Chapter 21
Elijah stared out the window, furious that he was reduced to living in this hovel of a hotel. He pulled the phone from his pocket, relishing the moment when he would find Tara and bring her back home. He would enjoy explaining to her all of the various ways she had disobeyed the rules! He would be very enthusiastic on how he would temper her rebellion in the future.
Thirteen years. He’d been married to the woman for thirteen years! None of the other fathers had allowed him to marry any of the remaining young girls in the community. Nor had Ethan given permission for Elijah to take another wife. Apparently, the community thought he didn’t have the capacity to protect his women. About once a month, Ethan would give a sermon to the church members about the sanctity of marriage, about how men should protect their wives from the outside world, even if their wives or daughters wanted to experience the outside world. He preached about hellfire and brimstone that would consume anyone who left the sanctity of their protected world.
The other fathers pulled their daughters close whenever Elijah walked by, almost as if the shame of losing his wife was contagious.
Ethan had explored the world outside of their community several times, always bringing back evidence of Tara’s current location. He’d then ordered Elijah to retrieve his wife and explain how their world worked.
However, every time Elijah had gone out to find Tara, going to the exact location Ethan had given him, the girl had already vanished. There was evidence that Tara had been there, but every time, Tara and that bitch of a sister had escaped Elijah’s grasp.
He understood that they were terrified of the lessons that would need to be re-taught over and over once they were brought back to the protection of their home. And yes, Kaia would need to live with Elijah as well. Kaia was now Elijah’s sister-in-law and, therefore, under his authority. He would teach the bitch her place in their world. He would enjoy teaching Kaia how to behave properly as a woman. Yes, he would love to discipline that bitch, since he knew that Tara never would have left if her older sister hadn’t helped her. Tara was a timid little shrew.
Elijah rubbed his beard, thinking of all the wonderful, delicious ways he would discipline his wife. Yes, he’d seen a flash of Tara. She’d been on the news earlier tonight during some sort of press conference. He hadn’t understood the language, so Elijah had no idea what was being said. The only good thing he could say about his wife was that she was dressed modestly and her hair was pulled back appropriately. She hadn’t been wearing jewelry, which was also good, but he didn’t care about her adornment. It was her behavior that infuriated him the most.
No, to be honest, it was the fact that he hadn’t been allowed another wife. The fact that Ethan wouldn’t let him have a new wife after his first one ran away was the reason he was so angry with Tara.
But he would fix it. Eventually, Tara would return to her apartment. When that happened, he had everything in place. She would be trapped! He would then notify Ethan, who had arranged a way for him to get his reluctant wife home. Elijah had no idea what Ethan had planned, but was assured that it would make it so that he could get Tara out of the country without the airport security personnel stopping him.
That was all Elijah needed to know.
Now he needed to figure out where his mother and sister had been taken. The police had carted his women-folk away in handcuffs. Elijah suspected that his women had been taken to the police station, but he would worry about that later. Once he had Tara back under his control, then he could worry about his mother and sister. He figured that, at the moment, they were protected by the police and therefore couldn’t possibly be in danger.