Taken: Original Sin Book 1

by Hart, Stella

  “What about Elena?” she asked in a hollow voice.

  I swallowed hard. I knew this question was coming. “I think they did something to her,” I said as gently as possible. “She was close to realizing the truth, and someone snitched on her after that meeting she called for all of you. The men had to get rid of her, or else their existence would be threatened.”

  Jolie didn’t say anything else. She covered her face with her hands and crumpled to the ground, wracked with hysterical sobs interrupted only by the need to draw breath. She cried as if her brain was being shredded from the inside, emotional pain flowing from every pore. It was a primal sound, a sharp jab in my guts which made me want to cry too. For Jolie. For all she’d gone through. For all she’d lost.

  Her sobs grew louder, her shaking more violent. It was like every atom of her being was screaming in unison, as if she wished the ferocity of her grief would bring Elena and her mother back, along with all the others who’d been lost to the cruelty of the Path of the Covenant cult.

  This was enough pain to break her, but she was strong. She would get through it, and I would be there to guide her and help her, if she let me.

  The cries finally subsided, as if Jolie had no more tears or breath to give. I held her in my arms, gently stroking her back, trying to calm her as much as possible.

  She pulled away and hastily got to her feet, her movements shaky. Her eyes were puffy and her face was tearstained, but she was still the most gorgeous woman in the whole world to me.

  “I’m so stupid,” she said in a ragged whisper. “You always tell me I’m smart, but look how dumb I am.”

  I shook my head. “You aren’t.”

  “All this time, I could’ve walked out the door and discovered the truth,” she said insistently. “But instead I stayed down there like a stupid cow, doing what I was told.”

  The anger was setting in, but she was turning it inward, aiming it right at herself.

  I grabbed her arm. “Jolie, listen to me,” I said urgently. “You were drugged almost every day of your life since you were a kid. Those vitamins you’re given all the time—they contain a sedative. It makes you calm and docile, and it makes you foggy too, so you can’t think properly.”

  Jolie sniffed. “So Elena was right about that too,” she said. She licked her dry lips. “I stopped taking them two weeks ago, you know. Just in case.”

  “Well, that explains why you’ve changed so much,” I said with a faint smile. “You’ve been daring lately, and you’ve let me in so far. You have no idea how proud I am of you.”

  She frowned. “Proud? That I was still too stupid to walk out of here even after I stopped taking the drugs?”

  “You were fucking brainwashed for over a decade. No one would ever think you’re stupid, baby girl. Besides, you should see the fence around the ranch. Even if you realized the truth and tried to leave, you wouldn’t make it far. The men would get you.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “We’re just slaves to them,” she said. “Aren’t we?”

  I nodded. This was good. Her anger was turning toward the men now, not herself. “Basically, yeah. All that shit about protecting you from the Wastelands… all bullshit.”

  “They made us feel guilty. Like we owed them,” she said. “They tortured us. They killed us.”

  “I know,” I said softly. A loamy scent was filling the air around us now. It was about to rain.

  She turned her narrowed gaze back at me. “I don’t understand. You came here and played along with my father’s lies for over a month,” she said indignantly. “Like Buddy. You said you found his tank in the Wastelands rubble, but you just went and bought it, right? And you didn’t fish him out of the water. They just had him at some sort of store for pets, I presume?”

  “Yeah.”

  She threw her hands up. “So why? Why did you play along with all the lies? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth about everything from the start?”

  “I tried. You wouldn’t listen. You thought I was sent by the Devil to test you, remember? I had to take it slow. Introduce a few new ideas here and there. Let you start to figure things out yourself.”

  “Oh.” Her face softened slightly. Then her eyes hardened again. “But why did you come to live here, Mason? I don’t understand that. You obviously don’t believe any of the stuff my father says.”

  “After my first visit here a few months ago, I was suspicious, but I had no proof. Nothing solid. So I decided to try and join. Gather everything I could. Then I could save you. The others, too.”

  She sniffed and wiped her face again as a raindrop fell on her cheek. “So… this thing between us. Was it ever real? Or did you just need to get me on your side to help you get evidence so you could take down the men here and save us all?”

  “I…”

  She held up a hand again, refusing to let me get a word in edgewise until she’d spoken her piece. “You told me why you came back and joined. But you haven’t said why you came to visit in the first place. What was that about? Surely not because you wanted to save me or anyone else. You didn’t even know what was going on back then.”

  I sighed. Without the vitamin pills blurring her mind, she was sharp as a tack. Nothing got by her anymore.

  “I’ll admit I didn’t come here in the first place with the purest of intentions, Jolie,” I began. “If you must know the truth, it was a sort of bet.”

  “A bet?” She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  “A friend of mine bet me I couldn’t sleep with one of the most unattainable women on the planet. I remembered you. I knew you were here, and I—”

  Her hand cracked across my face, the slap as loud as a clap. My head reeled backward from the surprise, and I touched my hand to my stinging cheek. I could tell there would be a welt left behind from how hard she hit me. “I deserved that,” I muttered.

  “So you just came here to seduce me,” she hissed. “All the things you said… they were all…”

  Now she was crying again, her words trailing off as her shoulders shook with sobs. Tears slid down her cheeks, tracing the dried lines from her earlier weeping and mixing with the fat droplets falling from the sky. The rainfall had turned from a drizzle to a light shower now, and her white nightdress darkened with moisture as she shivered.

  “Listen,” I said, wrapping my jacket around her shoulders. “I know I didn’t come here with the best intentions. But when I saw you and realized what was happening here, that all changed. Immediately.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she muttered.

  “Jolie, I came back for you. Getting into this commune was one of the hardest fucking things I’ve ever had to do, but I did it for you. I’d do it again. I’d do anything to have you in my life.”

  “Why?” she said, eyes still narrowed with distrust.

  I rubbed my jaw. “Because from the second I saw you, I felt something. All those things I’ve said to you about how I feel… it’s all true. I know it hasn’t been long, and I didn’t exactly come here with the intention of falling for someone, but that’s what happened. I’m falling for you, Jolie.”

  That was the raw truth. Seeing Jolie for the first time in eleven years hit me like a thunderbolt all those months ago. Like getting shot through the heart by fucking Cupid or something. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since.

  “You’re falling for me,” Jolie said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m pretty fucking sure I love you, baby girl.”

  “Pretty fucking sure,” she repeated slowly. “I don’t know if that’s—”

  “I love you. I do,” I said, cutting her off. “Look, I’m not good at saying all this stuff. Never have been. I’m sorry.”

  “You love me,” she whispered.

  “Yes. I know what I did was fucked up, and I’ll do anything to make it up to you. But I never lied about how I felt. How I feel.”

  Her eyes were wide as I spoke, luminous in the moonlight. She pushed back a str
and of hair and stood up on her tiptoes. “Show me,” she whispered.

  I touched a thumb to her cheek, stroking it gently over her face. The rain was falling harder now, and her blond hair was wetly draping over the perfect bone structure that drove me so wild. She was so fucking beautiful it made me ache. I wondered if she knew how crazy she made me feel. If she felt the same way.

  The rest of the world seemed to melt away around me as I leaned down and crushed my lips against hers, sliding my tongue into her hot mouth, tasting every sweet inch of her. It instantly felt as if we’d been transported to our own personal paradise, somewhere far away from the sinister confines of New Eden.

  The rain fell faster. Heavier. I didn’t care if the water soaked me through. I couldn’t wait to kiss her again and again. I needed to. So fuck the weather. Fuck the wet grass and dirt muddying up our legs and feet. Fuck everything else that wasn’t Jolie.

  “You came back for me,” Jolie murmured after we finally broke apart. “You really came back just for me.”

  “That’s right. You,” I replied. The rain was slowing, but she was still shivering. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, hoping to transfer my body heat to her.

  She suddenly began to cry again, wrenching sobs which broke my heart. I understood. She’d been through a massive shock. Discovered her entire life was a lie. She’d be jolted and heartbroken for a long, long time.

  I held her through it. Wiped her tears with my hands. Murmured comforting words, even though nothing I said could really take away the pain she felt right now.

  Finally she wiped her face again and looked up at me, determination sparking in her eyes. “Take me away,” she said. “Please. Take me to the police, or whoever it is out there who deals with animals like this.”

  By animals, I knew she meant her father and the Elders, not to mention the other older male members of the Path of the Covenant.

  I reached out and touched her lips again, a ghost of a smile on my lips. I’d often wondered if men like Jacob weren’t singularly motivated by a desire to enslave women and keep them down just for the perks it got them. I wondered if perhaps they were actually somewhat afraid of women; if they were frightened of the twisting, living thing that lay dormant in so many of them, white-hot rage stirring and readying itself to lash out after all the years of male suppression and dominance. I wondered if they were frightened of what could happen if all that anger was finally unleashed.

  If the men here had one woman in particular to be afraid of, it would be Jolie. They should be scared of her.

  “I want to get you out of here, more than fucking anything,” I said, stroking her softly. “But I can’t do it tonight. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of all the others,” I said. “There’s over a hundred other women here. Children, too. If you and I suddenly vanish in the night, the men might realize what’s coming, and they might enact some sort of backup plan. Your father is a very rich and powerful man, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he had another place just like this one. Somewhere he could hide everyone if he felt threatened.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Of course. I’m so selfish.”

  “No. You’re just eager to get the hell out of this prison now that you know the truth. And you will. I promise,” I said. “So will the others. I just need to get all the evidence I can possibly gather, along with some video testimony from you. I can’t do it alone, for obvious reasons. Will you help?”

  Jolie stared up at me, eyes brimming with angry tears, expression filled with thunder. “I want to destroy every last one of these men,” she said, chest heaving.

  I smiled. “So that’s a yes?”

  She nodded, steeling her jaw. “Yes. I’ll help.”

  16

  Jolie

  “My name is Jolie Chastain. I’ve been a prisoner at New Eden Ranch for eleven years, enslaved by the men from the Path of the Covenant cult.”

  I paused, waiting for Mason to zoom out with his video camera. He’d sneaked it in from outside so he could film my testimonial video. It was the last piece of evidence we needed for our case against my cruel father and all the other men here.

  We were in one of the Penance Rooms; the only place we could be together for longer than two minutes without people getting suspicious. We might be getting out of this place soon, but we still needed to be careful. I knew Mason worried endlessly about me, and while we’d been lucky so far, all it took was one person noticing something awry for our precarious house of cards to come tumbling down.

  Mason had told my father I showed him attitude when I was sent to clean his room yesterday, and he wanted to punish me to put me in my place. Of course, my sick, sadistic father said yes. He took pleasure in women’s pain. Even me, his only daughter.

  That worked out for us, though, because we needed at least half an hour to film this video, if not more.

  For the last three weeks, we’d quietly gathered whatever evidence we could. We needed it so Mason could send it to the higher authorities, like the FBI, because he was sure the local police had been paid off by my father to turn a blind eye to the goings-on at New Eden.

  Mason had given me a little camera to sneakily take photos of the living conditions in the women’s section, because that wasn’t something he could do on his own. There were too many people around during the day, when the candles were all lit, and it was too dark at night, seeing as all the lights were put out after a certain time in the evening.

  Women were basically invisible, though. Nothing more than little worker bees, here to do the bidding of men. Because of that, no one noticed me walking around with the little camera hidden in my bra, surreptitiously snapping photos of everything like Mason taught me to do.

  I remembered cameras from the old times, but this one was very new and modern. Until he showed me, I didn’t even realize it was actually a camera. It didn’t have film inside it like the one my mother used to take photos of me when I was a kid. Instead it had some sort of plastic chip which recorded all the data.

  Every evening, I slipped the chip to Mason when I served dinner. He would take it to a motel room in Amiens each morning, where he would upload the previous day’s photographs onto a big file on a laptop computer.

  He’d also spent a long time writing down everything he’d seen and heard during his time at New Eden; all the awful violations of human rights which went on under everyone’s noses out here. He’d even managed to sneakily make some voice recordings after encouraging my father and some of the men to talk about certain subjects.

  Lastly, he’d found some sort of tiny camera and attached it to the collar of his shirt so that the Joining rituals could be secretly filmed while he fucked me. This would demonstrate to the authorities how the men of the church ritualistically raped and abused the women, denying us agency and pleasure for their own sick desires.

  A few of the other men had actually asked Mason to share me during the last few Joinings, but he refused. I was his, and he made that very clear. I knew it annoyed the other men, but they couldn’t complain, seeing as my father had made it clear Mason and I would be married in the spring.

  “The room I’m in right now is one of the places where the men take us for punishment,” I said into the camera before stepping over to the rack where the whips and canes were stored. “They make us lie down on that trestle table while they torture us, with our wrists tied to the top, or they restrain us using the manacles on the wall.”

  Mason moved the camera around as I went, recording every word and movement.

  This video was for him to upload onto the internet, just in case the authorities didn’t want to listen or take him seriously. Mason said things could ‘go viral’ on there, and if my testimonial was seen by enough people, something would have to be done.

  We’d been filming for around forty minutes at this point. Before now, I’d talked about what happened eleven years ago and how we were tricked into staying underground. I’d talked
about the lessons we were taught, all designed to brainwash us and strip away our rights and dignity as girls and women. I’d talked about how we were taught to feel crippling guilt over feelings that Mason had explained to me were totally normal for humans to experience. Like desire. Anger. Curiosity. Doubt. Romantic love.

  I went on, explaining all the forms of punishment I’d seen and personally been subjected to. With halting movements, I stripped off my dress and stood in my underwear, twisting and turning to display each and every scar to the camera lens.

  After showing all the whip scars on my back and buttocks and explaining why I got them, I went on, pointing down to the faded pink and white scars on one arm. Mason zoomed in.

  “I’m sure you can see these horizontal cuts on my arms,” I said. “They are from a ritual we are forced to undergo after reckonings, where the victim is burned alive for whatever terrible sin she supposedly committed. We’ve been told that we are all responsible for the dead woman’s sins, as we are naturally dirty and sinful, and we must also be punished for whatever the other woman did. The men cut us and tell us the blood is sin leaking from our bodies, purifying us. They also terrify us with snakes and threats of hellfire.”

  I paused and took a deep breath. “This has been the reality of my life here for over a decade. It is still the reality of my life here. We are unwitting prisoners, and the men delight in our torture. My own father thinks I am in this room being beaten right now, and he was more than happy to give the order.”

  Mason stopped filming for me to take a short break. I was starting to crack, my emotions nearly stretched to breaking point.

  “Just a while longer,” he said gently. “I think you should mention Elena.”

  I wiped my eyes and nodded. “I agree.”

  He raised the camera again and told me to continue whenever I was ready. I put my dress back on and squared my shoulders.

  “My good friend Elena suspected the truth a while ago. She stopped taking the vitamins which dulled our minds, and then one evening she asked us all to sneak into the church with her so she could tell us about her suspicions. The men found out, and the next morning, she was dead. They told us she committed suicide. They said she was possessed by the Devil, and everything she told us was a lie, straight from his poisoned tongue. They made us…” My chest heaved, and I bit back a sob. “They made us thank Elena in a prayer. They made us thank her for killing herself and removing her evil presence from our lives. We swallowed it all. Hook, line and sinker.”