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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.”
