ASIRA
AWAKENS
By
CHEVELLE ALLEN
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for use in brief quotations for book reviews and critiques.
This is an original work of fiction built upon some historical events. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Chevelle Allen
ISBN-13:978-1546662303
ISBN-10:1546662308
OTHER TITLES BY CHEVELLE ALLEN
Darling Nikita © 2017
“The Lover’s Trilogy” © 2016
Her Love and Regrets (Book 1)
His Pleasures and Pain (Book 2)
Their Now and Forever (Book 3)
Visit: www.ChevelleAllen.com
For future releases, reviews, blog and more!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I thank my family and loved ones for support, patience, and encouragement. Very special thanks to advance readers for their insights and critiques of early drafts.
I’m particularly grateful to Booktique Editing for superb work and last but certainly not least, the amazing artistry of Zaji Zee of Creative Ankh Design for exceptional cover design.
“Let us make man in our image.”
Genesis 1:26
CHAPTER 1
The alarm sounded as Deborah rolled over to shut it off. Staring at the ceiling, the scent of Rodney lying next to her soon filled her nostrils with spent cologne and the swirl of their combined body odors. Feeling his morning arousal against her leg, he flung his arm over her belly like a weight as he edged closer to hold her. But frankly, she wasn’t in the mood.
“Morning,” he whispered with breath as stale as her own.
“Good morning.”
Spending the occasional weekend together, not much else happened between them other than… this. It had become abundantly clear to her what they shared was a relationship of opportunity and not one of desire.
“Rodney?”
“Yeah?” he responded inching closer and nuzzling into her neck.
“What are we doing?”
Lifting his head slightly, he looked into her warm brown eyes with a bit of confusion. “What?”
“We’ve been dating for over six months, and honestly, I have no idea if…”
“Are you serious?”
She rolled onto her side to face him. “Very.”
“If you’re asking what I think you are… I’m not ready for that conversation.”
“Do you think you ever will be ready… with me?”
Whatever arousal he had was gone. “I… I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
He groaned and sat up. “Listen, Deborah, being with you is cool. We have a good time, right? It’s all good for me right now. What happens later? I don’t know.”
“Thanks for being straight with me.” She got up reaching for his underwear and t-shirt on the floor. Passing them to him, she said, “I have to be at work by seven-thirty so…”
He reached for her arm all but ignoring the garments. “Wait a minute. I didn’t realize this was a thing for you.”
Looking at him over her shoulder, she smiled. “It’s okay. I wanted to know if we were in the same place.”
“Do you want to live together… or something?”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Then I’m confused.”
She sighed deeply. “I’m not feeling forever either. The truth is, I’m not even sure about next week.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. We can keep doing this until who or whatever we really want comes along, or we let go.”
“Let go?”
“Yeah.”
The truth was over time he bored her. As pleasant as he was, Rodney Jackson never sparked much in her other than the occasional orgasm. Their conversations were usually mundane. They had very few things in common on any deep or visceral level. She genuinely liked him, yet nothing happening between them lit her soul on fire or made her want happily ever after. Deep down she wanted extraordinary love and being thirty, she deserved it. Being self-contained and content with the life she’d made for herself, she wasn’t going to chase any man to have it.
“Why don’t we both take a few days to think about it, and we’ll talk later in the week,” she replied as delicately as possible.
“Whatever,” he huffed.
He was clearly hurt. She was uncertain if male pride or genuine emotion etched the expression on his face. Without another word, Deborah got out of bed desperate to shower. When she returned to her bedroom, he wasn’t there. With the towel wrapped around her, she stepped into the living area of her one-bedroom apartment noticing the bottom lock of the front door engaged. Rodney was gone, perhaps for good. The sense of relief confirmed all she’d said to him—if not more. With quickness, she dressed and was out the door for work.
She missed living within Detroit’s city limits, but simply couldn’t afford it anymore. High insurance and taxes dwindled her paycheck giving her little financial flexibility. Though crime decreased significantly in the downtown area and its adjacent neighborhoods, the housing prices soared as gentrification reared its head once again. But she’d grown accustomed to living in the small hamlet just outside of it. Even with unpredictable traffic patterns, she relished the drive in. It was a daily reminder of the heydays of innovation, wealth, and expansion of the Motor City, one of the most underrated or oft-maligned cities in America. Portions of the city were absolutely beautiful with greenery, a thriving downtown, and opulent old homes in pristine neighborhoods. But there was a stark and haunting beauty in areas long neglected, abandoned, and dilapidated. At times, she thought the city best reflected the human condition. People were capable of extraordinary genius, beauty, and love, but they could also be cruel, self-serving, and violent.
Heading into Detroit, she merged onto the Lodge Freeway from the Reuther. Deborah knew the exact spot where this marvel of engineering began to sink below street level. It was deliberately built in the 1950s to ensure prominent city residents didn’t have to see or hear the rush of traffic as it passed through. Some parts of the Lodge were fifteen feet or more below street level. Because of deferred maintenance and aging infrastructures, the storm drains weren’t cleared as frequently as they should be turning the Lodge into a flood-prone deathtrap during heavy rains.
Reaching her exit, she passed far too many liquor stores signaling the working class nature of the neighborhood. With traffic slowing, she approached the twelve-foot high iron gates and stone walls enclosing the entire University campus. Just beyond them, Tudor Gothic architecture dominated the landscape to stunning effect. In many ways, it seemed so out of place, but there was a time when the entire area was far more harmonious.
Passing through the stone entry, she drove the short distance pulling into the Faculty/Staff parking lot. It was a short walk to the Arts Building resembling a grand castle with massive towers. Affixed to its center dome was a cross signifying its origins as a Catholic university. The building housed the University’s archives, library, and a museum along with classrooms and administration offices. This was the place where the past, present, and future coalesced. Here, her intellect and imagination could run free.
She loved arriving early because it gave her time to be alone with her thoughts and ease into her day. As she walked toward the entry, she expected to see Mr. Mugabe, an elderly groundskeeper who always greeted her with a warm smile and a cheerful hello. But he wasn’t there. Instead, she was surprised to see her boss Megan Duval, the divisional director responsible for the arc
hives, library, and museum getting out of her car. With arms full of binders and an oversized purse, she seemed a bit disheveled but cheerful nonetheless.
“Good morning, Deborah!”
“Good morning!” Deborah replied cheerfully. “Do you need help?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
Together they walked the East Wing of the building to their offices. Megan was outgoing, smart, and someone Deborah greatly respected. She kept the similar but divergent worlds of her staff’s work in perfect synch.
“How was your weekend?” Megan asked.
“So-so. And yours?”
“We spent the weekend at Cedar Point. I hadn’t been in forever! We had such a great time!”
“Sounds fun… and exhausting.”
“I definitely had to pop a few aspirin when we got home. All that walking wore us out!”
Megan had three teens—two boys and a girl—all a year apart. A military widow, she relocated to the area after her husband’s death to be near family in the principally white suburb of Livonia.
“I can only imagine,” Deborah giggled.
Entering their office suite, Megan asked, “How’s the Van Nuys project going?”
“I’ve finished the condition reports, and I’m reviewing the correspondence while the interns digitize it all. Good stuff in there.”
“Do you think the students can wrap it up?”
“Certainly the digitizing, but I’ll still need to double check to make sure all meta tags and database descriptors are correct.”
It had been two years since the Van Nuys Collection was donated to the University. Deborah worked diligently making it as accessible as possible to researchers even though her work with it wasn’t complete. She loved archiving even during its most tedious tasks. When it got to her, she’d temporarily put a collection aside to go through other primary documents, manuscripts, letters, and maps, many of which hadn’t been reviewed in decades let alone digitized. As the University’s Chief Archivist, there was always something new to discover among the aged pages she was hired to preserve and protect. It was part of the reason she loved her work. With little of her background known, she found connections to people and places through her work.
“That’s good to know because I have another project for you… and it’s big!”
“What project?” Deborah asked.
“A collection containing papers from Father Willem of the Dubois family has been donated to the University.”
“It’s not like you to spring something like this on me, Megan.”
“Trust me, it’s more important than I imagined. It’ll be delivered tomorrow by armored vehicle.”
“Are the pages in gold or something?” Deborah chuckled masking this clear breach in protocol.
Megan replied, “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a heads up. Everything had to be confirmed and on its way here. Deborah, this is a major coup for the University, and it comes with a ten million dollar endowment to ensure it’s properly cared for. That should tell you something.”
“Who are these people?”
“An anonymous donor. Apparently, Father Willem was from a prominent 19th-century Belgian family. He was a Catholic priest devoting himself to mission work in Africa and the Caribbean beginning in the 1890s.”
“Why would the Collection come here?”
“I think Father Willem had some connection to the University’s founding order,” Megan replied.
“I don’t recall ever seeing his name among the priests or nuns starting the University.”
“Me either, but there’s got to be a connection.”
“What’s the condition of the papers?” Deborah asked with her curiosity beyond piqued.
“I have no idea. As far as I know, there hasn’t been an assessment. Just the donation and the money… all through the President’s Office.”
“We should’ve been involved to help determine if it’s worth it.”
“I’m meeting with the President this afternoon. I should know more then.”
“My schedule’s pretty open, so if you need me to join you, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Great!”
Parting company, Deborah headed down the hall toward her small office in the archival section of the library. File folders outlining the interns’ previous day’s work sat in her office door box. She pulled them out setting them on her desk to review later. Flipping on the overhead light, she went straight to her desk to boot her computer. It sprung to life as one notification after another showed her to-do list, incoming emails, and other tasks, but her thoughts were transfixed on this new information. Who is Father Willem?
Queuing up the database server from her computer, she typed in ‘Father Willem’ into the query box. The cursor blinked repeatedly, but no archival record appeared. Just what I thought, nothing. She then entered ‘Dubois.’ To her amazement, a few records appeared indicating the location reference of the file box in the archival stacks. She’d have to go to the rare archival storage area to find it since none of it had been digitized.
Printing out the page, she grabbed her keys rushing down the hall past the research tables and open records. Sensitive materials were kept behind an iron gate at the end of the records room. Placing her key into the lock, the familiar creak echoed into the space as she opened it. Walking deeper into the storage area, she reached the row matching the location number. She perused the row until she found the box with the corresponding number. Grabbing the sliding ladder, she climbed carefully taking the box down. Slipping on her white gloves, she opened it and retrieved Folder #9. Glancing through each piece of paper looking for the Dubois and Father Willem names, she finally saw it…
Compte tenu de ce 14e jour de mars, dans l'année de notre Seigneur, mille neuf cent deux cent cinquante mille francs belges, pour l'éducation des jeunes femmes dans une école de Détroit.
Signé, M. et Mme Antoine Dubois
Although her French speaking was a bit rusty, she read well and understood the passage.
Given this 14th Day of March, in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and two, one hundred fifty thousand Belgian Francs, for the education of young women at a school in Detroit.
Signed, Mr. and Mrs. Antoine Dubois
For such a large sum of money, Deborah was astonished the family’s name wasn’t listed among the original benefactors of the University. This doesn’t make sense, she thought. Monetary systems had changed significantly over time and throughout the world, but this was still a substantial gift, especially from a non-citizen. Racking her brain, she realized the closest comparison was James Smithson’s gift of 100,000 francs to found the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The mysterious Dubois family gift clearly rivaled it, yet they favored anonymity. Why?
The revelation was exciting. Wanting to know more, she continued flipping through the acid-free file searching for anything related to Father Willem, but there was nothing. In Folder #11, she found a small slip of paper also in French. The faded hand-written script proved far more difficult to read, but it seemed to be a personal note to Fr. Willem signed by Antoine. She could only presume it was the same Antoine Dubois. Snapping a quick picture with her cell phone, she carefully put most of the folders back into the archival box and placed it on the upper shelf before returning to her office with the two files she wanted to review in greater detail later. Crafting a quick note to Megan about her discovery, she leaned back in her chair pondering what treasure was in store on its way to the University.
CHAPTER 2
“May I get you anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you. Please let François know he has another satisfied diner today. Lunch was exquisite.”
“I’ll be happy to, Mr. Stewart. Will you be retiring to the library?”
“Not today, Geoffrey.”
Ben Stewart rose from his table. He was strikingly handsome standing a little over six feet tall. His strawberry blond hair had specks of gray defying his youthful fa
ce. He often drew the attention of women and men alike though for different reasons. His dimpled smile was inviting, but the eyes… his stunning deep blue eyes had the power to transfix or terrify.
The only son of an only son, he was affable and engaging. Among London’s progressive elite, he was known as an astute businessman like his father and grandfather before him, but he was still an enigma to most. There were no scandals associated with his name. Few people were known to keep intimate company with him. He seemed a solitary figure to most and a curiosity to all. Yet, everyone knew who he was.
Making his way from the dining room to the large Italianate Central Hall, he was greeted by several other Reform Club members on their way to lunch. He chatted for a moment with Sebastian Binns, a fellow collector of Central African antiquities and tribal arts. Sebastian spoke of his latest acquisitions in hopes of determining which direction Ben’s interests would turn. But Ben’s pursuits were far more specific and less about quantity preferring distinctly religious pieces when it came to his collecting habits. It was no secret he was willing to pay handsomely for an object suiting his needs. Concluding pleasantries with Sebastian, Ben left the club through its green wooden doors.
Stepping out into the bright sunshine and down the marble steps, his awaiting driver, Arthur, opened the rear door for him without a word. Ben got inside taking his seat next to Peter Grant, his personal assistant.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Peter said.
“What do you have for me?”
“Perhaps a bit of good news,” he replied as he handed Ben a portfolio.
“Let’s hear it.”
The car pulled away from the club heading south. Ben loved Central London, but his flat in West Brompton was merely for convenience. He much preferred the privacy of his West Sussex home—it was his haven.
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