by Nivia Borell
Nivia Borell
Shattered Love
The Forever Us Series Book One
Nivia Borell
Copyright 2018 Nivia Borell
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author. All songs, song titles, and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.
Disclaimer: The material in this book contains graphic language and sexual content and is intended for mature audiences, ages 18 and older.
ISBN: 978-3982019215
Book design by Swish Design & Editing
Editing by Swish Design & Editing
Proofreading by Swish Design & Editing
Cover design by Sprinkles on Top Studios
Cover Image Copyright 2018
All rights reserved
Bria du Mont and Damien du Sky have been in love for as long as they can remember. Neighbors and best friends since childhood, they planned to be together forever.
That is until Damien seeks to propose to Bria on her eighteenth birthday and finds her in bed with another man.
Bria has no memory of how she ended up in that situation, but Damien still leaves her. Traumatized by his departure, she develops broken heart syndrome and becomes emotionally numb in her search for closure.
Meanwhile, Damien drowns his pain in alcohol before becoming a ruthless CEO and a playboy who refuses to let himself love again.
Prisoners of their past, Bria and Damien prove incapable of staying away from each other. They dig deeper into the fateful night which tore them apart and uncover secrets which will threaten all they know and challenge the meaning and strength of true love.
I dedicate this book to all those who let that tiny voice inside them whisper about their calling and were brave and crazy enough to listen to it.
And to love – love is the reason why I am here today, why I write, and why I wake up every single day feeling grateful and blessed.
I would like to start by thanking my family for their support and unconditional love.
To my other half – you lift me up, every hour of every day. Thank you for being there for me, loving me, giving my soulmate a face and two arms in which I feel at home. I would not be the woman I am today without you at my side. I love you, deeply, madly, and my heart is yours. I treasure our love and getting older with you is a privilege. I will be eternally grateful for—with no false modesty—you are the best man I could have ever wished for.
To my dad – thank you for being the best dad possible. You gave me wings to fly, empowered me to go and chase after whatever I wished for with resolve and courage, and offered me the strength to feel there’s nothing I couldn’t achieve if I wanted it. Thank you for raising both a warrior and dreamer, and for believing in me. I love you.
To my mom and best friend – thank you, my beautiful, crazy, and brilliant mom for being you. There is no one with whom I laugh louder and more full-hearted than with you. I love our talks and how passionate you are about your mother-friend role. It is a blessing to be your daughter, and I love every minute of it. I love you tremendously.
To my brother – you are a part of me, and I could never imagine life without you. I love you. I am glad you grew up before you gave me a heart attack. I could never say growing up with you gave me a dull moment.
To my future readers – please believe me when I say, I will be grateful for every single one of you, and with every new reader, my heart will expand.
To Kaylene Osborn, my editor from Swish Design & Editing – thank you for your support and patience. You are great, and I am glad I’ve found you and Nicki. I have no idea what I would have done without your helpful suggestions and tips.
To Sarah from Sprinkles on Top Studios – thank you for the beautiful cover. I’m more than happy with the end result.
I hope this list will grow with every new release.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
With love and gratefulness,
Nivia Borell
“Don’t build a wall around your own suffering or it may devour you from the inside.”
~Frida Kahlo~
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
A Note From The Author
Connect With Me Online
About the Author – Nivia Borell
BRIA
There is no end to the depth of blankness, and no one knows it is everything left of my core.
Here I am, with every fleeting minute, fading into nothingness. A question infiltrates my thoughts in the face of finality. Will I be remembered? And if so, based on what and how? What is it that makes us worthy of being memorialized? Is it a special trait we inherit or learn? Or maybe the way we decide to live our lives? Is it what we succeed at or what we failed to achieve? The dreams we buried or the hardship we overcame? The days and nights that blended while we made decisions which altered our lives and drove us to a different path than we desired or imagined? Or is it solely because of the people with whom we struck a chord of their soul on our way and planted us in their hearts that make us unforgettable? Isn’t it love which locks us in the mind and heart of the other as we cast the key away? Then, no one who has been loved has ever been forgotten, or…
Well then, here lays the paradox. To begin with, love destroyed me.
I glance up the twilight sky and ponder as I take in its endlessness ‘who am I in the large scheme of life?’ No one special, just a girl who had the incredible luck to be born, live, love, and her spirit crushed.
My hands intertwine with the railing of my balcony suite as I gasp realizing my end is approaching. I avert my gaze toward the dimly illuminated Lake Zürich which spreads out in
front of me while the veil of darkness dawns to kiss the day goodbye. I plod back into the safety of my borrowed home for the night and rub my arms. My feet burrow into the plush blue carpet as my eyes adjust to the arctic white walls and the refined cream furniture surrounding me.
I pace from corner to corner until I slouch on the king-size bed, and although lavish, it doesn’t seduce me with the possibility of sweet relaxation. I hop up as if burned leaving behind only faint evidence in the form of a ruffled royal blue blanket. I avoid stumbling over my luggage on my way to the bar. Why should I bother to take my clothes out of my suitcase, anyway? Soon I will be gone—just a bitter memory.
After I pour myself a generous glass of ruby wine, I perch into the lush armchair with my forefinger tracing lines on the mahogany desk, and the other grasping the glass of my favorite poison. As I stretch my feet, I’m dragged into the clutch of tonight’s event, the reason I am here and not home.
Welcome to Oblivion.
A rather proper party motive for my present and precarious position.
I raise my glass of wine to the superficial and vain, to all the cowards, myself included, and to those who stare right through you praying not to make the mistake of glimpsing the mad core of another person. I commend the ones who want to forget themselves for a few glorious moments and feel accepted, part of, and, oh, let’s not omit, important. Alcohol and lies are the best mixes for people wavering with shaky legs on the delicate lines of life and sustenance. Like seductive mermaids, they call to the weak, charming with a dare to let the mask fall and unchain their true self.
My painted red lips arch into a sardonic smile because I know nothing good ever came out of this alcohol and mask-induced bravery.
And last, I drink to myself, or more likely, to the end of me—my name, my identity, my story. Blurred images come to my mind, and I’m incapable of grasping the recollections. None of them reach my heart. I can’t summon how it used to be or who I was. Well, here I am at twenty-five relieved everything will end soon.
I have played my role so damn well that no person will recognize the void residing in me. Everything I am is fake. I am dead inside. My heart stopped beating when I was only eighteen. The time when others began to nibble on adulthood was the moment my life tumbled, tearing my world apart. Everywhere I went, I’ve left a small, broken piece of my soul hoping he’d collect them someday.
It’s a wishful thought to have about he who hates me with such passion. Acknowledging the impact of that hatred would break me further except, at this point, there’s nothing to shatter which hasn’t already been ruptured by myself as a sacrifice to the temple of our love. My only masochistic satisfaction is comprehending he once loved me. No one would believe it, though, not even me any longer as the first-row witness to our story. Everything I now glimpse in his icy, scornful, yet mostly indifferent blue eyes—the lack of everything we were and shared with layers of dust on the monument of an epic and failed love. As someone otherwise incapable of feeling a damn thing, I’m still affected by the power he has to slice through me. Isn’t that ironic? But at least I am feeling during those moments of pain. Mad as it may sound, these will be the only ones I’ll miss if a dead person can still miss anything. I’m not panic-stricken to halt and scrape at life’s walls. For many years, I’ve lived in impenetrable inner darkness with my poisonous mind as my treasured company. Shivers run through me at the thought of leaving my carefully-built charade. My weakness would sicken me, but lucky me, I don’t care either way.
The phrase, ‘In the blink of an eye,’ crushed me, and life made a sacred duty of teaching it to me, forever changing the course of my existence and giving me another gift—an illness that became my sanctuary and assured me I must have loved in the only way that has the capacity to tear one from the inside out.
They called it broken heart syndrome. Everything came at once. I became ill, and I gave up fighting because the reason for my existence couldn’t even look at me anymore—the same person who always said I was the light of his life, his personal sun.
However, in the blink of an eye, I instead became the dark shadow of the moon. I was no longer the girl who kept his demons at bay, but the one who called them out to play, luring them to do their worst on me. After years of trials, he succeeded to decimate the final fragments of my sanity one year ago—his gift for my twenty-fourth birthday. It makes me cringe, and it’s enough not to reminisce as I massage the throb behind my temples.
But long before my twenty-fourth birthday, there was a night, six years earlier, when my downfall was cemented. In twelve months, I wrecked my heart, my soulmate, my health, and my… I shut my eyes and wrap my hands around my chest breathing through the havoc. So yes, I didn’t have it in me to keep fighting and keep moving on. Depression and guilt were constant reminders of my brokenness beyond repair, and of the things I’ve lost at my expense and my fault only. My family couldn’t take it anymore, and my doctors gave up hope attempting to help me. No one can save someone who has no intention, will, or desire to be helped. It’s the saddest and frustrating task of all, and in the end, it is a losing battle.
I witnessed that suffering is selfish, it craves the anguish of everyone around, and it strives and grows with each increase of misery.
For almost a year, nothing worked. I kept deteriorating, torn between fighting and giving up, dying a little more each day. Death never came, though, and with it my hopes of a clean end.
As it was, what broke the cycle was not my mother’s cries, my father’s pleas to come back, my brother’s suffering of losing me, or even everything the finest doctors in the world tried to do to make me function again. The answer laid in the remnants of a lost and shattered love and the dying wish of an old man, my best friend, and the man who would become the father of the new, although dysfunctional, me. Quinn Hope gave me a purpose and said something I will never forget, and it has become my mantra ever since. I realized not being alone and having the support of someone is ultimately the best helper to keep crawling forward.
He said as he pointed to the vacuumed spot behind my chest, “I know you’re broken, little one. I see you’re hollow inside… but as long as your heart still beats inside your chest, the fight goes on. What will your legacy be? Will it be a memory of a woman who resigned or of someone who defeated the odds and rewrote her path? Dear girl, I notice something in you, a flicker, but this small spark will give you something back… not what you’ve lost, but a fragment you can leave behind. You have to find it in you, child. I will be right here for you for the entire time this adventure lasts.”
When everyone gave up on me on that hospital bed surrounded by the pungent stink of antiseptic and false hopes, myself included, it was Quinn who got through the walls with his promise of making me someone worth remembering. In exchange, I promised him the only thing I could—I would spend a few more years trudging along until I could leave something better behind than the memory of the old me, the biggest failure to the people who adored me.
I sneer at the thought of it. My mind is my hulky enemy not allowing me even a single day to forget, and even though it numbs my feelings, it has never had the same effect on my brain. It runs one program and never allows me an easy breath. No, on the contrary, every new gasp is a constant reminder I’m still living and still the one to blame.
As I take another sip of Chateau Mouton, I peek through the window and see a part of the city which has been both my home and tormentor blanketed by the sky’s nightfall. I bow in front of the proud, large hills and majestic lake reflecting the plump moon peering behind the irregular mountain’s crest as if demanding attention for making something terrestrial appear celestial.
I assume by now the guests are arriving dressed in their black attire and masks—an idea I had in hopes of making everyone feel at ease with the false safety it guarantees because tonight is a play zone for those who crave to take a little pause from life. So, this is my last act. Tomorrow, I will be free.
Exhausted over
the past seven years, I beg for release as I toss down this dried, fruity bouquet of ruby liquor. I drink to the girl I once was—in love and loved.
“This is for you, my dear lost girl, to celebrate you as you once were, happy and carefree, so full of dreams and hopes. You had something I will never have… a future.”
These words threaten to choke me. Is this the proverbial moment they rave about in the face of finality, you covet another chance at life? I shake my head at my disarrayed thoughts.
BRIA
Present day…
After the last sip, I set the glass on the dark wood table, pull myself up, and roam toward the ample mirror of the closet to survey myself. I stare while a heavy pant jolts my body as the last flicker of what has kept me going disappears from my hazel eyes. With my finger raised, I try to clasp and hold onto the dimming spark, but it flees through my clumsy fingers.
A breath I’ve kept a prisoner for too long slips out my mouth as my image in the mirror fogs before me for a few seconds. I try to find shallow pleasure in my appearance—how my long, golden-brown hair is straightened to perfection, and my black leather pants are so tight they meld like a second skin. My low, V-neck satin shirt with black pearls sewn around my cleavage give my look a glamorous touch—all sophistication and body-fitted. My barn owl heart-shaped necklace, which holds so many memories of a life long gone, now mocks me.
I stare at it questioning why I’m wearing it. Am I that masochistic tonight? I nod to myself in affirmation because, for a few hours, I want to remember, to delve into something, anything, even though I know it will be pain. What else could I still feel? I squeeze my hands into fists and examine further.