Page 25 of A Princess, Stolen
I puffed out my cheeks as I exhaled like I was blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Once, twice, three times. I knew how to counter the panic since I had practiced it with Dr. Moore after the accident, after my nightmares triggered panic attacks.
“Twenty-one days,” I heard the man say, “that’s how long you have to hold out. By that time, your father should have met the demands. Do you understand?”
I nodded, my teeth chattering as if I was still fighting the waves and clinging to Dad. Twenty-one days. I had no idea how I was going to survive another minute at sea. Somehow, I managed to lie down, my cheek on the icy floor, my legs drawn up like a fetus. He had taken me back to my private holding cell and I heard he was still here. I closed my eyes in despair. Three weeks in this state, tied up and blind on a boat instantly felt like hell, like torture. No, it was torture. Even if he had just called me Willa, not princess. Even if he carried me instead of kicking me. Even if he was still standing there, not radiating only hatred. There was something else. Something warm and familiar that seemed almost comforting. He certainly thought I had passed out from fear. Perhaps that had softened his mood: knowing how scared I was. Perhaps it gave him satisfaction. Somehow, I sensed both, but I could be wrong.
I swallowed again against the tightness in my throat. I so desperately needed reassurance that nothing would happen to me here. And right now, he didn’t seem as hostile as before.This was my chance. And shouldn’t you talk to your abductors anyway? Show them that you were flesh and blood? That you loved and had feelings? That was what they always said in movies. But what could I tell him? He knew everything about me and he knew that I loved Dad, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. Besides, it would probably make him furious if I mentioned my father.Don’t provoke him, I heard Troy whisper in my mind. Maybe I should ask him something. But what? If his name was Nathan? Perhaps why Anger was his middle name? My mind was in absolute chaos. How could I get him to talk to me? I thought about the word that Troy had whispered to me, which I didn’t know.
“Tucekilemeur,” I whispered to myself, lying on the floor in a daze.
There was an awful long silence and then he asked in a dangerously low voice, “What did you just say?” It sounded ominous. Not warm, no longer comforting. “Repeat it! Now!”
“Tucekilemeur,” I whispered, full of fear.
He breathed in and out hard. I heard bitterness in it, and abruptly, he stepped toward me, so close now that his shoes were touching me. “My past is none of your business! My family is none of your business!” He sounded as if he wanted to drag me to my feet, slap me, or spit on me. I recoiled and he stopped. “Who told you that? Troy?”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“You have no right to say those words. To voice them aloud. To even think them! Not you! Especially not you…” I saw him in my mind, ashen with clenched hands. “I don’t want to hear another peep from you, okay?”
“But I…”
“Not a single word!” he spat in my direction. “Don’t forget what you are; a bargaining chip, a hostage, our prisoner. You’d better do what I tell you.”
I pressed my lips together. Nodded. Trembled.
When he finally stomped away, the bottom of the ship seemed to vibrate under his angry steps; it seemed as if he could light a fuse with his anger. WhateverTucekilemeurmeant, it flipped a switch. The only question was why Troy had told me if he knew how hot-tempered his leader was.
“My name is Willa Nevaeh Rae Hampton, I’m nineteen, and I have been abducted for ransom,” I whispered when he was gone. I couldn’t go crazy even if I started talking to myself. And in my mind, I heard Dad answer: “We’ll get through this, Willa Mouse.”
After Mom died, he had always said the same thing:We’ll get through this, Willa Mouse!When I was a child and too scared to climb up the ladder to the slide for a while:We’ll get through this!When I ended up in the hospital after a life-threatening allergic reaction and had to change my entire diet:We’ll get through this!
Dad and I had always been one. Inseparable and that’s how it would stay forever. “I’ll get through this,” I whispered now. “For you, Dad!”
And in my mind, he whispered:I’ll take good care of her! I promise.
Was that the last thing he ever said to Mom?
Chapter 7
“Well, have a nice dream, princess? Maybe about a prince?”
I flinched in shock, which earned me several dirty laughs. Uneasy, I turned my head. There must have been a few men standing around who had been watching me. I had probably dozed off briefly despite panicking, now, however, I was sitting against the wall with my knees pulled up, and burying my face in the soft fabric of Belle, which still smelled slightly of my floral perfume. I didn’t want these bastards to see how miserable I felt. There was a disgusting taste in my mouth, I was alternating between sweating and freezing, and the dress clung to my body like a second skin. Even though it was completely unimportant, I realized it was the first time I had worn the same thing twice in a row. I had never been tied up before either.
“Know what we do with you when done here?” I heard the man with the accent ask. I would have recognized him by his smell because he still stank of onions and cheap tobacco.
I shuddered. “Let me go,” I answered dully even though he sounded like he was leading up to something.
He laughed. “That what you think, prinsessa. Maybe we ship you to China on big freighter. In container with fish and crabs.”
I swallowed.
“Sometimes, those containers fall overboard,” another said, whose hoarse voice was new to me. “You probably know that, don’t you? In storms, for example, if you don’t tie them down properly.” The pungent smell of camphor filled my nose that I automatically associated with this man. “The container would probably sink to the bottom of the sea.” Now they were no longer laughing and I became aware of the hatred emanating from the camphor man. Whoever he was, he seemed to want to strangle me with his bare hands sooner rather than later. “And then you’ll sit in your cold coffin miles down, waiting for death. Do you know how dark it is down there? And how cold? Or what creatures lurk there? And I’m not just talking about sharks…”
I felt sick and cowered even more.
“Your father must pay,” the man with the accent continued, who, in my eyes, was still the murderer type. “I take photo for him now. Maybe you smile nicely.”
I sat there motionless.
