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When he’s gone, I swallow and look at Gregory, who is watching me with silent interest, and all I can think is I’ll be his too.
What state will I be in by the time it’s his turn to have me?
Gregory turns and boards the plane, so it’s just me and Sebastian.
“My brother is right. You speak when spoken to. Get on the plane.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“You should be more respectful.”
“Where are you taking me?”
He exhales loudly, like he was expecting that, expecting me to be disobedient.
When he reaches out for me, I take a step back, but that big hand closes around my arm, and I’m trapped.
He smiles. “I knew you’d be like this,” he says, turning me, marching me to the stairs and up them and it’s like I’m ascending the scaffold to my execution.
A few minutes later, we’re seated inside the luxury jet and taking off into the night sky to a destination I do not yet know, to the beginning of a life I’m less and less sure I will survive.3SebastianI’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 fucking 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.
