detail of the room so as to avoid having to look at me.

I’m a patient man. I wait until she has no choice but to meet my gaze.

“Why did you bring me in here?”

“I thought you’d be more comfortable on the bed. You were asleep—”

“I wasn’t asleep.” She glances at the bed. She doesn’t believe me that it’s concern for her comfort, and she’s right not to.

Any normal person would feel pity for her, but not me. I like her fear. It gets my heart pumping, blood flowing. Gets my d**k hard.

“Is it starting already?” she asks, her voice breaking a little.

“Is what starting already?” I ask, as if I don’t understand.

She shakes her head, opens her mouth, then closes it again, points to the bed. “I mean, what you want from me, we both know what that is.”

“What do I want from you?”

She looks at me, narrows her eyes. “I’m not going to play your stupid games.”

I uncross my legs, smiling as I rise, go to her.

She stands her ground, even when I get into her space, but flinches when I raise my hand to her face, almost touching her cheek, but not.

Instead, I set her hair behind her shoulders and take a moment to feel the texture of it, feel the difference of the black strands as opposed to the silver streak.

I lean in close to her, inhale her scent. She’s trembling a little.

“That’s too bad, because I like games,” I say.

I step back, look her over, then return to my seat, pick up my drink, and take a sip. I cross my leg over my knee again. “Your shoes are hideous.”

She looks down at them, gives me a little smirk when she looks back at me. “I like them.”

“Drink?” I ask her while I sip mine.

She shakes her head no.

“Sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you going to stand for four more hours?”

She looks beyond me out the window, but it’s still night. “Where are we going?” “Venice.”

“Venice? As in Italy?”

“Yes.”

“But…you can’t…” She sits on the edge of the bed, almost falls into it, and tugs the sleeves of the pretty black dress down into her palms.

I notice the strange ring on her finger.

She turns back to me with something like hope in her eyes. “I don’t have a passport.”

I almost chuckle. “I’ll stop the captain immediately, then. Tell him to turn the plane around. Call the whole thing off.” I extinguish that hope like a candle and I know it’s cruel to do it but it’s too easy and I can’t resist. And really, like a passport would matter if it was even true. “I have your passport. Your mother knew the rules. Everything was arranged, as it should be.”

“You’re a jerk.”

I shrug a shoulder.

She puts her fists to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to the Scafoni estate in Venice. There’s not much to understand. You will be comfortable—”

“Comfortable?” She snaps her gaze to me. “I will be anything but comfortable. Your brothers look at me like I’m a piece of meat. Your mother looks like she wants to stab me. And you…you…”

I’m on my feet and so is she. “No one’s going to stab you, Helena. Don’t be dramatic.”

She stops, looks up at me. “Don’t be dramatic?”

I don’t comment. I know it’ll take her time to accept her situation.

“Is this funny to you? Putting me and my sisters up on blocks like we’re slaves to be auctioned off, dressing us in decaying old…parchment—”

“It was hardly parchment—”

“Looking us over, one by one, judging us while your brothers look on, one of whom could barely keep his d**k in his pants while you…you—”

“Settle down,” I warn, and when I step toward her, she backs up.

“While you touched me like you did. You’re sick, all of you, but especially you! You think this is funny? Kidnapping is funny? Making someone a slave to you, to your family, is funny?”

“Not just someone,” I say, closing the space between us so her back is to the wall. “You.”

She raises her arm to slap me, but I catch her wrist. “Don’t ever do that.”

She tries with her other arm, and I capture that one too. I raise both of them over her head and lean into her, pressing her back to the wall.

“Do you have a hearing problem, Willow Girl?”

“My name is Helena.”

“Your name is Willow Girl when I want it to be Willow Girl.”

She tries to free her arms, but she’s trapped. When she tries to knee me, I capture her leg between my thighs. And then she does something totally unexpected. She spits.

Right in my face.

Instinctively, I transfer both of her wrists into one of my hands and raise my arm, palm flat, ready to strike, but she lets out a half-scream, and I stop because what the f**k am I doing?

Her eyes are huge, and I wonder if she isn’t as shocked with what she just did as I am.

I lower my hand, the one that was ready to slap her, and wipe off the spit, rage building inside me like lava coming up a volcano on the edge of erupting.

I grip her jaw and force her face up, look at her features, pretty and delicate. She’s so much smaller than me. My hand next to her face, it’s huge.

“Be careful, Willow Girl. I can crush you.”

When she blinks, tears streak down her cheeks.

I watch her; wild horses couldn’t drag my attention from her right now. I am lost in her sad, frightened, midnight-colored eyes. The blue is lighter when she cries and she’s so f*****g pretty right now, so soft and vulnerable and afraid with her wet face, her swollen lips and wide eyes.

Some women are prettiest when they cry. She’s one of them. And I want her tears. It’s sick, I know. A disease. I’m sick. But I want them.

“Won’t you crush me anyway?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper. “But is that all you’ll do? All your brothers will do?” I release her and step back. I understand her meaning. We don’t take the Willow Girl for her conversation skills. She’ll be our toy in every way. And this part, I can’t kick the fact that it bothers me.

“You stay in here and try to wrap your brain around your situation.”

“Stay in here? Where would I go? We’re on a f*****g airplane.”

“Take this time to come to f*****g terms with the fact that I own you.”

“f**k you.”

I snort. “Want some advice, Helena?” I ask, taking her by the arms. Squeezing. “Try to figure out how not to piss me off. It might help you to remember that you belong to me. That I am your master, and that I will be obeyed. Are we clear?”

When she doesn’t answer right away, I give her a shake.

“Are we?” I ask.

“Yes!”

“Good” I go to the door,

“I saw Libby,” she whispers. “She was my aunt.”

I stop, my hand on the doorknob.

“The last Willow Girl,” she says, as if I need that clarified.

I straighten. I know.

I remember Libby.

I turn to her. “Have a f*****g drink. Have ten. Get yourself together.”

Her chest heaves with a sob, and she wipes the back of her hand across her face.

I open the door and walk out into the main room where my family, my f*****g family, has been enjoying the entertainment.

“She givin’ you some trouble, brother?” Ethan asks, picking the olive out of his drink and tossing it into his mouth. “Told you that you should have taken one of the others. They were prettier anyway. Mama, don’t you think so? They were prettier.”

Lucinda ignores him. “You should whip her, Sebastian. The instant we arrive. It’s the only thing that works on the Willow whores.”

She drains her martini.

I go to the liquor cart, yank the glass out of the attendant’s hand, and pour myself a double. I take a long sip before turning to them.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the show, but where it concerns my Willow Girl, mind your own f*****g business.”