Taken: Original Sin Book 1

by Hart, Stella

  It made sense. She’d been brainwashed for eleven years, ever since she was a young child. All she responded to in men was fear, violence and cruelty, so I should’ve known it would take more than me simply telling her my version of the truth. It would take a hell of a lot more than that.

  She truly believed in all the things she’d been taught over the years, because she had no other choice. Down here, it was ‘believe or die’ for the girls, and punishments for even the smallest of so-called sins were more brutal than I could’ve imagined. Just a simple lie about saying hello to an outsider earned Jolie several lashes down in the Penance Rooms.

  I shuddered at the memory.

  When I yanked her to her feet after the caning that evening, her pink nipples were rock hard and the dark curls of her pubic hair were damp and glistening with arousal. Her chest was heaving with excitement. She’d been conditioned for so long to believe that pain was a wonderful thing that she enjoyed it just as much as she disliked it. She even thanked me for it.

  It was so fucking twisted.

  I didn’t want to hurt her that night, but if I didn’t, one of the other men would’ve done it instead. Also, like Jolie said, if I took her into that room and brought her out unscathed, they’d know I was up to something and they’d cast me out of this place before I was able to gather any solid evidence or testimony from the girls.

  Unfortunately, as tempting as it was, I couldn’t just call the police and get them to raid New Eden now that I knew how sick and twisted it was in these dark depths. Knowing Jacob and his wealth, he probably had quite a few connections in high places, and he would very likely receive a warning that a raid was about to take place. They’d be able to hide everything. Cover it all up like they did every other time someone came here. Then it would only be my word against theirs, and, of course, I would never be allowed to step foot anywhere near New Eden again after my betrayal.

  So I had to stay and bide my time. Slowly introduce things to Jolie in the short stolen moments we got together. Say the right things here and there and let her figure out some of the stuff on her own. That was the only way she would finally listen and understand the truth.

  While I was trying to make that happen, I would also be able to learn everything I possibly could about the practices of this place. The more information I had, the harder it would be for the cult to cover things up once I finally went to the authorities with everything I knew and got Jolie the fuck out of here.

  I just had to hope it didn’t take too long to convince her and the others of the truth, though. There was only so long I would be able to keep my mouth shut about all the horrors here in the commune. Only so many times I would be able to feign tiredness or sickness at the weekly Joining rituals so that I didn’t have to touch any of the girls. Only so many times I would be able to prevent the other men from touching Jolie…

  At the most recent ritual—the night before last—Jolie thankfully hadn’t been in attendance. Apparently she had her period, and menstruating women weren’t allowed near the men, as they were considered to be ‘unclean’. The cleanliness thing was bullshit, but if it meant a whole week would go by without some prick shoving his cock in her mouth (or having to do it myself just to prevent any other guy from going near her), then I counted that as a blessing. It was the first thing I’d felt grateful for since my arrival at this godforsaken place.

  “It usually takes a while for new members to acclimate, but you’re doing well,” Jacob said as he speared some eggs with his fork.

  I nodded and kept my fake smile plastered on. He and the Elders were still pleased with how keen I’d been to jump right into the harrowing abuse of women in this place. At least that’s what they thought.

  I spied a familiar honey-blonde head out of the corner of my eye. On the other side of the dining room, near the entrance to the main kitchen, Jolie and four other girls were walking in single file. Each of them carried cleaning equipment. Buckets, mops, brooms, dusters.

  I tried to catch Jolie’s eye. As if sensing someone was staring, she turned her head to the left and looked in my direction. She didn’t seem to notice me, however. Her eyes were distant, vacant. She almost looked dazed. The rest of the girls were the same.

  “Looks like the girls didn’t get much sleep last night,” I said, turning back to Jacob.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They look exhausted.” I nodded toward the procession of dazed young women as they headed out of the dining room.

  “Oh.” Jacob laughed. “No, they’ve just been dosed. It’s their duty to clean the mansion today.”

  I must’ve looked confused, because he smiled and patted me on the back. “There’s still so much for you to learn about our ways. You didn’t think we clean the mansion, did you?” he asked.

  “It hadn’t occurred to me,” I admitted, although now that he said it, I felt pretty damn stupid. The mansion was always in tip-top shape, and it wasn’t like the men out here ever lifted a finger to clean anything. “When I first visited the ranch before joining, you said the women were too scared to go up there.”

  “That was before you were a member, so I had to lie. Sorry about that,” Jacob said. He leaned back and patted his stomach, seemingly full already.

  I frowned. “What did you mean when you said they were dosed?”

  “Well, it takes almost a whole day for a team of them to clean the whole mansion, and as you know, they all believe it’s too dangerous for women to leave the safety of the shelter for more than a few hours at a time. So... you know the vitamin pills we give them every day?”

  I nodded. I’d seen the girls taking them, and it made sense. They spent the vast majority of their lives underground, never seeing the sun, and serious Vitamin D deficiencies could occur if the men didn’t provide supplements for them.

  Jacob leaned forward. “The tablets don’t just contain vitamins. They contain a certain type of sedative too. Not so much something that makes them tired. More like…” He trailed off and pressed his lips together, presumably searching for the right words.

  My stomach lurched. “Something that dulls their minds and stops them from thinking properly?” I said. “Makes them more docile?”

  He grinned. “Yes. Exactly,” he replied. “Anyway, give ‘em a high enough dose and they won’t even realize what they’re doing or where they are. They won’t even remember any of the day when they wake up the next morning. The memories will just be gone. It’s too dangerous to dose them up that high on a regular basis, but every so often is fine.”

  “So a different team of girls goes up to the mansion every week?”

  He nodded. “Yes. If we rotate the schedule like that, each girl only gets mega-dosed every few months. No real risk of damage.”

  “Smart.” And by that, I mean sick. “And they never figure it out?”

  “No. They take the pills happily.”

  I nodded slowly and cast my gaze around the dining room, coolly assessing all the other men. “Can I ask you something else?” I asked, turning my attention back to Jacob a moment later.

  “Of course.”

  “There’s over a hundred and fifty men here, and you’ve had this place up and running for almost twelve years. How is it possible that in all that time, not one man has ever turned his back on the lifestyle and tried to tell the women the truth? Or the general public?”

  Jacob took a sip of coffee and nodded as I spoke. “Good question,” he said after swallowing and wiping his mouth with a white cloth napkin. “A few men have actually betrayed us in the past. Or at least they’ve tried.”

  My muscles turned rigid. “What happened?”

  “Sometimes our teachings just don’t take with the young men,” he said with a shrug. “On other occasions, we’ve had a new member live amongst us for a while and wind up deciding it’s not for him. All of those cases were managed.”

  I leaned in with a frown. “You mean you killed them?”

  He tipped his head back and roar
ed with laughter. “Oh, heavens, no. We don’t kill men.”

  Right. Murdering women was apparently fine, but the mere suggestion of a man being killed was ridiculous.

  Jacob went on. “In the cases of the new members who changed their minds, they turned their backs on us, but they didn’t tell the women anything, and they kept their mouths shut when they returned to the outside world. We have information on them, you see. Information which ensured their silence in return for ours.”

  Ah, of course. The blackmail.

  Considering the type of men they admitted here—total sick pieces of shit—it made sense that the other members who’d joined over the years had dark pasts they didn’t want coming back to bite them in the ass. It wouldn’t surprise me if half of them were child molesters or something equally awful.

  “I think they also know we’d come after them if they ever tried. As much as we despise the idea of killing a fellow man, if we felt threatened enough, we might just have to go ahead and do it. But of course, we always try our hardest to negotiate before things come to that. Like we did with young Eric Carmody.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He was a young man we raised. He would’ve been around nine or ten when we brought him here with the others back in ‘99. He always seemed like a good boy, but when he learned the truth as he came of age, he wasn’t too happy. I could always tell something was off with him. He liked women a little too much.”

  “In what way?”

  “I think he just remembered too much from the past about all the equal rights nonsense and so on. Never outright said it, but I could tell he didn’t like us keeping the women down here all the time.” Jacob sighed, and his brows knitted in a deep frown. “Anyway, he wound up having an affair with a girl his age named Rebecca Brady. She was married to Thibodeaux.”

  He looked down the table at Elder Thibodeaux. He was stuffing toast into his mouth, completely oblivious to our conversation.

  “This actually happened not long before you came to visit us a few months ago. Eric was overheard trying to tell Rebecca the truth about the outside world. Apparently they’d been having this affair for quite some time, months even, and he’d finally decided he was in love with her and wanted her to know the truth so they could leave together. Fortunately, they were caught and restrained immediately after that conversation was overheard. We removed Rebecca’s tongue before she could repeat anything to the other women, and then she was dealt with later in a reckoning. Adultery is one of the worst sins, you know.”

  “Yes.” Bile rose in my throat. “She was burned, right? As is instructed for dealing with adulterers in His Word?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Eric?”

  “Excommunicated. He wound up in Baton Rouge, staying with a second cousin he knew from before.” Jacob licked his dry lips before continuing. “The thing some men don’t realize is you can never really leave this place. Even though Eric was banished, we had a few people out there keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t get any funny ideas.”

  “I’m guessing he did.”

  He nodded. “The cousin’s internet search history suggested Eric had been using his computer to look up phone numbers for local news stations and papers. It looked an awful lot like he might be considering going to the media and talking about us. He knew better than to involve the cops, you see, just in case we had an ‘in’ with them.” He tapped the side of his head. “So anyway, when we learned what he was up to, we arranged a little car accident.”

  My blood ran cold. Christ, I wished I had a recording device on me right now. Why didn’t I think to bring one to every meal?

  “I thought you said you don’t kill men,” I said stiffly.

  “I said we don’t unless we have to. Nevertheless, Eric didn’t die. He was only injured. A couple of us went to visit him in the hospital and made it abundantly clear what would happen if he ever tried to talk.”

  “I presume he was told that next time he wouldn’t just be injured.”

  Jacob grinned. “You really are one of us, Mason,” he said. “Anyway, that’s what happens with men who leave us. Either they’re too scared to talk, or…”

  He trailed off. He really didn’t need to say the rest.

  Even though he was acting all chatty and smiley with me, his words contained a veiled threat. Try to leave or screw us in any way, and the same thing will happen to you. Live the rest of your life in fear, or don’t live at all. You can never really leave this place…

  “I’m going to go to the church and read His Word for a while. It’s so much more enlightening than other religious texts,” I said once I’d polished off my eggs. I didn’t really want them, but I was hungry, and the Elders would be suspicious if I didn’t eat.

  Jacob looked pleased at what I’d said. “See you at lunch.”

  I headed down the hall toward the expansive underground chapel. The pews were uncomfortable, but the architecture was quite impressive. All around the top of the stone walls were elaborate carvings and faux stained glass windows with small lights behind them which made them look like real windows catching rays of sun.

  On my way to the front of the church, I noticed several girls on their knees, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. Their pale blue dresses reminded me of Jolie. My Jolie.

  My cock ached as I recalled the way she stood in front of me the other night and removed her dress, her movements halting and anxious. Her figure was slim yet curvy in all the right places, and her green eyes were bright and luminous even in the dim lighting surrounding her. I craved her more than I’d ever craved anyone or anything else in my life. If I hadn’t been there for such screwed up reasons, I would’ve wanted to tear her dress off myself and ravage her like a fucking animal.

  That wasn’t possible, though. Not under those circumstances. She deserved better.

  She needed time to adjust and understand the truth of her situation, and I needed time to become the most dominant figure in her life. That would draw her to me above all the other men in this place, and only then would I be able to enjoy all of her. Devour her like I wanted to the second I laid eyes on her gorgeous face…

  Oh, Christ, it was going to be so hard to pretend with her until that moment came. So hard to pretend I was just like all these other guys, only darker and crueler and therefore more enticing to a faithful girl like her, who believed so strongly that men must behave in an abusive way to prove their devotion and affection toward women.

  It would be especially hard considering how much I already cared for her after returning to her life only a few short months ago, despite our infrequent interactions. I still wasn’t even sure why I wanted and needed her so badly. Only that I did.

  Maybe there really was a higher power out there, and it had kept Jolie in my thoughts and pulled me back to her when she really needed me. Like fate.

  Then again, fate sometimes needed a little helping hand…

  I made a left at the front of the church and stepped through a little arched doorway which led to a small nook. It contained shelves lined with copies of His Word for church services, and a small chalkboard.

  On the chalkboard was a schedule for this week’s Faith Formation evening.

  The event was held every two weeks, and from what I’d been told, it was essentially a group of plays put on for the children and toddlers of New Eden to teach them important lessons from His Word. Apparently it was more ‘fun’ and interactive than making them sit through long, dragging scripture lessons every single day, though if I had to guess, I’d say it wasn’t actually any normal human being’s idea of fun.

  As a relatively young and unmarried man, I’d been asked to participate in the plays. My name was down on the chalkboard next to a girl named Martha Chase. She must be Elder Chase’s daughter.

  Frowning, I moved my index finger down the board until I spotted Jolie’s name. She’d been assigned to a short performance with some guy named Danny Miller.

  “Sorry,
Danny, whoever you are,” I said with a thin smile, rubbing out Jolie’s name. I replaced it with ‘Martha Chase’. Then I rubbed out Martha’s name next to mine and wrote Jolie’s name in the empty spot.

  That would get us some time together without making anyone too suspicious. After all, we needed to rehearse our play, right?

  My grin grew wider as I saw the theme next to my name; the deadly sin our play had to be based on. Lust.

  Well, well… this actually might be kinda fun.

  11

  Jolie

  “This is too heavy.”

  Lauren grumbled from beside me as we carried heavy baskets of folded clean clothes to the men’s section of the shelter. Some of the other girls had spent all day yesterday scrubbing the clothing before leaving them to dry for Lauren and me to deal with today.

  I wasn’t sure what I did yesterday. It was the strangest thing. I kept trying to remember what I did, but all I could remember was breakfast and then… blank.

  This happened sometimes, though. My father said it was normal for women. Our brains weren’t big enough to retain every single memory, or something like that.

  I returned my attention to Lauren. She was right. The baskets were heavy. I’d barely noticed the weight until she mentioned it, however. We’d passed Mason in the hall a moment ago, and at the mere sight of him, my head had turned dizzy and warm. I could’ve sworn a small scar on the back of my leg began to tingle and burn at the same time.

  It was a scar he made with the cane a couple of weeks ago; a thin pink stripe across my pale skin which would probably fade in a few months. I’d managed to sneak into a room with a mirror to look at it the other day. I loved seeing it on me, and I didn’t want it to disappear. It reminded me of how Mason made me feel that night in the Penance room.