by Stella Hart
Torn
Original Sin Prequel
Stella Hart
Copyright © 2019 by Stella Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Introduction
1. Jolie
2. Jolie
3. Jolie
4. Mason
Sneak Peek
More Information
Introduction
A FREE peek into the dark, twisted world of a broken girl and her unrelenting future captor. Find out what goes on behind closed doors in the world’s most depraved cult…
When I first met Jolie Chastain, we were just kids. Our paths crossed for one short day before diverging, and now we’re worlds apart.
I’m richer than sin, and I always get what I want. Always.
Jolie is a member of the country’s most enigmatic cult, and almost everything about her is a mystery. There’s no mystery about how I feel once I catch a glimpse of her, though.
She’s all grown up now, and she has no idea she’s caught my attention. She has no idea I want her. She has no idea I’m searching for her.
When I find her, I’m going to conquer her. Own her. Maybe I’ll even decide to keep her.
Watch out, Jolie… I’m coming for you.
1
Jolie
August 22nd, 1999
Vermilion Parish, Louisiana
“He loves me, he loves me not…”
My friend Elena pulled two silky petals off a lilac-colored daisy she’d picked out of my mom’s favorite garden. She paused to wipe a bead of sweat off her pretty face and glanced up at me to see if I was still watching.
I nodded at her to show her I was, and then I peered over at the boy she liked. Adam Landry. He was the son of one of my father’s close friends, and he was also in the first grade with us at our school in the nearby town of Amiens. He was lanky with scruffy blond hair, and he was currently picking his nose and smearing his dirty finger on his shorts.
I wrinkled my own nose. I wasn’t sure what Elena saw in Adam, or any other boy. Boys had germs. At least that’s what I’d heard from most of the other girls at school. It made sense. From what my mom had told me, germs had something to do with colds and dirt and sticky things, and most of the boys I knew from church or school fitted that description. They liked to play in dirt and grass, and they never wiped their faces properly.
A lot of them were loud and silly, too. My father always said boys were much smarter than girls because that’s how God built people to be, but so far, I hadn’t seen much evidence of that. I did better in class than a lot of the boys in my grade, and Elena was even smarter. No one could ever beat her. She seemed to know the answer to everything, and I’d even heard a rumor that she was going to be put up a grade next year. Our teacher always described her as seven going on seventy, because she was so wise and knowledgeable.
“He doesn’t love me.” She gazed gloomily down at the ruined flower in her hand, her shoulders slumping.
“It’s okay. Dolls are better anyway,” I declared. “They don’t pick their noses.”
She giggled and yanked another flower out of the garden bed. “Maybe that was just a bad daisy. I’ll try again.”
I smiled patiently and watched her as sweat dripped down my neck and back, dampening my white Sunday dress. I didn’t really want to be out here in the sweltering summer heat, but my father had organized a spiritual retreat for our church this weekend, so I had to be a good girl and attend every single event, including today’s outside luncheon after the prayer sessions.
A massive white marquee tent had been erected a few feet away from the garden I was standing in. Most of the families from church were milling around or sitting in there, chatting and eating from the buffet tables my parents had set up in the center of the tent. Elena and I had been in there for a while earlier, but it was actually even hotter and stuffier under the marquee than it was outside in the garden because of all the other people.
As much as it annoyed me that I’d lost my whole weekend to this boring stuff when I could be playing or reading in my cool air-conditioned bedroom instead, I suppose it made sense for the retreat to be held here on our family estate, given how big it was.
Before he started preaching and building his own church community, my father had been a very successful businessman. Because of all his hard work back then, we lived on a huge ranch property with a restored plantation mansion sitting in the center of it all. The ranch took up many thousands of acres with expansive sugarcane fields, murky swamps and large patches of woods surrounded by stretches of green grass. More space than anyone could possibly need.
The house was also far too big for just my parents and me. I loved growing up in it anyway, because it made me feel like a princess every day. It was white with huge pillars and a wide balcony running along the outside edges, and the main entrance had a huge carved arch over it which made it look like a grand palace doorway from one of my storybooks.
The inside was just as nice with sweeping stairways and huge rooms. My father had carefully decorated the place with expensive furniture and artwork. He always said we had been blessed with such a beautiful home because our God had chosen him as his messenger and given us many gifts in return for his service. I wasn’t sure if that was true or not, because my mother didn’t like the house anywhere near as much. She said she thought it was haunted, rather than some sort of gift from above.
I’d asked her what she meant by that a few months ago, and all she said was that bad things used to happen in places like this. She said I would learn all about it soon, but for now, she wanted me to have another year or so of what she called ‘blissfully-ignorant innocence’. She said she thought all children deserved to have that.
“He loves me!” Elena crowed triumphantly, holding up the newly-stripped flower. Her blue eyes were lit with joy. “Now we need to find a boy for you!”
I folded my arms. “I told you, I like my dolls better. I don’t really want a boyfriend.”
She pressed on anyway. “What about Danny? He’s the same age as us and he’s cute.”
I shrugged. “He’s okay, I guess. But I don’t like him like that.”
As I spoke, I raised my eyes over Elena’s shoulder and looked down our long driveway. It was lined on either side with live oak trees which seemed to reach toward each other across the road with their long, twisting branches. Spanish moss hung off them like a flimsy green curtain, swaying in the gentle breeze. I’d always loved the way the oak alley looked, but that wasn’t why I was staring now. An unfamiliar black car was making its way down the drive, stirring up dust as it drew closer.
“Who’s that?” I asked, squinting in the harsh sunlight.
Elena turned around and glanced at the car. “I don’t know. I thought all the families were already here.”
We watched as two adults got out along with a tall boy I assumed was their son. He was much older than us—probably fifteen or sixteen—and I drew in a sharp breath as I caught sight of him. Maybe boys weren’t so gross after all. This one was clean and looked like he could be a model in a clothing catalog.
His hair was dark, almost black, and he was tanned with a broad chest and strong arms. I couldn’t see his eyes from where I was standing, but I could see the general features of his face, and it made my heart feel fluttery. My legs wobbled slightly and my tummy started to feel funny. Sudde
nly I completely understood the appeal of having a boyfriend.
Was this what Elena meant when she said she loved Adam?
“Wow,” she said breathlessly, echoing my thoughts. “He’s way cuter than Danny. He should be your boyfriend instead.”
The sun had turned my cheeks warm earlier, but now they felt like they were burning up from a fever. “I wonder who he is,” I murmured as the boy stepped over to my father with his parents. My father greeted them all with hearty handshakes and a bright toothy smile before leading them into the marquee.
When I lost sight of the handsome boy, I felt a strange pang in my chest. I wanted him to come back so I could look at him again.
Elena turned and stared at me, her eyes flashing with amusement. “You totally like him!” she teased. “Your face is so red!”
“I don’t even know who he is,” I mumbled, but she could see straight through me. She always could.
She leaned down and plucked yet another flower from the garden. “I’ll do one for you. He loves you, he loves you not…”
The first few flowers said the attractive stranger didn’t love me. That wasn’t surprising, considering we’d never even met. Elena was undeterred, though. She grabbed another daisy with a smile, confident that this one would finally prove that the boy would wind up as my future husband.
“He loves you, he loves you n—”
A dark shadow fell over us, and Elena stopped abruptly. I looked up to see my father staring down at us with narrowed eyes. He ripped the flower out of my friend’s hand and crushed it under his black shoe. “I think your parents are looking for you, Elena,” he said stiffly, dismissing her without expressly saying it.
She mumbled goodbye to me and darted away. She’d always been frightened of my father.
To tell the truth, I was a little afraid of him sometimes as well. He could be very loud and passionate about his beliefs, and sometimes he even scared my mother with the things he said and did. I knew because I heard them argue sometimes, and whenever I heard the tinkling of breaking glass or china in whichever room they were in, followed by my mom’s frightened screams and shouts, it made me jump too.
My father would always comfort me afterwards and say that nothing was wrong with their marriage, and they would never get divorced. It was just that Mommy was feeling emotional because she disagreed with some of his teachings and wanted him to stop. That was a woman’s burden, he told me—always feeling emotions instead of logic and reason. That was why we needed men to make the big decisions in life, so nothing became clouded with silly feelings.
Secretly, I wasn’t sure that emotion thing was entirely true. Mom’s best friend from church had two sons around my age, and they were way more sensitive than me. One of them—Danny, the boy Elena talked about before—even cried when he accidentally stepped on an ant the other day.
Also, with the way my father carried on sometimes, yelling and banging his fists on the church pulpit when he delivered his sermons, I suspected he had a lot of feelings too. I didn’t like disagreeing with him, though, so I kept those thoughts private and nodded whenever he spoke to me, pretending to agree.
Besides, he was a very smart man, and he had also been gifted with a great amount of knowledge from our God. I knew that. So maybe he was right. Maybe there were a lot of things I was still too young to understand properly, and a lot of things my mom simply wasn’t smart or logical enough to understand.
“What was she doing just then?” he asked sharply, his eyes still narrowed as he watched Elena run off.
I bit my bottom lip. “Nothing. Just picking flowers.”
He sighed and stooped down to my level. “You don’t need to lie to defend your friend, Jolie. I heard what she was saying. She was trying to use the flower to divine secret knowledge.”
“It’s just a game,” I mumbled, averting my eyes. I knew better, though. My face felt awfully warm with shame, and my lungs suddenly revolted against the humid air, making me let out a nervous cough which only made me look more suspicious.
“It’s not a game. It’s very similar to witchcraft, darling. You don’t want to be an evil witch, do you, my little lamb?” he asked. His voice was light and airy and he’d addressed me with my favorite nickname, but his eyes were steely and his jaw was set. He was in a dangerous mood.
I gulped as tiny spikes of fear rushed through me. “No.”
“Next time she wants to play a sinful game like that, you say no, and you say it firmly. Okay? We only follow the new God here. We don’t let the Devil near us in any form, even if it seems like a fun little game.”
“Okay,” I said in a small voice.
“And no more talk of boys. You’re far, far too young to even think about boys.”
“I told her I like dolls anyway. Not boys.”
He smiled and rubbed my left shoulder. I breathed a quick, quiet sigh of relief. His bad mood had passed as quickly as it came on. “Good girl. Now, I want you to do me a favor. Go and take some beignets to the Ashwoods and introduce yourself. Maybe show them around a bit. I would’ve talked to them for longer myself, but I’m expecting an important phone call in a few minutes, so I have to go inside.”
“The Ashwoods?”
He pointed at the marquee. The new couple and their son were lingering by the very edge now, casting wary glances at the gathered church folk. “Frank Ashwood and I did some business together a few years ago. He and his family are visiting our state at the moment, and he remembered me mentioning where we live, so he thought it might be a nice idea to drop by and visit us.”
“So they aren’t from the church?”
“No. But they are our guests for the time being, and we welcome everyone, don’t we, my little lamb?”
I nodded. “I’ll go and say hi.”
My father was right. It was the polite thing to do. Besides, it would give me the opportunity to see the handsome boy up close and talk to him.
I walked into the marquee and headed over to the left buffet table. A plate of my mom’s beignets sat close to one end. I grabbed three of them and put them on napkins before making my way over to the Ashwood family.
They didn’t see or hear me coming, so they kept talking amongst themselves. One thing I’d noticed about adults was that their hearing was never as good as mine. I regularly overheard a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to, and this conversation was no different.
“We can’t just leave. It looks rude if we show up somewhere and then dash away less than fifteen minutes later,” Mrs. Ashwood was saying. Her accent was the same as mine.
“Well, I didn’t know they had some crazy event going on,” Frank said, brows drawn together in a frown. He obviously wasn’t from our state. His accent sounded similar to the people from my mom’s favorite TV show, Friends. I wasn’t supposed to watch adult shows, but I sneaked out and watched it sometimes when she didn’t know I was awake, because I thought it must be good if she liked it.
“Have you heard the shit they’re all spouting?” Frank went on.
Mrs. Ashwood shrugged. “Not really, to be honest. I’ve been too busy admiring the house and all the trees.”
“Just look at the pamphlet one of them handed me, for Christ’s sake. It’s insane. They’re all brainwashed.”
“You know, for someone who isn’t religious, you sure do take the Lord’s name in vain a lot,” she said. She didn’t look angry at the blasphemy, though. Her eyes were twinkling and her lips were curved in a half-smile. She was amused.
Frank thrust one of the spiritual retreat pamphlets at her. “Look at it. Jacob Chastain has lost the fucking plot,” he said in a low voice. “He was a decent guy back in the day, but holy shit, this is literally doomsday cult material. All this ‘the end is nigh’ and ‘repent your sins to Him before the Millennium arrives’ shit… it’s all over the place here, and the people are swallowing it far too fucking happily. Some of them look damn well dazed. They even call him ‘Prophet Jacob’. This nutso shit is not exactly what I had
in mind when I decided to come and visit.”
“Well, we don’t want to be rude. We’ll hang around a little longer, just to be polite, and then we’ll make our excuses and leave,” his wife replied in an insistent tone. “Besides, crazy cult stuff aside, this property is just gorgeous, isn’t it?” she went on, casting a dreamy gaze around with one hand outstretched. “I actually came here on a school trip when I was a child, before the Chastains owned it. It’s an incredible spot. All the natural beauty this parish has to offer rolled into one patch of land.”
Frank chuckled. “You sound like a damn tourism campaign for the state,” he said, rubbing her arm affectionately. “But okay, fine, we’ll stay a while longer. It’s nice for Mason to see the area his mom grew up in, I suppose, even if the experience comes with a rambling cult leader.”
Now I knew the boy’s name. Mason.
By now I was standing awkwardly by the Ashwoods, waiting for a lull in the conversation so I could introduce myself and give them the sweet treats. The wife suddenly noticed me as she looked toward the house again, and her eyes widened in a flustered expression. “Oh! Hello, sweetie. Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
I didn’t let on that I’d heard their insulting conversation. It would be very awkward, and I knew the right thing to do was to forgive them for their ignorance and move on. They didn’t know any better, after all, because they weren’t members of our church and hadn’t heard all the teachings. They didn’t know that my father occasionally received messages directly from the heavens, either.
“Hello. I’m Jolie Chastain,” I said with a smile, holding out the napkins. “My father asked me to bring you some beignets. My mother made them.”
“That’s very sweet. Thank you. I’m Marie, and this is my husband, Frank,” the woman said. I was surprised to hear her talk. Usually the head of a family would speak up above the others, and that was always a man. “And this…” Marie went on, touching her hand to her son’s arm. “This is our son Mason.”
