Claire: The Forced Virgin Of The Billionaire

She nodded, “Of course. I don’t remember a Felicia.”

“She came shortly after you left.”

“She probably replaced me. When one goes they bring another.”

I felt nauseous.

“Did they say anything about me?” she asked softly.

“Yeah. They asked if I was taking responsibility. Said I was.”

She choked up, “I won’t let you down. I tried not to think about what if, what if they came for me. It tried to creep in but I just put the baby first, I…” she stopped and shrugged.

“Leese, you’re family. You’re pregnant with my brother or sister. My sisters love you. Me and Azriel would never let anything happen to you.”

Her face went sour.

“What?”

She shook her head, “Azriel.”

My scalp prickled and I knew by her face what she was referring to.

“Hey. You do not speak of that. You do not know. You think you know but you f*****g don’t.”

“I loved your uncle,” she said, “I know what you think of what he did, buying me, and buying her for you. But he gave me so much. He saved me, Drake. I loved him and Azriel took—”

“Shut up,” I warned. This was dangerous, “You and I are gonna need to talk about where you’re getting your information but we won’t talk about it here and now. All you need to know is that he’s gone. You don’t need other details but you need to shut your f*****g mouth about my brother.”

She stopped talking. Her face went stony. She was guarding her emotions now, doing what she’d been taught at Kruna.

“f**k,” I said and then reached into my pocket for my cigarettes.

“Drake, the baby,” she said as I lit one. I gave her an apologetic look and walked in the other direction, taking a few quick drags and then dropping it and stepping on it. I walked back to her and sat beside her on the bench.

“No one’s feeding me info, Drake. I have two eyes and a brain. Tessa and Luc know, too. No one talks about it but we can all guess what went down.”

“What’s your real name?” I asked her, ignoring what she’d just said.

“Shayla Townsend,” she whispered.

“How’d they get you?”

She took a deep breath, “They stole me off a cruise ship. I was 17. I had almost no family left, no one really close. My daddy died when I was little. Mom took us on a cruise when they found out her Cancer was inoperable. It was a girls’ trip together for us to make memories before her health declined.

I checked after your uncle saved me. She’d reported me missing. They’d said I probably fell overboard. It didn’t take long for it to just be a cold case and she died a few months later so there was no one to push for answers.”

I put my arm around her and she put her head on my shoulder. But she didn’t cry. Poor Leese. Stolen and forced to live knowing her Ma was dying not knowing what happened to her. I shook my head and let out a slow breath.

We were quiet a minute. When I asked Felicia about her family she shook her head. Maybe there was no one. Maybe that was a requirement for these guys before they took a girl. Maybe they made sure a mark had no one to look for her. Felicia had said they blackmailed her. I didn’t know the details yet. I’d find out.

I got to my feet, “Carry on as normal. I have to figure out what to do about this situation. I may ask for your help with her. For info about them. I dunno yet.”

She nodded, “I am very grateful to be a part of this family. I won the lottery as far as being a Kruna girl goes. I’m sorry for what I said about your brother. You’re right. I don’t know what happened. I just miss my husband.

I know your uncle was a man with secrets, more secrets than any of us knew about. I also know that he loved you all and wanted you to be happy. He wasn’t perfect but family was so important to him.

I guess he bought Felicia to make that happen for you. He told me he was worried about how cold your heart was after your engagement broke off.

He was so happy that Azriel and Claire fell in love and wanted love for you, too. He got me away from there and made my life better. And I did my best to make him happy. You can do the same for her and she for you. You can give her a beautiful life the way your uncle gave one to me.

You can have that too, be her winning lottery ticket, let her be the gift Tom intended and believe there was nothing underhanded about it.”

She shrugged and put her hand protectively over her belly, which wasn’t even rounded yet.

Nothing underhanded? My Uncle profited off the misery that Lisa, Felicia, and those other girls endured, for f**k sakes. f*****g basement holes and torture rooms and fear and rape. Now I’d imagined Lisa and Felicia in those f*****g solitary cells naked, cold, dirty, hungry, and f*****g broken.

And then I imagined my uncle sitting in those dining rooms and luxurious suites laughing and drinking and smoking a stogy like king of the f*****g world with Lisa at his feet waiting for him to feed her table scraps.

f**k.

“Let’s get you home,” I said through clenched teeth and we headed back to the car.

As we pulled up to the house she said, “Look at your brother. It doesn’t always start out right but it can get there.”

I didn’t reply. I passed her the keys and watched her walk to the house. I texted Nino to ask him if he could swing by and give me a lift home. I Skype called my brother from my phone. He didn’t answer.

As I was waiting it dawned that when I’d had dinner the last night at Kruna they’d said there would be “play” in the Townsend room. Lisa’s real name was Shayla Townsend.

I decided to add Lisa’s details to the puzzle, to give the information to Zack and see if it helped him get us more information.

Felicia’s POV

He was gone until after lunchtime. I’d gotten up, got dressed in a black pair of dress pants and a black blouse, put make-up on and flat ironed my hair, and I was sitting on the terrace with a cup of coffee and the cashmere throw from the sofa over me. It was getting chilly. The leaves were starting to change color. I hadn’t dealt with cold weather in 2 years and while I’d spent the previous almost decade in the frigid frozen tundra, this was an adjustment.

I caught something from the corner of my eye. He was back. He was standing at the patio doors, leaning against the wall, staring at me. He was in jeans and a t-shirt and his hair was wet. He must’ve been back a while and grabbed a shower.

His face looked hard, pissed. I swallowed past a lump in my throat and got to my feet. He opened the door for me and I went inside. He closed the door behind me. I gave him a tentative smile but my eyes quickly darted toward my feet when I saw the hard look on his face.

I walked to the kitchen sink and rinsed my cup and then put it in the dishwasher. When I turned around he was standing behind me, leaning against the island with his arms folded across his chest.

I stood still, eyes to the floor, waiting for him to address me.

“You straightened your hair,” he said finally.

I jolted. He’d told me at the resort that he preferred I didn’t but maybe I did it in an effort to behave myself. My hair was almost always straight at Kruna unless I was playing the naughty role. I pushed that thought away, avoiding the urge to analyze it, to think about anyone from there.

“Wanna go shopping?” he asked.

I was startled. That was not what I’d been expecting.

I lifted my chin and looked at him and nodded.

“Then let’s go,” he said softly and went to the table by the door where his keys and phone were.

“Can I have two minutes?” I asked.

He jerked his chin up in a ‘yes’.

I hurried to the bathroom and put on some more mascara and l*p gloss and then put a few things into one of the purses that had been packed for me, put on a pair of ballerina flats, and found him by the door. He was in jeans and a t-shirt, a leather jacket and sneakers and was standing by the door twirling keys on his index finger.

“You don’t have a coat?”

I shook my head.

He reached into a closet by the front door and handed me a black fleece-lined hoodie. It was too big for me but I put it on. It smelled like him. Smelled so good.

“Let’s go get you one.”

I’d been expecting him to come in and tell me that last night was a mistake and that it wouldn’t happen again. Then he’d be distant with me. After all, he was drunk and he didn’t mean to take advantage of me. He didn’t take advantage of me but I was waiting for him to act like he did.

Right now I didn’t know what to make of his demeanor. He was pissed off, as per usual, he’d left this morning without hardly looking at me, but now he was taking me shopping to buy clothes.

The elevator took us to the underground and he opened the passenger door to his SUV for me. When we pulled out of the garage onto the street I was struck by how odd it was to be in a moving vehicle again. I felt woozy.

He turned the radio on to some classic rock and I just stared out the window watching cars and people go by, living life, living normal everyday lives. We pulled into an enormous mall parking lot and I took the hoodie off and left it in the car, figuring I’d be inside and warm enough in a minute.

As I got out he came around to my side and reached for my hand. Yes, he still looked pissed but he was holding my hand as we walked inside. My heart was in my throat at that.

“What first?” he asked as we got into the enormous mall. It looked like it had a lot of upscale shops. He stopped in front of the mall directory and map.

“Ummm…” It felt like I was on another planet. I had spent half my life as a teenager in shopping malls. But after all this time, it was so strange, so foreign. So… normal.

This was a normal I had once prayed for but had long since given up on the notion of returning to my life. This was people, normal and free people around me exerting their free will and they were going about their day: teenaged girls laughing and walking while thumbing away on smartphones, women pushing strollers with babies in them, old people congregated around benches, couples holding hands.

I looked down at our hands with our fingers woven together and my heart lifted like a kite being pulled up by a gust of wind.

“Comfortable clothes?” He motioned toward a yoga store on the listing with his free hand. I nodded enthusiastically.

He motioned toward the shop, which was not far ahead of us, let go of me, which meant a small pain in my chest, that I thankfully was able to push back, and then he opened his wallet, handed me a credit card, and then leaned over and whispered in my ear, making me tingle, “Go nuts. Pin 3825.”

He sat on a bench and pulled his smartphone out of his pocket and started thumbing at the screen. I think I must’ve looked like a zombie for a second because he looked up and smiled and then jerked his chin toward the store.

I hesitantly went into the store, pushing back the urge to throw myself at his feet and hang onto his ankle. I took slow breath after slow breath to hold it together. The sales girl totally put me at ease.

After buying a few pairs of capri length and full length yoga pants, t-shirts, tank tops, and hoodies, I went to him and he took my bags and led me to a coat store where I bought two coats while he waited on a nearby bench with my bags. I’d bought a fall one and then a winter one as it would be snowing in the not too distant future.

I was kind of looking forward to seeing snow again so I could wear the gorgeous coat. After 7 years of living in Alaska, a place I’d never wanted to go, I never thought I’d say that I looked forward to snow ever again.

I didn’t want to take advantage but I didn’t want to insult him either by declining his kindness and it was fun. At first I had trouble deciding what I wanted and all the people around me was a little dizzying but salespeople were more than happy to make recommendations.

I got two pairs of jeans. I bought a pair of sneakers. And then he let me loose into a higher-end department store and I bought new underwear, some toiletries (like bubble bath), thick fluffy socks, and I bought three pairs of ladies’ winter pjs and a bathrobe. I bought 2 pairs of long pjs and one pair of super soft fleece pink and purple striped shorts with a matching hoodie.

“Anything else you want?” he asked as I emerged from the department store. He was seated on a bench with my shopping bags around his feet. He had a cup of Starbucks in his right hand and he held another Starbucks cup on his knee with his left hand. He passed it to me. My heart warmed.

“Thank you. I can’t remember the last time I had one of these.” Actually, no. I could remember. Suddenly I could remember it as clear as day, so clearly I could smell the November Juneau air.

It was on my way to the airport the day I’d left from Juneau airport to leave for Bangkok. Chills ran up my spine.

I sipped it. It tasted amazing. It was milky and sweet and it tasted like happiness in a cup.

“Anything else you want?” he asked again. He didn’t look pissed off. He was smiling at me.

“No. Thank you for everything. So much. I think I’ve subjected you to enough torture today and spent enough of your hard-earned money. Thank you, Drake.”

He gave me a small smile and then lifted my booty of shopping bags from the floor all into one hand and slipped handles over his wrist so he would carry his coffee in that hand. My non coffee holding hand had two bags in it. He took them from me and transferred them onto the already full wrist and then grabbed my free hand with his now free hand and we headed back to the car.

“Wanna go eat?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied as he opened the passenger door for me and tossed all my bags into the back seat.

He drove to a little Italian place not far from the mall. He seemed relaxed as we drove, happy even. As we entered a man in a suit approached.

“Ah, Mr. Drake! What a surprise! We are still getting ready for dinner but come, sit. We will look after you and the beautiful lady.”

“Nice to see you, Augustus. Is Ed in?”

“I don’t think so yet, Mr. Drake. He’s expected any minute. Please introduce me to this lovely lady!”

“This is…” He stopped and looked at me. His face was blank. I was relieved he didn’t introduce me as Felicia, that he remembered I didn’t want to be called that any longer.

“Angel,” I extended a hand to the older Italian man, “Nice to meet you.”

“Angel. Bella! Face of an angel, Mr. Drake. Such a beauty. So lucky, Mr. Drake, so lucky. Right this way.”

We were seated and Drake was studying me. I gave him a smile. He didn’t smile back.

He didn’t look angry but he was studying my face, trying to figure something out, I think.