Chosen: Part Four (Allure Book 4) Read online

  About this Book

  My name is Grace Delaney. I was born into this country’s most admired political family. When I was sixteen, the media dubbed me “America’s Princess”. I hate being called that, all the more so since I discovered the terrifying secret hidden behind my family’s glittering public image.

  A few months ago, I graduated from college determined to make a life of my own. But now, suddenly, Adam Falzon is in it. The head of an old-world family with a reputation for ruthlessness, he looks like a fallen angel. As attracted as I am to him, I’ve come to suspect that Adam is hiding secrets of his own more deadly and dangerous than I ever want to know. I don’t dare give into my feelings for him.

  But I may not have a choice. With every beat of my heart, he is drawing me further into a web of dark desire. My chances of escaping are slipping away. Worse yet, I’m no longer sure that I want to.

  CHOSEN is a story of dark romance. It contains scenes of coercion, both emotional and physical, and should not be read by anyone who could find that distressing.

  A Note to Readers

  A huge thank you to everyone who has gotten in touch with me about CHOSEN. I’m thrilled to hear from each of you and to know that you’re enjoying Adam and Grace’s story. Because so many of you have the same questions about this series, I thought I’d put the answers here:

  How many books will there be?

  My best guess right now (as I finish Part Four) is that there will be nine books in all but the story will unfold in its own time, at its own pace so that could change slightly. I won’t extend it beyond what it absolutely needs and I won’t give it less than it deserves.

  Before I started writing CHOSEN Part One, I outlined the entire story so I know exactly where it’s going and how it will get there. Of course, I’m also sure that Adam and Grace will have many more surprises for me along the way. That’s a big part of what makes writing fun even on the days when I’m tearing my hair out. (There are a lot of those!). If you’ve already read Parts One-Three, you know that these lovers are facing tremendous challenges within their own relationship that had such a dark beginning. And you’re aware that they also face threats from both of their twisted, dangerous families. All that has to work out fully in order to bring them to the Happily Ever After ending they deserve. And right there is an answer to another question:

  Is this heading toward an HEA?

  Yes, it is and if that ruins the suspense for anyone, I’m sorry. But what can I say? I’m just an HEA kind of girl. I honestly don’t think that I’ll ever be able to write a story that doesn’t end well for the two main characters. Of course, what “end well” means exactly remains to be seen.

  How frequently will the books be published?

  I write two other romance series--ANEW and ARCADIA--and I’ve put both on hold in order to complete CHOSEN as quickly as possible. At the same time, I’m one of those writers who just can’t let a book go until it’s right. I’d love to be able to say that I can publish one part each month but I already know that isn’t true. The best I can say is that I’ll get as close to that as I possibly can.

  The last question many of you have asked is the one I really can’t answer, at least not completely:

  Where did the idea for CHOSEN come from?

  Readers have already picked up on some references that call to mind certain powerful political families in the U.S. and elsewhere, and they’re right to do so. In addition, one particular individual--a European aristocrat and financier who I won’t name here--played an unwitting role in shaping the character of Adam. But when all is said and done, everyone and everything that happens in CHOSEN is strictly the product of my imagination. In other words, it’s fiction.

  I hope that answers your questions. If it doesn’t, or if you’d just like to get in touch, you can find me on Facebook at Josie on Facebook or email me at [email protected]. I’m always thrilled to hear from readers!

  And now, on with the story--

  Table of Contents

  About this Book

  A Note to Readers

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Three Weeks Before

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Sneak Peek #1

  Sneak Peek #2

  Chapter One

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’?”

  “Yes, I know what that is.”

  “Then you’ll understand when I say that you’re exhibiting symptoms of it.”

  The therapist sitting in the chair opposite me was a middle-aged woman, blond, impeccably groomed, and thoroughly professional. Her manner exuded a blend of competency and compassion that no doubt appealed to the vast majority of people who came to see her. I was perfectly willing to believe that she had only the best intentions.

  I hated her.

  Just as I’d hated the therapist I’d seen the previous week. That one had waited until we were almost at the end of our first session to render the same diagnosis.

  This one had needed less than half that time.

  At the rate I was going, the fourth or fifth therapist I saw would decide the moment I walked in the door what was wrong with me.

  Stockholm Syndrome. A psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.

  I looked up from my hands clenched in my lap and cleared my throat. “I can’t help thinking my situation is more complicated than that.” My voice was thin and faint, the result of my not having used it much lately.

  Three weeks after being flown back to New York alone in a private jet, I still left my apartment rarely. Hilary had called from Haven House, worried that I hadn’t been in. I made an excuse, claiming a bout of the flu but I wasn’t sure that she believed me. Will had left several messages but I hadn’t returned them and I didn’t intend to.

  After a single, excruciating meeting with my parents and Grandmother, during which they grilled me for information I wouldn’t give while refusing to provide any answers of their own, I retreated into myself. A wounded animal, I only wanted to curl up somewhere and be left alone. But I still possessed an instinct for survival and it drove me finally to seek help. Finding that was turning out to be even more difficult than I’d feared.

  “In times of great duress,” the therapist said, “the mind looks for ways to protect itself. You haven’t said who your captor was but I’m guessing that he was an attractive, even compelling man. The kind you might have been drawn to under normal circumstances.”

  “I was attracted to him from the moment we first met,” I admitted. That was an understatement. When I recalled my instant awareness of him across the width of the Plaza Hotel ballroom, I trembled inwardly.

  Despite my raw emotions, I made an effort to explain why I didn’t believe that I fit into the neat diagnostic slot she wanted to put me in.

  “But afterward, when I found out that he was responsible for my captivity, the attraction was still there. If anything, it was even more intense. And when we…had sex…”

  I broke off, flushing at the memory of his hands on me, his mouth, the overwhelming beauty and power of his body. And even more, the exquisite closeness I had felt with him, the sense of being exactly where I belonged, something I had never experience under any other circumstances.

  “You didn’t r
esist?” she asked gently.

  “Only a little the first time. Not at all after that. On the contrary.”

  The beach…our shared escape from death…Adam’s body driving into mine, my own rising to meet his, the incandescent explosion of pleasure and release that seared my very soul. And later in the tower room, in the red veiled bed, the raw, remorseless intimacy we had shared.

  “You were trying to survive. You did what you had to.”

  Desperation wrenched the truth from me. “No, I did what I wanted. I wanted him. I still do.”

  I couldn’t hide from that; I wouldn’t even try. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the brutal, primal intensity of my need for Adam. Or the hollow, agonizing sense of loss I felt after being freed by him.

  He had thrown me back into a world where I no longer fit. Without a word of explanation and while I was still so shattered by what he had done to me at the very end. I closed my eyes, seeing again the windowless room, the chair he had tied me to, and--

  I couldn’t speak of that, not to her or anyone else. Instead, I looked at the therapist again and said, “Something’s wrong with me. I’m really screwed up.”

  “You’re suffering from shock. PTSD can be helped with medication…”

  I shook my head, cutting her off. “I don’t want to be drugged. I just want to understand and…I want closure. Some way to put all this in the past so that I can move on.”

  She nodded as though that made perfect sense when all I could think of was what a crock it was. How could I ever hope to put what had happened behind me? Why would I even want to when it had opened an entirely new world of pleasure and desire that I still longed to be part of?

  “The medication really can help,” the therapist said. “But for now a good first step would be to go the authorities. Have you considered that?”

  No, I hadn’t. Moreover, I’d made certain that I understood the meaning of patient-doctor confidentiality before I told anyone anything. So long as I didn’t give her a reason to think that I was a threat to myself or someone else, her lips had to remain sealed.

  Despite what Adam had feared, I had no interest in self-harming and as for the fantasies I entertained about making him suffer for what he had done to me… That was all they were--fantasies, not something I could ever bring myself to do. In that regard at least, I was still myself and for that I was grateful.

  But it wasn’t enough. I had the sense that time was running out for me to find a way to put my life back together without him.

  “I don’t think that going to the authorities would help in this case,” I said. “I have no evidence and, given who I am, anything I said might leak to the tabloids. The last thing I want is more notoriety.”

  I hadn’t been on-line since I’d gotten back but on one of my very few forays from the apartment, I’d seen my picture splashed across the front page of a tabloid with a headline screaming: America’s Princess in hiding again! We want to know why!

  “That’s understandable,” she said. “But I’d like you to consider that by not naming the man who did this to you--you said that you haven’t even told your family who he is--you’re protecting him. The cost to yourself of doing that is likely to be high.”

  When I didn’t respond, she tried a different approach. “We can put that to one side for now but we should return to it. In the meantime, how is your appetite? Are you eating?”

  “Sort of…” The truth was barely. I’d lost weight in the three weeks I’d been back. Coming on top of the weight I had lost while in the cell, I looked as fragile as I felt. That was another problem I needed to fix.

  She studied me skeptically. “What about sleeping, how is that?”

  I slept, once I was exhausted enough to do so. But I woke from twisted, torrid dreams of Adam that left me painfully aroused, gasping, tearful, and filled with emotional pain worse than any I had ever experienced.

  “It’s all right…broken.”

  The therapist put down her notebook. Her tone was carefully modulated but firm. “It’s very important that you take care of yourself. Nothing good can happen without that. In addition to our sessions, I’d like you to meet with a nutritionist. She can help you develop strategies to overcome a reluctance to eat.”

  Because now I was also anorexic?

  The diagnoses were piling up fast and furious. Meds, referrals, labels… I could see the therapeutic future spiraling out in front of me. It wasn’t someplace I wanted to go.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Her lips thinned. Behind the perfect mask of professionalism, she was becoming impatient. I couldn’t blame her. I felt the same way myself. I wanted it all to be done, over, finished. I wanted to move on, to be me again, to forget Adam Falzon as quickly and thoroughly as he evidently had forgotten me once he’d gotten what he wanted.

  Whatever that was. He hadn’t said and my family had refused to tell me. I could only surmise from their cold hostility that whatever it had been was far more than they had wanted to give even for the sake of my freedom. I had warned Adam that they wouldn’t care about that. Nothing mattered to them except the family’s reputation behind which all manner of crimes were shielded. To my misfortune, he had finally found a way to break through that and make them give him what he wanted.

  Whatever that was. The thought echoed in my head, remorseless and inescapable. The lack of any explanation for what had happened to me was slowly driving me over the edge. I had to find some way to stop that but therapy didn’t seem to be the answer.

  For the remaining minutes of the 50-minute hour, I listened, nodded in the right places, and didn’t dispute anything else that the nice blond woman said. But mentally I was already out of there. I left without making a follow-up appointment.

  Chapter Two

  Standing outside the medical building in the golden light of an autumn afternoon, I pulled up the top of my hoodie and tucked my hands into my pockets. People hurried past me on Park Avenue, busy and purposeful. If I’d had more energy, I would have envied them. Cabs whizzed by but I didn’t try to hail one. As tired as I was, I was also restless. I needed to move even if I had nowhere in particular to go.

  I cut across to Madison and headed south, past stretches of exclusive shops that I’d patronized in the past. None of them interested me now. To my numbed senses, the world had become flat and featureless. The cacophony of taxi horns, the aroma of curry from a food truck, the glide of a jet across the brilliant blue sky, none of it touched me.

  I’d gone half-a-dozen blocks when I realized that the lace of one of my sneakers had come lose. Bending down to retie it, I happened to glance in the direction that I’d come from. About ten yards away, a tall, well-built man in a dark, zip-up jacket and slacks turned suddenly and stared into the display window of a shop selling luxury chocolates. As paranoid as I was about being spotted by the paparazzi, I made a note of his appearance before I straightened up and went on.

  A few minutes later, as I waited at a red light, I saw him again. But this time he was on the opposite side of the street. A tremor ran through me. I told myself not to get any crazier than I already was. The man just happened to be going in the same direction that I was. So were several hundred other people on the crowded sidewalks.

  Even so, I took the opportunity provided by the next subway entrance to head underground, bypassing the turnstiles and taking the connecting passageway toward Fifth Avenue. By the time I returned to street level, there was no sign of the man.

  Feeling at once relieved and foolish, I kept going. Near my apartment, I ducked into a grocery store. Wandering the aisles, the sight of so much food made me nauseous. I grabbed apple sauce, vanilla pudding and, in a fit of optimism, frozen macaroni and cheese before paying and getting out quickly.

  A sigh of relief escaped me the moment I unlocked my door, stepped inside, and closed it securely behind me. The apartment had become my refuge, ironically so given that it was where I’d been taken from.

  After dragging my
self under a hot shower, I put on comfortable old pajamas and settled on the couch under an afghan with a container of apple sauce and a bottle of water. I told myself that I’d get up soon and make myself something more substantial to eat, maybe even order take-out. But hours passed, the light faded, and I scarcely moved except to flip through TV channels looking for something, anything that might distract me.

  It was a little after midnight when I finally got up to go to the bathroom. Stretching my cramped limbs, I glanced out one of the windows. The street below was almost deserted, only a few cars passing by. That wasn’t surprising; I lived in what was, for New York, a quiet neighborhood. People were in bed, resting up for the workday tomorrow.

  Most people, at least. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness outside, a shadow moved in the doorway on the other side of the street opposite my building.

  I told myself that I was mistaken. Temperatures had dropped, it was a cold night, no one would be there. I almost managed to believe that until the headlights of a car momentarily illuminated the recess, giving me a brief, flashing glimpse of a tall, dark-clothed man. He wasn’t the same man I had seen earlier but they were similar in type--young, fit, with an aura of competency and purpose.

  Stepping back quickly from the window, I wrapped my arms around myself in an instinctively protective gesture. The man could be there for any reason--a furtive smoker about to light up, a cop keeping watch on a suspect, anything.

  But I knew the truth even as I tried to reject it. He was there because of me. The only question was whom he worked for. My family, who didn’t believe my claim not to know who had taken me and who seethed with rage over whatever it was they had been forced to give in return for my release?