The Drazen World: Irrelevant (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Allyn Lesley

  Paying for a therapist isn’t cheap but it’s worthy every cent. With her help, I’m even trying new things like yoga and cycling to see what I enjoy, to know who I am. There’s not a day that I don’t miss or think about Jon, but I think he’d be proud of the woman I’m becoming. Yeah, he’d be proud, I think to myself, sitting in front of the television with my cup of coffee.

  “We have breaking news. Channel Five has received word that Monica Drazen, wife of the late Jonathan Drazen III, was arrested late last night.”

  I choke on the hot liquid and grab the remote to increase the volume.

  “Mrs. Drazen and her mother, Marie Faulkner, were arrested in a murder-for-hire plot at the Drazen’s home in über exclusive Hyde Park.” There’s a video image of Monica looking smug as she’s escorted from her mansion with her mother behind her. I peer closer at the screen, and rather than remorse, Monica’s smiling for the camera and pronounces her innocence. “An insider close to the investigation told us that the plot to kill Mr. Drazen, founder of a multi-national technical security corporation, was put in motion before they married a year ago.”

  Well I’ll be damned!

  The reporter goes on to other news, but I’m still reeling even as I head out for my yoga class. I’m so distracted that I wobble through the worst warrior pose since my two-week start and almost lose my balance attempting a tree pose. I’m still beating myself up for not being focused in class as I head up the few steps to my front door. A distinct cologne wafts into my nostrils and stops my ascent. Maybe you’re losing it. Then I tell myself Jon wasn’t the only male who ever wore that scent. I take another step and stop dead in my tracks.

  “Hey, baby girl.”

  “Wha-what’s going on?” He’s here and alive, looking fine and healthy. “Yo-you were shot. In th-the chest,” I tell him through trembling lips, recounting the things I read in the newspaper about his death. “I-I don’t understand.”

  He stands up, and I back away, still not sure if it’s a ghost, a figment of my imagination, or someone playing a cruel joke on me.

  “Let’s go inside.” Jon stretches out his hand for me to take, but I hesitate. Maybe hearing about the arrest of my stepmother and my half sister this morning is still messing with me. I have been off since hearing about a murder plot. “Katie, please.” His eyes crinkle at the sides from his warm smile that’s so familiar yet cautious. Like he’s unsure of himself.

  I rush into his arms. “Is it really you?” When our chests meet, I know he’s real. Tears fall onto my cheeks. “How are you here?”

  He takes the keys from my unsteady fingers, helping me indoors to sit on the couch. I see his mouth moving, but everything is fuzzy, and I see two of everything.

  “Wait here,” he mumbles, leaving me alone. He’s back with a glass of water, feeding it to me with care and love. “Is that enough?”

  I nod because that’s the only thing I can do in this moment. My face presses into his neck, breathing him in. One of my hands roams over his chest to feel for deadly bullet holes where his heart beats. “You’re here,” I tell him again low but happy. I didn’t need him to live, that much was proven when my life carried on the day following his funeral. But his love, his presence rounds me out ... makes my life that much richer, more complete. He’s my other half. The one I didn’t know I was searching for. The man with the indecent proposal who changed my entire life.

  “I know I have a lot to tell you, but it’s so good to see you.” Jon captures my hand, planting a sweet kiss on each fingertip. “To see with my own eyes that you’re all right.” He pans the cozy living room with my simple furnishings that I put together on a shoestring budget.

  “The money you left in the safe was just enough to cover my deposit and to get a few things,” I tell him as a way to explain the missing curtains over the windows and the snack table holding up my television. “I planned to—”

  “It’s perfect.”

  I look down at his large hand over mine and still can’t believe what’s going on. So many thoughts whir around my head and I spew the first one out in nervousness. “I-I was kicked out of your funeral.” His hand tightens on mine, and I wonder what’s running through his mind. This morning’s news story comes back to me. “I told you about the voices in the library but I wasn’t specific.” That conversation was brief because I wasn’t sure Jon wanted to hear what I had to say. “I heard Monica, definitely, and someone else, a male. The day when—”

  “When she pushed you.” His chin dips and his profile is closed off. “I should’ve told you what was going on, but they weren’t sure of your involvement.” He turns to face me, and his green eyes are filled with sorrow. “I wasn’t sure of your involvement.” I slide my hand from under his. He didn’t trust me? “The police came to me with Maria and Monica’s plot from the very beginning. Back then I was running on revenge and the quest to get Monica back for the way she treated me, discarded my love when I worked for her family.”

  I open my mouth to say something but he shakes his head and I keep my peace, giving Jon the space to go on.

  “What I’m about to say, please, I need to beg for your forgiveness. I wasn’t thinking. I was foolish, selfish, and filled with rage. I wanted to see who Monica had conned into her play. I came to Maria with the idea of having you work and live with her daughter and myself. Instead of anger as I assumed, she demanded payment.”

  My face is hot. Now I’ll finally hear the truth.

  “‘A king’s ransom to fuck the whore’ she told me.”

  “Ho-how much was that?”

  Jon grips my hand. “Katie, look at me.” I can’t though. The events in the parlor. Being bought like chattel. “Please,” he says, voice broken up with pain. And when I finally raise my head up, his cheeks are wet with his tears. “I’m sorry. I am.”

  “I know.” But I still need to hear the number. How much was I sold to get out of Maria’s home when she knew the details of Jon’s intentions toward me. “How much was this ‘king’s ransom’?”

  “A million and a half. But I couldn’t go through with it. Not after the time I spent with you in the parlor. I wanted you. That much was true from the day of my reception but you were such an innocent. I wasn’t thinking straight. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in my revenge, baby girl. That’s the reason I left for all that time. I couldn’t take you back to Maria’s and I was too selfish not to have you near me. But I didn’t want to hurt you either.” On my lips, he begs low, “Say you forgive me. Please? You’re my heart. I need you to forgive me.” His voice cracks. “Anything could’ve happened to my heart, Katie. I left you with that madwoman! I should’ve fought to have you brought into police protection.” All I see is his face wet with tears. “I could’ve lost you because I was blinded by my need to avenge decades-old shit that wasn’t worth the fight. Your sister was after my money and was willing to do anything to get her hands on it.” Jon pauses briefly like he’s not sure if he should shut up and say more. Then he gets bold when I remain stunned by his confession. “Please, say something. Anything. Curse at me. Call me a miserable peace of shit.” He slaps his wide chest, covered by a short-sleeved gray T-shirt. “Because I deserve it. I do. I call myself all kinds of names. I wasn’t here to protect you, to watch out for you. I love you so much. And this is how I show you. It hurts when you’re not around.” He doesn’t hide his anguish; his regretful tears splash on the hardwood floor under our feet. “My revenge almost destroyed you. Please, Katie. Tell me you forgive me. Tell me it’s not too late for us.”

  “I forgive you but I still have questions, Jon.” This man isn’t my father who won’t answer me and I’m no longer the woman afraid of her own shadow. “Why still go through with the wedding if you knew Monica wanted to kill you? Was there no other way around that? Was that a legitimate wedding at all?”

  He eases his back onto the couch but settles me between his muscular legs. His hands, the ones that caressed my feet in the hospital when we miscarried, wrap a
round me, drawing me nearer to him. “There were other ways but I had to see if she’d still marry me. Please know that my mind was so twisted with my revenge that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew the police were gathering their evidence against her, and legally she would be handled eventually. But I needed to see how far she would go with her play-acting. If I had to do it over again, I would choose the sister whose sunrise eyes I’ve dreamt about for seventeen years.”

  “I can’t be your mistress again.”

  “I’d never ask that,” he’s quick to tell me. “The marriage was annulled this morning.” Seconds become minutes while his heart thunders under my back. “Marry me, Katie. Marry me because this boy with no name is only who he is when you’re by my side.”

  Epilogue

  “One last push. Come on, you can do it.”

  I look ahead into the determined eyes of my doctor and grunt through a contraction despite what I learned in the Lamaze classes Jon dragged me to.

  “Come on, baby. It’s time for us to meet our little boy.”

  I force my head off the pillow, gather the last bit of strength I really don’t feel I have, and bear down, grunting some more, grimacing a lot, as another contraction hardens my stomach. I crush Jon’s fingers, squeezing them, while I cry out in pain as another contraction rips through my body. Then there’s relief. Relief that it’s over.

  I flop backward, tired and weak. Something’s on top of my stomach, and I realize it’s my son, but there’s only silence from him. No movements. No cries.

  “Jon.” Tears spill from my eyes as I realize that I’ve birthed another dead baby. “Jon.” I lift up my head just as my baby is whisked off my stomach by a nurse. I can only hear the sounds of fast walking. I still don’t hear the usual newborn cries. “Jon. What’s going on?”

  His fingers tighten around mine in a near bone-crushing grip. Neither of us says anything, but I feel his concern. I hear his unstated worries.

  Not another loss. I can’t take it. I won’t survive this one. Just then, I hear the sweet sound of a newborn’s cries echoing throughout the birthing room.

  “He’s all right, Katie. Our son is okay.” He takes our bundled baby who is pressed into his waiting hands.

  “What about his toes and fingers?”

  “See for yourself.”

  As soon as the tiny body settles against my heart, he stops squirming. Then I remember the made-up story I used to tell myself about my own birth. I do what my mother didn’t get the chance to do. I count his ten toes and kiss his ten fingers. I marvel at the copper tuft of hair so like his father’s and the eyes that, at first glance, appear hazel but may turn green like his dad’s.

  “He’s both of us,” Jon tells me at the side of my bed. “What shall we call him, Mrs. Drazen?”

  I smile at my new name. Our wedding was a total surprise. I thought we were going to dinner, but Jon had other plans. No one was there but the priest and us. But I’ll never forget that afternoon. I walked down the aisle with a single hazel-colored Aster toward a proud Jon.

  “So, what shall we call him?” he asks, bringing me out of my head.

  I’ve given this a lot of thought since finding out we were having a son. “The best namesake I know. Jonathan S. Drazen IV.” I finger his tiny fist. “Welcome to your family.” My son will never know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who share his blood but hate him. As long as there’s breath in my body, he’ll never walk around feeling inadequate.

  “He likes his name,” Jon tells me as we both listen to our child’s soft cooing sounds. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  ***

  I can’t believe the number of people here.

  From my place at the podium, I look around at the unfamiliar faces gathered inside Books & Other Things who are here to enjoy the bookstore’s weekly “Spend Your Night With ... ” series, which features up-and-coming authors.

  A blown-up picture of my book, A Boy with No Name, sits on an easel beside me. It’s largely fictionalized, but bits of my life and pieces of Jon’s are woven into the love story about a boy and a girl who were saved by love. It’s not a bestseller, and I’m not a household name, but I’m enjoying the new career I haphazardly uncovered while I breastfed JJ, my son. I look down at my watch one last time. Jon promised he’d be here.

  I adjust the microphone, stalling, but I’m out of time. The nerves get the better of my stomach muscles, causing them to quiver. I can do this. With more confidence than I feel, I step forward and open my book. When I look back out at the crowd, my biggest cheerleader, Jon, sits front and center, mouthing, “I love you.”

  “Me too,” I mouth back. I clear my throat. “There once lived a boy with no name who fell in love with a girl who was irrelevant.”

  I never thought I’d be anything but irrelevant, but I’m now a wife, a mother, and a woman with knowledge about my self-worth. Had Jon not offered me his audacious job proposal, I probably would have never found the love of my life.

  THE END

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  Want more of CD Reiss’ Kindle Worlds? Click to see teasers, character muses, and much more.

  Other Novels by allyn lesley

  —romantic suspense novels—

  The Deeper Chronicles

  Deeper (Book One of The Deeper Chronicles)

  Descent (Book Two of The Deeper Chronicles)

  Abyss (Book Three of The Deeper Chronicles) ~ coming soon

  ricochet: A Romantic Suspense Novelette

  —new adult novels—

  Liar: A Short Story

  Falling ~ coming soon

  About allyn lesley

  allyn lesley writes real stories about real people.

  As a teen, allyn lost herself in the pages of some of romance’s heavyweights, trusting a happy ever after was just around the corner. In allyn’s own writing journey, as in life, she’s learned people don’t always experience recovery and restoration after a fall. Her stories speak to the gritty side of life, where the right choice isn’t always easily identified and happiness not quickly gained.

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