“I will,” I promised. I was too distracted by all the stuff I still had to pack before my Peter Pan bus left for NYC to cross the room and hug her.
Not giving her a real goodbye was something I'd come to regret in the years to come. If I'd known this would be the last time I would be seeing her, I would've made the moment count.
I would've thanked her for being the best friend I'd ever had, and I would have apologized for what was about to come next in what we’d both assumed would be a lifelong friendship.
But I didn't know that back then. So I just let her go with a little wave.
And when a knock sounded on my door five minutes later, I climbed over all my boxes with a self-deprecating, “Hold on, just have to get past all of these suppressed emotions.”
I opened the door with a teasing grin. “Did you forget something?”
But the smile dropped off my face when I saw the person standing on the other side of the door. The man who was definitely not Lena.
It had been over four years, but you don't forget a face like his.
Phantom.
Phantom was standing at my door.
26
I woke up… I couldn't have told you how much time it was later. At first, I assumed I must be on the Peter Pan from Massachusetts to New York.
But no…
Wherever I was, it smelled expensive. In a faintly familiar way. Like leather and expensive Japanese whiskey. And suddenly, I knew exactly where I was, even before I opened my eyes.
Still, I gasped and bolted into a seated position when I found Victor sitting across from me.
So, he was the guy I saw yesterday.
Today’s suit wasn’t white. It was dark blue and went perfectly with the tan leather seat framing him from behind. I wildly wondered if he had dressed to match the car’s interior.
He was still so insanely hot. It was hard to look at him. However, he was much thinner—no, thin wasn’t the right word. His body was still packed with muscle underneath his jacket, but his face wasn’t as filled out as I remember. Its lines were sharper, angrier. He looked even more like a raven now. A portrait of cold, black raven rage.
As shocked as I was to see him, he didn’t so much as flinch when I sat up so abruptly after finding myself in the back of his car.
He said nothing. Did nothing. He seemed to be waiting for me to speak.
So I did with my heart beating in my throat. “What's going on? What am I doing here?”
Victor regarded me for a long, cold moment. Then he raised his hands to ask, “Have you forgotten your CSL? You did such a good job learning it to trick me.”
Both my mom and Byron had hearing implants now. And even if they didn't, I barely saw them. I barely used ASL these days. Much less, CSL.
But I gave it the proverbial college try, just to say as best I could in my old mash-up of ASL and CSL, “Yes, I forgot it. I didn’t know there would be a test.”
Another cold beat. Honestly, it was like getting stared down by an iceberg. Then: “You are less afraid than when I saw you last. Or perhaps this is the real you now that you are no longer acting.”
“I was never acting,” I answered, my ASL coming back, along with a rush of anger. “Not like you were.”
He crooked his head, a lion regarding a mouse. “Yet, it is you who are living a happy and carefree life in America after destroying everything my father built.”
I could argue with him, sure. I could try to defend myself. But people don’t order their goons to drug and kidnap other people when they’re honestly open to hearing their kidnappee’s side of the story.
“So this is about revenge?” I asked, trying not to let how scared and confused I was seep into my voice. Also, I had to substitute in the signs for FIGHT and PAYBACK since I didn’t remember the one for REVENGE.
“We are here for many reasons. Revenge.” Of course, he used the correct ASL sign for that word. “Also, H-O-N-O-R—I am spelling that out because I am sure you don't know the sign for that word.”
He was right about that, damn him. But instead of confirming it, I asked, “So what exactly is honorable about drugging and kidnapping me from my dorm room?”
“I think you forgot what day it is.”
No, actually, I knew exactly what day it was.
May 25th.
It was the day that we were supposed to have gotten married. The most important day in our alternative timeline.
I'd been trying not to note our never-anniversary for four years. But I didn’t want to play Victor's game, so I raised my hands to ask and sign, “Why am I here? Why did you drug and kidnap me?”
Damn rusty ASL. I said the word “kidnap” out loud but had to settle for putting extra emphasis on the sign for TAKE.
A smile formed on his lips but didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Your father has gone undercover with a Mexican cartel now. Maybe he does not know that the world has changed. We are no longer as separate as we were in the past. Our organizations—mine especially—work together with other organizations. We share information for mutual benefit.”
He was finally smiling, but his words rolled my stomach.
Suddenly, I was all out of “less afraid” responses, and my throat clogged up with horror.
Victor continued as if he hadn’t just threatened to out my dad to a group of infamously brutal gangsters.
“And I hear your brother has dropped out of college and decided to become a police officer. How nice that he is following in your father’s footsteps. I hope he doesn't get killed by an unknown criminal while performing his job. That would be very sad for your mother. She would only have you then. And I imagine you would feel very guilty about what your actions brought down on your family.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, helpless anger competing with abject fear for control of my mouth. They both won. “So you’re threatening my entire family now?”
“No,” he answered right away.
But any relief I might've felt disappeared when he informed me, “I'm promising to destroy your family, unless…”
He stopped there, that malignant smile of his spreading even wider to reveal his perfect white teeth.
I waited and waited. But the car filled with more silence until I was forced to ask, “Unless what? What could possibly keep you from hurting them? From hurting me?”
He honestly seemed to consider my question before answering, “Ten years.”
I didn't understand. “Ten years? What do you mean ten years?”
“I've done some calculations. And I’ve decided that ten years of ownership is what I would require as payback for what you did.”
I shook my head at him. Confusion and fear twisted my stomach. “Ownership? Ownership of what? What could I possibly have that you want?”
He stared at me for a few dead-eyed seconds. Then he said, “Of course I'm talking about ownership of you, Dawn.”
The water composition in a woman’s body ranges from 45% to 65%. I learned about that in excruciating detail to get my degree. But my throat dried out as if there was no liquid to be had in my body at all.
After several tries, I managed to raise my hands to ask, “What exactly would this ownership entail?”
Instead of answering me, he looked out the car’s tinted window.
So, I did too.
Outside, a busy street rolled by, lined with the large brick and columns buildings I’d become used to seeing all the time in New England. But I didn’t think we were still in Western Massachusetts. The streets were a little wider here, filled with a few more cars.
Victor started signing again. “We have made it to our destination.”
As if to punctuate his words, the car pulled to a smooth stop in front of a building with the words PROVIDENCE TOWN HALL engraved across it.
Strangely, I still remembered the signs for both the city and the state. I’d spoken about my dreams with Victor so often, they had become permanently engraved in my memory. But I was too shocked to use either of
them when I asked, “What are we doing in Providence, Rhode Island?”
Again, he didn't answer, at least not with signs. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small silk-covered square box. When he popped open, I found a band, a stripe of black onyx, sandwiched between two bars of stainless steel.
“I… I don't understand,” I said, looking from the ring box to him.
Victor’s eyes flashed, electric and black. Then he set the ring box down to sign two words in CSL. Two words I understood, even after all this time and rust.
“You” and “will.”
The Story Continues in
VICTOR: HER RUTHLESS OWNER
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Oh my gosh, thank you so, so very much for reading the first book in the VICTOR trilogy.
The May of my senior year of college, I found myself in the opposite situation as Dawn. All of the grad school programs I’d applied to had sent back rejections. I had a vague notion about trying law school in a couple of years, but none of the law firms I’d interviewed with offered me a position. By the time I walked across the graduation stage of my own women’s college, I had one solitary job offer: a position teaching English in Japan that I’d randomly applied to because why not?
“So, I guess I’m going to Japan,” I glumly told my friends, who all seemed to have shiny jobs, paid internships, grad school acceptance letters, and a life path pointed in a solid direction.
I took an LSAT study guide with me to Osaka, where I was assigned by the teaching program, but never opened it. After a lifetime of being a good girl, I partied, drank, kissed boys, spent all my paychecks as soon as I got them, and made all the mistakes. I traveled all over the Eastern hemisphere but weirdly never managed to make it up to Tokyo. And when I was too broke to go out, I wrote the script that would eventually get me into a graduate Dramatic Writing program.
For a long time after I returned from Japan, I called it “my lost year” because nothing really happened. It didn’t move my life forward. It was just this weird blip of a twelve months.
Seventeen years after my lost year, this story about two foreigners who meet in Tokyo came to me rather dramatically. I was on my annual multi-day “mom’s hike” through the same Pacific Northwest rain forest where the Twilight series was set when Victor and Dawn downloaded into my head like they’d been waiting for just the right moment. Luckily, I’d brought a notebook with me because I ended up spending nearly all of my free time on that big hike outlining the origin story of this epic couple.
Looking back on it, I see that my time in Japan wasn’t a lost year at all. I still have dreams where I’m suddenly back in Osaka. The country calls to me like a friend I’ll never forget. And now that we’ve become a nomadic family, my oldest is campaigning hard for us to spend a season or two in Japan.
Also, that script I wrote during my broke weeks set me on a new path of becoming a career writer.
I felt so sad and dejected at my college graduation. I thought I was a total failure. But now I’m so grateful that moving to a completely foreign country was my only post-college job option. Besides, I know SO many romance writers with law degrees. We all ended up in the same place.
Where we were meant to be.
I’ve had such a fantastic time finally getting to Tokyo through Victor and Dawn. And I can't wait for you to read the second part of their story. Victor and Dawn were just kids when they fell in love, but they’re adults now. And what happens next will have you gobbling up the pages.
Until then….
So much love,
Theodora Taylor
P.S. – If you’re wondering about Luca Ferraro, that story’s a reader favorite. Check out his free preview novella, WICKED PRINCE.
Also by Theodora Taylor
RUTHLESS TYCOONS
HOLT: Her Ruthless Billionaire
ZAHIR: Her Ruthless Sheikh
LUCA: Her Ruthless Don
THE VERY BAD FAIRGOODS
His for Keeps
His Forbidden Bride
His to Own
RUTHLESS BOSSES
His Pretend Baby
His Revenge Baby
His Enduring Love
His Everlasting Love
RUTHLESS BUSINESS
Her Ruthless Tycoon
Her Ruthless Cowboy
Her Ruthless Possessor
Her Ruthless Bully
BROKEN AND RUTHLESS
KEANE: Her Ruthless Ex
STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer
RASHID: Her Ruthless Boss
RUTHLESS RUSSIANS
Her Russian Billionaire
Her Russian Surrender
Her Russian Beast
Her Russian Brute
QUARANTALES
Cynda and the City Doctor
Billie and the Russian Beast
Goldie and the Three Wisconsin Bears
Reina and the Heavy Metal Prince
LOVING ELVES
These books are seasonal and
only available as full novels
from December through February.
TWELVE DAYS OF KRISTA
TWELVE MONTHS OF KRISTAL
TWELVE YEARS OF KRISTOS
ALPHA KINGS
Her Viking Wolf
Wolf and Punishment
Wolf and Prejudice
Wolf and Soul
Her Viking Wolves
ALPHA FUTURE
Her Dragon Everlasting
NAGO: Her Forever Wolf
KNUD: Her Big Bad Wolf
RAFES: Her Fated Wolf
Her Dragon King
THE SCOTTISH WOLVES
Her Scottish Wolf
Her Scottish King
Her Scottish Warrior
HOT HARLEQUINS WITH HEART
Vegas Baby
Love’s Gamble
About the Author
Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. She also LOVES to hear from readers. So….
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