Catalyst: Book 2 in The Dark Paradise Chronicles
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Catalyst
Book 2 in The Dark Paradise Chronicles
Isadora Brown
Contents
Prologue
1. Keirah
2. Reese
3. Andie
4. Keirah
5. Reese
6. Andie
7. Keirah
8. Reese
9. Andie
10. Keirah
11. Reese
12. Andie
13. Keirah
14. Reese
15. Andie
16. Keirah
17. Reese
18. Andie
19. Keirah
20. Reese
21. Andie
22. Keirah
23. Reese
24. Andie
25. Keirah
26. Reese
27. Andie
28. Keirah
29. Reese
30. Andie
31. Keirah
32. Reese
33. Andie
34. Keirah
35. Reese
36. Andie
37. Keirah
38. Reese
Epilogue
39. Ready for the final book in The Dark Paradise Chronicles?
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Acknowledgments
Also by Isadora Brown
Also by Isadora Brown
Also by Isadora Brown
Also by Isadora Brown
Written with Rebecca Hamilton
Text Copyright © 2014 Heather C. Myers
All Rights Reserved
Created with Vellum
For my readers – without you, this would never be.
Prologue
Dear Miss Andrea Shepherd,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Eagle Corporation’s internship program. Please report to the main building on Monday, January 7th at 1:00PM to the desk in the lobby, where you will pick up your visitor badge and meet Grayson Pierce, your immediate supervisor. Please be prompt. From there, he will inform you of your specific duties, and the expectations Eagle Corp. has of you. We understand Onyx High School students are required to write a companion paper for their Business 195 class. Any statistics needed in order to accomplish this task will be provided.
Welcome to the Eagle Corp. family! We look forward to meeting you.
Sincerely,
Tucker Wilson, CEO & President
The signature was a copy. The entire email was a copy, despite its usage of her name, despite how warm it came off.
Andie wiped away a stray tear as it fell down her cheek. She couldn’t look away from Carey’s computer screen. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling. It was probably a good thing Carey and her family were on their annual winter break vacation—planned long before Andie started living there—so she could cry in peace.
She hated crying. And she had been doing it a lot lately.
It was all Jack Phillip’s fault. She didn’t know how, but everything reminded her of him. Sometimes, she would walk through the streets of Onyx and catch a glimpse of his tall frame or his short chestnut brown hair, but it was never him. Other times, the reminders were much vaguer: the rain as it hit the sidewalk at night, the feel of freshly cut grass between her bare toes, the red sundress she wore to their Thanksgiving. In fact, the dress still smelled like him, like aftershave and spice, which was probably why she hadn’t worn it since that day.
Even this acceptance letter reminded her of him. She could already picture the conversation in her head. Andie would show him the letter and tell him how professional it was. He would roll his jade green eyes and point out that he personally called her to offer her the internship position himself, even after she called him an asshole and dumped water on him. Then he would go on and on about how Eagle Corp. wouldn’t treat her right, that the CEO was some recluse who didn’t even go to work, let alone know the intimate details of his company, that the company was still new, that she’d be much happier with him. And she’d whisper, “I know,” but somehow he’d hear her, and they’d share a look—
“Stop.” She blinked and let out a shaky breath. “You have to stop this,” she told herself.
Andie had chosen to leave Jack. The pain she was feeling was her fault. It was the right choice, she knew, but that didn’t make it any easier. She was trying to get over him, really she was, but it was proving to be—
“There is no such thing as impossible,” she reminded herself, closing her email and wiping away more tears. “All you have to do is get through the New Year’s party and then you can finally move on.”
The New Year’s party.
She was trying to forget about it, but it was the only thing she could think about. It was the last time she would get to see Jack, but the first time since she walked away. At least she would have her friends with her —Miranda, Reese, and if Keirah could get off work early at Abby Mental Ward, she had said she’d come too—and then she’d be gone. Free. She’d never have to see him again unless she opened a newspaper or tabloid.
“Just one more night,” she whispered to herself, sniffling. As of right now, the tears were successfully kept at bay. “Just one more night, and it will be over. For good.”
She was no closer to convincing herself than she had been when she first left him standing in his home, staring after her.
Keirah
How long had it been since she had seen him? Since she touched him? Since he touched her…?
Keirah Shepherd swept the stray strands of dark brown hair behind her left ear before grabbing her mop and placing it into a white bucket. As she cleaned the hall, she gritted her teeth, trying her damnedest to forget him. It was the only reason why she agreed to attend this New Year’s party with her sister. Her mother would be out with her friends—Judith’s first social outing since Keirah’s father left—and since Judy had kicked Andie out of the house, she would otherwise be home alone, which would be the worst. She needed to forget the way he looked at her with those enigmatic golden eyes of his. She needed to forget the way he could slap her across the face in one moment, punishing her for something she didn’t realize she did wrong, and caress her in the same moment, apologizing with his unspoken tenderness. She needed to forget that tenor voice that could clip words in half or draw them out—it didn’t seem to matter what he did to them, people listened to him anyway.
But that was probably because he was Onyx City’s most notorious criminal mastermind, the very reason for the deaths of numerous innocent citizens. He captivated people because they were afraid of him, and instead of being offended, he decided not to let that fear go to waste. Instead, he used it against them. All of them. Even her. But in the time Keirah had spent with him, she felt her fear of anything slip away. It wasn’t as though she was numb to everything; but she just didn’t see the point of wasting time on an emotion that wasn’t going to help her, only hinder her.
She really wasn’t sure about anything now. It almost felt like waking up from a dream she wasn’t quite sure about. Was it a nightmare, or a fantasy? Could dreams be a mixture of the two? Life was.
“Are you going to talk today?” a voice asked from behind her.
Keirah bit her bottom lip and managed to refrain from rolling her brown eyes. As usual, she didn’t respond to Chad’s inquiries. Before her initial capture by the villain, she hadn’t really been social. Friendly, yes, but not sociable. Now she didn’t bother with people she didn’t like. Sure, her classmates and colleagues at Abby Ward thought she was stuck up, too quiet, or just plain weird, but she didn’t care.
She didn’t care.
This, of course, did not mean Keirah was ungrateful. After she had to quit her internship at Dr. Hawkins’ renowned criminal psychology practice, thanks to her entanglement with Noir, Commissioner Jarrett got her a replacement internship at Abby Ward. She knew he still felt guilty for what had happened to her, and even though many citizens believed she was in cahoots with Noir—Bonnie to his Clyde—Jarrett still had unwavering faith in her.
That was why Keirah didn’t want to think about how she had felt about him. She considered her feelings buried deep, hidden safely away from the world and herself. People—including both her mother and Andie—believed she was plagued by Stockholm Syndrome. She scoffed at the idea. Keirah had studied Stockholm Syndrome and was a firm believer that she was not experiencing any delusions about the man—because, he was, in fact, a man. Maybe it had started out that way, but it grew into something deeper, something more. She loved him, as hard as that was to believe.
She frowned at the thought, annoyed with her heart for clenching together when musing about how she had felt; as in past tense. She dropped the heavy mop back into the bucket, accidentally spraying Chad and herself with water.
“Watch the uniform, Helen Keller,” he told her with obvious distaste, casting her a dark glare before going back to what he had been doing in the first place—staring at her ass while she moved the mop back and forth across tile that never seemed to get clean.
Uniform. Right.
Keirah herself didn’t give a shit about the uniform she had to wear. It was one of those ugly, dark grey grey jumper suits that was way too big for her slim frame. Her hair was always falling in her face, even if she styled it for a half an hour before hand, but she had to be careful when wiping the strands away. Rubber gloves were a requirement, but she didn’t want the bacteria collecting on them to somehow get into her eyes. On her feet were very worn Converse, and though they were comfortable, they didn’t really offer her any arch support.
Keirah didn’t like her internship, especially since it was janitorial work rather than criminological research, but she was thankful for it. Despite everything she had been through, Onyx High still required she get a passing grade in her business class if she wanted to graduate in June. Commissioner Jarrett got her this internship, even though Abby Ward didn’t offer them to high school students. She had free rein of the ward, except for the fourth floor. Both the commissioner and the ward’s director, Caroline Abby, emphasized that her presence on the fourth floor was strictly forbidden. To this day, Keirah didn’t know why.
The ward, like much of Onyx, was a corrupt place, but Caroline Abby really was in this line of work in order to rehabilitate those who were cast aside by society because of their wicked deeds. She even offered jobs to those deemed most likely to successfully reintegrate into society.
For the past month, after school, this was how Keirah spent her days: cleaning the filth the inhabitants, the psychologists, and the guards would leave behind. Instead of speaking to the patients or socializing with her colleagues, she spent her time daydreaming. It was a pastime she had given up long ago in hopes that being more serious would help her get a job as a psychologist. After the first month, it was easy to ignore the ribs and innuendos coming from both the patients and the guards. Now, they reminded her of flies; they were annoying, but they didn’t make too much noise, and most of the time could be ignored.
She had no idea where she was going nowadays. She didn’t seem to have any long-term goals, and this bothered her because even when she was with him, she all but oozed ambition. Keirah wasn’t sure if she wanted to start dating, if she wanted to get married, have kids. She didn’t even know if she could get a job that might result in some sort of career, due to her indecision about if she even wanted to be a criminal psychologist anymore. Hell, she didn’t know if she wanted to go to college, which was just silly. She had wanted to go to the University of Onyx since she was seven, when she and her father watched one of the football games together one Saturday afternoon. Andie had been out shopping with Mom, so it was just the two of them. But now….
“Hey,” Chad said, reaching out and pushing Keirah’s elbow in order to catch her attention. She was so consumed by her thoughts that his simple touch caused her to over-extend the mop and nearly slip on the wet tile. Chad seemed amused, causing her to grumble silently under her breath. But he wanted her attention for a reason, so when he stopped laughing, he said, “We gotta get up to the fourth floor, pronto.”
Keirah gave him an annoyed look. “Why?” she asked, replacing the mop in the bucket before placing her hand on her hip and leaning slightly on the wooden stick.
“She speaks!” Chad exclaimed in mock surprise. Suddenly, his pudgy face became dry once again before explaining. “Fred called in sick, and the orderlies want you to do the fourth floor before you leave tonight.”
Keirah said nothing, but began to push the bucket toward the elevators with Chad following, muttering something about how she was being quiet now all of a sudden. Like that was a surprise.
It was probably her fault that she didn’t remember Jarrett’s warning about not going up to the fourth floor. Maybe she should have sensed a bout of foreboding, but she didn’t. In fact, Keirah treated it like any other floor.
When the elevators released the two, Chad slipped in his identification card and then typed in a unique code that pertained to each patient. 1-3-2-2-5. Not that she was paying attention or anything, but Chad wasn’t trying to hide it. One advantage of being deemed a mute: people seemed to underestimate her.
Keirah’s fatal mistake, however, was looking into the cell before pulling her equipment in. Standing there, arms handcuffed to his bedpost and staring at the door, was a familiar set of gold eyes that still managed to make her feel as though she was nothing more than transparent. She swallowed and immediately looked away, her focus on the bucket of dirty water.
The man smiled at this before smacking his lips together in his usual fashion. “Well, well, well-ah,” he drawled in his normal dark velvet voice, keeping his eyes firmly on the back of the young woman in front of him. “Look who we have herrre….”
Keirah could feel her whole body freeze at his words, and the hair that covered her body stood erect on their own accord. She clenched her teeth, realizing she should have prepared herself better, even though she hadn’t been quite sure whether or not those rumors about him being here were true. She knew she should have been aware that she might encounter her former lover one way or another, especially now that she knew he might be locked in the very place that she worked. Immediately, she silently scolded herself for allowing her defenses to be dropped at such an inopportune time. But more importantly, she hated the way her body responded merely at the sound of his voice.
The dark velvet that broke through the silence and caused spark-filled tension to consume the atmosphere between them did not go unnoticed by the young woman. How her body longed to be consumed by that voice, that mouth, those hands that were handcuffed to his bedpost. Just the sound of his voice caused a soft ache to penetrate her pelvis, and she could already feel herself getting wet. If she looked at him again, she knew she would be doomed.
Instead, she forced her attention on her task at hand: cleaning up the patient’s cell—because that was all he was to her, just another patient.
You know that’s not true, another voice taunted from the back of her mind. Any other patient couldn’t make you tremble with need and ooze desire the way he does, and you know it.
If Keirah’s teeth weren’t clamped together, she no doubt would have told herself to shut up. However, they were, and instead, she let out her frustration with herself with a heavy sigh from her long, upturned nose, and lifted the heavy mop out of the bucket with the intent of getting her job done as quickly as possible.
“Aw,” he continued, his gold eyes penetrating through her body and to the essence of her very soul. To be honest, he was quite amused at how she was tryi
ng to ignore him, but he could tell her attempt was useless. Commendable, maybe, but useless all the same. “Don’t pretend like you don’t, um…know me, sweet-tart,” he continued. His scar around his left eye crinkled, and his chapped lips curled up into a predatorial smile, his teeth still stained a dull yellow. “After all-ah we’ve been through….” He let his voice trail off, trying to get some sort of reaction from her. He frowned when he failed to do so, and instead, refocused his eyes on her body, simultaneously trying to gauge its reaction to him while scoping out what he had been missing the past eight weeks.
“Shut up,” Chad spat from the doorway, narrowing his brown eyes at the prisoner. “There is no way that you could possibly know Elen, not even in your fucking imagination.”
Noir threw his head back and laughed at that, causing Keirah to jump slightly. She had yet to get used to it, and some nights, it would be the last thing she heard before slipping into slumber.
How amusing this was to him. He couldn’t have asked for a better show.
“Is that what they’re, hum…calling you now…Keirah?”
The sound of her name on his lips caused her pelvis to squeeze involuntarily and she masked a whimper with a cough. However, she couldn’t stop the telling flush as it started to invade her cheeks, and despite her adamant orders to herself not to, she glanced over her shoulder and locked eyes with Onyx’s most notorious criminal. Upon seeing those brown orbs of hers, he smiled lazily, and then slicked his tongue over his lips.