Unbind (Sub Rosa Series Book 1) Read online

  UNBIND

  A NOVEL

  Sarah Michelle Lynch

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  The erotic Chambermaid Series:

  A Fine Profession

  A Fine Pursuit

  Bedtime Confessions

  One True Lover

  Contemporary romance:

  Angel Avenue

  The Unity Quadrilogy:

  The Radical

  The Informant

  The Operator

  The Sentient

  CONTENTS PAGE

  Prologue

  Part One: London

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part Two: New York

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Part Three: Unbind

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Contact

  Suggested Playlist

  Copyright

  Dedicated to everyone who continues

  to support and believe in words

  Prologue

  Connecticut, 2000

  THE OUTLINE OF a petite woman dressed in a gauche ensemble grew bigger as she walked toward Cai. He inwardly groaned, Go away. Please, not her. She stomped across the uneven, old cemetery in her high heels, unceremoniously marching over long-forgotten graves to make her way to where he stood. He noticed her limousine loitering in the distance and reasoned the wake was long over. She’d be hacked off he missed it. Of course he’d purposely avoided the whole thing—fake smiles, apologies, pithy remarks from freeloading drunks and plain fakery from all corners. None of them knew the woman his mother really was. To most she was just a reclusive artist with a ton of secrecy surrounding her unusual lifestyle.

  The last mourner there, his neck ached from fixing a constant gaze down into the ground beneath his feet. Tossed earth and red roses marred the gleaming white coffin and he wondered what the point of it all was. His mother wouldn’t know the difference, would she? Then again, he wondered what the point of life was some days.

  All day heavy rain clouds had threatened to send him indoors and yet he remained, gazing down into that joyless hole that a man lurking nearby was impatient to fill. Now dusk, it was the dark that might toss him home.

  Both parents, gone. The most recent, his mother.

  For some reason, he couldn’t mourn. All day he’d willed even a few tears to come, but none had.

  His aunt’s hand fell lightly on his shoulder and she tried to tug him away from that site. He knew she was talking but he didn’t hear her, not until she started shouting.

  “I’ll have no more nonsense, d’ya hear me Cai? Indoors, now!” She ravaged his ears with a strong, cockney accent.

  He thought this woman—his new guardian—crude and dislikable.

  The night closed in fast but Cai still refused to leave. The undertaker waited in his truck nearby, talking rampantly on his cell, poised to finally get the job done. Several times that day, Cai had threatened to throw himself in with his mother if he wasn’t given enough time.

  There’d never be enough time.

  Aunt Jennifer had only just turned up in his life though for years his mother had raved about her incessantly, telling him how glamorous and travelled and individual she was.

  “I just learned it’ll be me who oversees your financial affairs, Cai.” He didn’t miss the cool tone of her voice when she said his name, like he was a duty and not a person. “Best start the way we mean to go on… you… being behaved, I mean.”

  “Why you?” His teenage voice squeaked slightly, only just broken. “Didn’t Mom leave the lawyers in charge?”

  “I don’t know, Cai. Your mother was strange but maybe she did make one sound decision,” she told him firmly. “I’m family… I’m not a faceless pen pusher.”

  I’d take one of those any day, he thought.

  Fourteen years old and orphaned—all he had left was an aunt he didn’t know and a house full of bad memories.

  “I don’t want to stay here. That place,” he said in a rush and gestured to his mother’s mansion nearby, “gives me the creeps.”

  She licked her painted lips. “Lucky for you I just landed a job in New York City; they have the best schools anyway I’d bet.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Escape. Freedom. Somewhere different. That Georgian estate he’d grown up on was full of ghosts and secrets.

  The looming white building could be seen from his current hillside vantage point and he didn’t know what was worse—living in a place of nightmares or staring out of the window at the consequences up on the hill.

  “We’ll keep the house running… maybe offer it as a wedding venue. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”

  “For now, maybe. Later, I’ll demolish it,” he replied.

  “We’ll see. This could be an earner for you, love,” she said calmly, but the fingers she kept at his shoulder dug in painfully.

  He turned to look at his aunt and saw through the dramatic black veil she wore. All that make-up and elegance, all that poise and style, yet he recognised people by nature were all the same beneath.

  He kicked the earth, his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “When I come of age I’ll sell, or better still, have every brick removed and taken elsewhere. I’ll smash it to pieces, bit by bit!”

  She scoffed, seemingly unflustered. “Huh, well, we’ll see. There’s a clause, old fashioned but… you’ve inherited as a minor so you’ve to marry to inherit otherwise you won’t get the money before your 25th birthday.”

  “Typical,” he mumbled, stalking away as soon as the first, tender splashes of rain tumbled down. The undertaker cursed desperately in the background, threatening all sorts.

  “My sister wouldn’t have wanted you to sell,” she shouted over his shoulder. “She loved this place.”

  His mother and aunt British-born, Claudia was the elder sister and had inherited the estate in Connecticut from her father’s elder brother. Claudia’s decision to leave London meant the sisters lost touch somewhat and it was in America that Claudia met Philippe Cortez, Cai�
��s father—the couple’s volatile partnership something Jennifer never approved of.

  Cai and Jennifer were all that remained of a family which from the outside appeared to live fast, and die young.

  She caught up with his strides, warning, “I’d advise you not to carry your father’s name, my boy. A man as notorious as him, well now… you don’t want to be tarred by the same brush. I’ll say you were my sister’s love child. I’ll say… well, I’ll make stuff up. After all nobody really knows what went on here, do they? We cannot have people thinking you are your daddy’s son. Do you understand?”

  He nodded slowly alongside her, labouredly, and she repeated, “Tell me you understand?”

  “I understand.” My father was a bad man.

  They climbed into the waiting limousine and Cai hoped they were only going back to the house to pack their bags. He watched the skies open as she continued to dictate to him, the driver setting off without need of instruction.

  “I won’t have any mucking about Cai, d’ya hear me? The life you knew is over. You’ll go to school and out into the world for a change. There’ll be no more hiding, d’ya understand me? You’re a clever lad and you’ll do well. You’ll behave and that’s all there is to it… you and me will get on grand if you just behave, hmm?”

  He nodded slowly, not caring to show his inward pleasure. He’d been desperate to escape for so long, the smile threatening to break over his face hurt—even though he thought this woman was out of line talking to him that way. Like a child. He’d seen things that made a boy a man.

  Jennifer knew he’d had a strange upbringing and she was going to remedy that. The nightmare of the past 14 years was officially over—and she’d saved him from that in some part, when she could have left him with the servants.

  Cai would sell the estate as soon as he got chance, or burn it to the ground. If nothing else, he would at least have every rose on site destroyed so that they never grew again.

  He’d wait until he could be free of his aunt—who was just another reminder. Hell, he might even consider getting married.

  Part One: London

  “There is simply the rose;

  it is perfect in every moment

  of its existence.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Chapter 1

  Yorkshire, 2011

  YOU DON’T KNOW you’re alive until you’ve been robbed of everything you felt sure of. Have you ever been skating along, running the gamut of life like you’ve got it all sorted, only to one day have the rug pulled from under you? The comfort blanket of routine taken away—all you’re left with is this irrepressible feeling of uncertainty. One event. One, tiny, event: it can change the course of human history. (So they say.) Who was it that said that cause and effect stretch further than we realise—might a butterfly’s aerial dance in New Zealand for instance really reach the other side of the world? Chaos theory, right? Well, I’d give anything for that butterfly to never have careered off course—for no chaos at all. Sure, every one of our actions has some result, somewhere. And no piece of matter dies, it just becomes something else. Nothing is lost, we only evolve.

  I grew up hating conformity, desperate to break the shackles of what I deemed oppression. My parents grew up in neighbouring South Yorkshire villages and never left the county. I felt suffocated and vowed to never be like that myself. Except I’d somehow reached the age of 30 never having boarded an airplane, never having lived anywhere but the county I grew up in. Until now.

  In the corners of my living room were boxes piled high, neatly aligned so there were no gaps where the joining walls met. Having room for error was difficult for me to deal with.

  I spent a long time packing my suitcases carefully, ensuring the arrangement was tidy. I folded everything first, then calculated which piles would fit with which, before stowing my treasures carefully between layers of tissue paper and bi-folded jeans, which provided steady shelving for the more delicate articles. When I was happy, I fastened my luggage shut.

  I was aware of my tendencies but I never realised how they became heightened at times of stress. Like when I was finally moving to another town, the biggest town in fact.

  The stacked boxes full of my possessions were going to charity; there was nothing really in them I needed to keep. Old books I could easily get for my Kindle if I wanted, old movies I could download to my tablet.

  When I was first told I got the job in London, I decided then and there, this would be a new era. It was a chance, a new beginning, and so I was leaving everything behind. Well, all except my clothes—a collection I’d been fastidious over for many years.

  With everything around me packed and ready to go, I made my last cup of tea in the two-bedroom flat I’d lived in for nine years on Ecclesall Road, Sheffield. The flat was fine and dandy. Perfect for me. Cathedral ceilings in a Victorian, detached house converted into flats. I had an en suite and a separate WC for guests staying over. I even had quite a nice built-in kitchen, with an iron balcony railing looking out over a big back garden. I didn’t even care that I lived on a noisy main road because it enabled me to always be able to catch a cab, a bus or grab a takeaway anytime I liked. Within my space, there was linear peace, so it never mattered what went on outside anyway.

  I loved that city for so many reasons. Yet I knew I’d hidden out in that flat, and deep down, I knew why.

  There was one, last thing to do before I left my corner of the world. So I got in my car and travelled north, to Barnsley, the place of my childhood. It was a comparatively rural neighbour of the steel town, Sheffield. Growing up I had viewed Sheffield as the place to be, where the action happened, the supreme alternative to where I’d grown up. It wasn’t far enough, though. It couldn’t have been—I had achieved little progress in the decade I lived there.

  The journey from Sheffield to Barnsley was half an hour on a good day, being early Saturday morning I encountered few delays. A brief portion of the journey was motorway and gave me chance to admire the sprawling, green fields of South Yorkshire, possibly the hilliest inhabited part of God’s own country. Former mining towns still visibly suffered but the success of the city of steel had helped rejuvenate everything in the area. Mum reckoned she knew one of the men who inspired the famous film, The Full Monty. I think she knew of him, but Mum was like that, always bragging about whatever she could. Making good of anything, rather.

  I pulled up to the semi-detached house my parents had lived in for donkey’s years and killed the engine, sitting for a moment while I got myself psyched up. Before I knew it, my middle sister Anabel came running out of the house, charging at my car. Anabel often stayed with me at Ecclesall Road, but I never let her see me cry when she came over with the latest news about my youngest sibling, Amanda. The youngest of us three was the black sheep—that was the easiest, most unkind way of describing her.

  Anabel threw open my car door and almost dragged me out. “I missed you! Come on!”

  She yanked on my arms and quickly had me out of the Ford Fiesta I loved but was also ridding myself of before I left for London.

  In Anabel’s embrace, I sensed there was something she wasn’t telling me. She felt tense and rigid, so unlike her usual self. I broke from her arms and looked her up and down.

  “Why are you nervous?” I asked her genially.

  “Come inside.”

  I shut my car door and locked it, then followed her warily. There’d been a period of about five years where I hadn’t spoken to any of my family. From the age of about 19 to 24, they almost didn’t exist to me anymore. Until one day Anabel knocked on my door and poured her heart out, made me see I was breaking our mother’s heart and to visit for her sake, if nobody else’s.

  During most of my visits to the homestead, there had always been one person absent, hiding away in her room. Mum always succumbed and took her dinner on a tray.

  When I walked in through the front door that day, I noticed the front room had been decorated. There was a cake on the table,
bottles of pop, some snacks in Mum’s fancy crystal bowls I remembered from childhood tea parties, plus my sister Amanda, sat awkwardly in one corner.

  Mum fussed over me like a nutcase, making a song and dance about what I was wearing and how she liked my hair, my make-up. What perfume was I using? Where was I getting my hair done? It was Mum’s way of trying to say she cared, she did, but she couldn’t be seen to be too interested in what was going on in my life when two people who hated my guts were also in the room.

  “Sit, sit, sit!” I was ordered, and a glass of fizz or something was thrust into my hand. Mum then announced, “Cheers, everyone! To Chloe and her new job!”

  I noticed everyone else held glasses, but most were already empty. Anabel downed hers most likely out of nerves, Dad and Amanda had already emptied theirs, and Mum was the only one joining me properly in the toast.

  Anabel sat in an armchair next to the one I was harnessed in and started with the whole rigmarole of checking I was going to be alright—asking questions she already knew the answers to. I feigned interest and noticed Amanda watching us like a hawk. Vague in my answers, I said I was hoping to keep busy and to spend a bit of time with my friend Kayla, whose couch I’d be using until I got sorted out.

  That day it almost seemed like my father had been drugged. His cutting remarks absent, he looked calmly at the floor, and not at anyone else in the room. He sat in the safe confines of his black leather recliner, an odd addition to Mum’s mostly flowery, chintzy furnishings. I couldn’t remember the last civil conversation I had with him. Since losing his job as a factory manager, he’d given up on trying to find something else. He just sat in that chair while the rest of us around him tried to live, tried to escape the suffocation of his influence, that attitude he couldn’t let go of: ‘You’ll end up disappointed. What’s the point?’

  I didn’t miss that atmosphere of discontent at all.

  “What are you writing about down there?” Amanda chirped up.