Captured (erotic) (#5, 101 Nights)

Chapter Three: Alisha

Layla is everywhere. Every television news broadcast, internet forum, and news website. I read the articles for hours, seeking some piece of information hidden in the official press release, conspiracy theories and ill-informed gossip pages that might help me find Natalie.

There’s absolutely nothing useful, aside from the fact that Layla is here in Nijala, which means George was right. Hasan brought the teen and Natalie back to the kingdom, probably on the king’s orders. I don’t understand why the king chose now to reveal Layla, since I suspect she’s been in country for much longer.

The pictures of the girl make me pity her. I almost think she was better off with Natalie wherever they were than being thrust into the spotlight. One day, she was a normal American teen with a disability trying to make it through the awkward stage of puberty where she didn’t fit in anywhere.

The next, she’s a princess headlining every newspaper and blog. Standing next to her smiling father in most pictures, she appears at the very least bewildered, if not outright terrified of the circus around her. I have no idea what it’s like for her, since she has no memory of the people claiming to be her relatives. She knows only her brother, George, and the caretaker she was taken from.

I hope Malika is able to protect her. I don’t understand why Elijah was hiding her, except that there were allegations of abuse long ago from sources I dug up.

Nothing is getting me closer to Natalie.

Upset, tired, I roll off George’s bed, where I’ve remade my nest of laptops and pillows, and pace into the living area.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see the body of the man who tried to attack me. I avoid the living room. The tremor of fear inside me comes to life again. The coffee table is gone, the sole sign that something happened. I can’t help thinking the guy was dead, even though George said he wasn’t.

George is the last person to care about my feelings. If the guy were dead, he’d tell me.

And I’d ball my eyes out for the rest of my life.

Taking my mind from the horrible experience, I walk onto the balcony overlooking the gardens of the courtyard. I’ve been waiting for the blue butterflies to appear without finding them and lean against the railing. The sun blazes overhead, and I look around at the quiet palace framing the courtyard.

Somewhere in the maze of a palace, Layla is hidden away. Scared, alone, trying to figure out her new world. I relate to the teen without ever having met her. Does she know her father kidnapped her? Does she know who Hasan is? Where Natalie is?

What if she’s afraid to say? What if Hasan or her father threatened her?

Despite the weirdness between us, I take comfort in knowing George is looking out for the little girl as well as Natalie. He’s so much tougher than I am. I accidentally defeat a bad guy and spend half a day traumatized in the kitchen, terrified of leaving.

How does he do what he does? What made him not even blink when he saw the mess in the living room? He tried to comfort me of all things. He didn’t give a shit about the wounded man bleeding in his living room and seemed not to be concerned about me drugging him.

He was nice again. It’s moments like those when I can’t think of anything else except for how warmly he regarded me and how gentle his touch was after watching him beat someone near death with those same hands.

George leaves me confounded.

Unable to help anyone from here, I return to the bedroom and throw myself down in the center of my nest. I’m waiting for some encryption software to finish off what I started in hacking into the secure lines of the Nijalan Security Bureau. My laptop is alternately sifting through all the legal ways into Nijala and accessing the databases of passenger data, so I can see if Hasan slipped up anywhere. My gut tells me he didn’t enter the country through legal or overt means, but I gotta do something. It’s virtually impossible for someone to move around with no electronic trace. I just have to find the string I need to pull to unravel the whole thing.