Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1)

by Jacqueline Sweet

  “No, this unit is the property of the firm, to be used exclusively by employees of the firm. If we let you stay here past six p.m. today we’d be opening ourselves up to tax liabilities and the possibility of a lawsuit. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Six? That’s not enough time. I’ve been here for two years. I have things! I can’t get movers here that fast or even pack.”

  “You’ll have to hand over your phone as well. And your computer. And any other company property. The partners are concerned about your behavior last night, Ms. Hart.” Robert said in a voice dripping with contempt. “There is a fear that if left to your own devices you might try contacting former clients, current clients, or the media. They’ve requested that I remind you of the agreements you signed when you were first hired by the firm. Contacting anyone about your termination, outside of immediate family, will be met with swift action. The full weight of the firm will fall upon you. Do you understand?”

  All of those papers, those non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. They’d seemed so innocent when she’d signed them. Boilerplate text, they’d said. Industry standard clauses. Nothing to worry about. At the time, she’d agreed. She’d been flattered and desperate—a terrible combination. But standing on the other side, she saw the injustice threaded through those documents.

  “Robert, where am I supposed to go?”

  “That really isn’t my problem, Ms. Hart. Whatever happens to you from this day forward, it’s your own actions that have brought you here.” He produced a plastic bag from under his arm. It was thick and gray, with the firm’s logo stamped on the side. “I need your phone and computer now.”

  “But I don’t have another phone. How can I call for help?”

  “Use a payphone.”

  “Where, in 1997?”

  Robert pursed his lips and then sighed. “Bella, you have time to make one call. They’re shutting the service down right now. And then you need to gather what you absolutely need from here, and then get lost. At six, men will be here to lock you out. You don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

  She almost said thank you to Robert, as if showing the barest amount if decency towards another human being was worthy of praise.

  The phone could be shut off at any second. Who should she call? None of her work friends could help her, and they probably weren’t even her friends anymore. Who knew what stories were being spread about her by Charles Edward Heath. Most of her friends from law school had scattered to the wind, to Portland, to Seattle, to Los Angeles. And anyway, staying with them would probably violate a dozen clauses in her contract about associating with opposing counsel after termination. She knew how the machinery of corporate law worked. She’d seen the gears grind up well-meaning people who thought good intentions were more powerful than a contract. It was just surprising to find that she was now the one caught in those jagged metal teeth.

  There was no one else close enough to call. Ex-boyfriends? She didn’t have any she was close enough with. And since she’d spent two years actively ignoring all of her non-work friends, none of them were likely to help her.

  That left only one person in the whole world she could call for help. But he was the one person she’d resolved to never ask for anything.

  She found his number in her contacts and thumbed the button. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hello? Who is this?” his voice was stern and distant. Like always.

  “Dad, it’s Bella. I need help.”

  Her father sighed with disappointment.

  “I’ve lost my job, Dad, and I have nowhere to go.”

  “I don’t have any money,” he said. “At least none to spare.” She could feel him pushing her away with every breath. Go ask anyone else, was the subtext.

  “I don’t need money. I need somewhere to sleep tonight.” She tried to find her grown-up voice, her lawyering voice, but when she spoke to him she was fifteen again.

  “I can’t have visitors here. The rules are very explicit. The Lord Winterborn detests guests.”

  Without him, she’d be homeless that night. Maybe she could track down an acquaintance and beg them, but without a phone it was unlikely.

  “Please, father. I’m begging you. I am literally begging you.” Her voice threatened to crack. “Please help me.”

  He sighed again, aggressively. The man had a thousand different ways of expressing disappointment with his sighs. “Very well. But it’s only temporary. A few days. Then you leave.”

  “Thank you. Seriously, thank you.”

  “Take the bus to Bearfield. I’ll meet you at the station after dark and then we’ll creep like common thieves back to my home so no one hears us.”

  Before she could say anything, the phone died.

  No service, it said.

  CHAPTER 2

  T he bus ride gave Bella plenty of time to think, but she tried not to. During the day, the drive north was gorgeous—all mountains and sea and rolling hills. But at night it was all darkness and headlights. A sea of tail lights floated ahead of the bus, like embers from a fire blowing in the wind. She’d burned down her life—not on purpose, but the results couldn’t be argued with. The question was, could she rise from the ashes like a phoenix, or had the flames scarred her forever?

  God, she missed her phone.

  She arrived in Bearfield just after dark. The little vacation town was quaint, but too sleepy for Bella’s taste. It looked like the kind of place where nothing ever happened, and a new bakery opening up was the talk of the town for months. The bus station was just the parking lot next to a shuttered barbecue joint. A schedule tacked up on a post was the height of the technology on display.

  Bella missed San Francisco with every drop of her blood. It was such a beautiful city, full of opposites. The uber-rich, and the homeless. Cutting edge Silicon Valley ideas layered upon two hundred years of ghosts and traditions.

  She huddled into her sweater and sat on the curb, hoping her father would arrive soon.

  In the hurry to leave, she packed exactly one suitcase full of her own clothes. The firm had sent a messenger over, in Robert’s wake, with an itemized list of the suits and dresses and shoes and even underwear that they had paid for and therefore considered their property. They impounded her panties. What would they do with them? It was mortifying. When the firm said they had a monthly clothes budget for her, she’d never stopped to consider that meant the clothes belonged to someone else—but they did. Or at least she couldn’t fight them on their claims. What was legal so often was just what a wealthy person declared was legal, until the challenge made its way through the courts.

  What apparel she had left, that still fit, easily fit into her modest suitcase. Mostly it was Sunday afternoon clothes or yoga pants that she’d worn all of one time. Her collection of mementoes and documents that she still considered important she mailed to her aunt in upstate Wisconsin with a note asking her to hold onto them. Aunt Caroline was a very kind woman, big hearted, but also an incorrigible snoop. Bella knew she’d open every box that arrived and go through every scrap inside. But she was welcome to. Bella had no more secrets left. They’d all been burned away.

  Her whole life, reduced to one bag and a corner of her aunt’s garage, thousands of miles away.

  Bella still couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t think about Charles Edward Heath, either, without shaking. She definitely couldn’t think about what he might have done if he’d found her, or if she’d slipped out of the office a little too early and run into him outside.

  The night air was warm and still. Even with the lights of the little vacation town burning in the night, the stars were magnificently visible. It was summer, Bella realized. The summer stars shone down on her and she mentally listed all the constellations she could see. It was an old habit, borne from years of her father quizzing her during their nightly walks. He’d point to a constellation and ask her the name. “Orion,” she’d say. “Draco. Corvus. Corona Berenices.” He wouldn’t tel
l her she was right, or even nod in approval. He’d just keep going until she messed up and then frown at her or give his little condescending laugh and explain in a monologue why she was wrong.

  She missed seeing the stars.

  She didn’t miss her father.

  It was nearly midnight when he arrived, over three hours since Bella had been dropped off at the empty lot passing for a bus station. Franklin Hart pulled up to her curb in his employer’s town car, an ostentatious Lincoln that was a deeper black than the night. He didn’t roll down the window or open the door. Her father sat, staring straight ahead, and waited for Bella to come to him. Typical.

  She tried the door, but it was locked.

  Her father stared straight ahead.

  Bella rapped on the Lincoln’s window with a knuckle.

  But Franklin Hart, her father and only remaining parent, stared straight ahead.

  Bella pinched the bridge of her nose. Her father had a way of turning every interaction, no matter how mundane, into a battle of wills that only he could be allowed to win. He was the most stubborn, least forgiving man in the universe. Once in law school, she realized that she was always the one to call him to say hi. He never made the first move, hadn’t at least since her mother had died. So Bella decided that she wouldn’t call him at all until he called her at least once.

  He never called. She relented after eight months, just before Christmas, if only because she needed to know if she could stay with him for a few nights. But that was at his old house, near Sacramento. Her father had a new life, a new job. It was all very mysterious. He resisted giving any details at all, other than that he was a sort of groundskeeper for a wealthy recluse. When pressed for details, he had a habit of changing the topic. If Bella pressed harder, he’d inquire after her weight, her marriage prospects, or any other sore subject.

  “Dad, please open the door.”

  Her father was motionless but for a finger that opened the passenger window a sliver.

  “Isabella, before you enter this car, there are rules to be agreed to.”

  “I’ve been out here for hours, can I please just get in the car and then we can talk?”

  “There are rules,” he said stiffly.

  “Dad, leaning against the car like this, talking through a crack in the window, I look like a call girl.”

  He pursed his lips. “I see the city has improved your vocabulary.”

  Bella knew, in her heart, that if she didn’t relent he’d just drive off. Maybe he’d look for her in a day or two, maybe not. He’d chalk it up to teaching her a lesson in humility, or respecting her elders, or something. The man used cold reason as a shield for his cruelty.

  “What are the rules, please?”

  “They are quite simple. I’m sure with your juris doctorate you will have no trouble understanding them.” He was the only man in the world who could make graduating law school at the top of the class sound like a mark of shame. “Primarily, you shall not leave the residence. That is the building where I reside. It is modest, but spacious enough for the two of us. No gallivanting around. No midnight explorations of the grounds. The Lord Winterborn detests intruders and we shall respect his wishes.”

  “Got it, what else?”

  “You shall be quiet when at home. No screaming or yelling, certainly no rock music or loud phone conversations.”

  “Sure, okay.” Was she fifteen again?

  “Lastly, there are things we won’t discuss. You are well aware of what they are.”

  Bella wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. Probably he meant they shouldn’t discuss money, religion, politics, his failure as a father, her failure as a daughter, old grudges, future grudges, and especially her late mother.

  “Understood,” she said, resisting the urge to snap off a salute.

  The door unlocked with a quiet thunk, which was all the welcome she’d receive.

  Bella slid her suitcase into the back seat. The car was immaculate. The leather interior was a deep red color, oxblood she thought it was called, and there wasn’t a smudge on it. Her father had left a neatly folded tarp to protect the car from Bella’s things. It felt like a metaphor.

  Once she was in and buckled, he turned to her and said, “It’s nice to see you, monkey.”

  “You too, Dad.”

  He always called her monkey when he wanted to soften the conversation. It was verbal punctuation to him—a sign that the stern father portion of the conversation was over, and they could discuss trivial things like books or movies. He meant it kindly, but Bella bristled at the pet name.

  Silent as smoke, the car slipped off into the night. Bella felt like she’d been awake for a week. She wanted nothing more than to rest her head against the cool glass and nap on the drive to the estate, but her father had very strict no smudging rules vis-a-vis foreheads and car windows, so she contented herself with staring ahead at the winding mountain roads.

  If she was going to stay awake, she’d need to talk.

  “Tell me about the estate, Dad. What do you even do here?”

  “More than I used to,” he grunted. “I was hired on as a landscape architect. Preserving the grounds, keeping away invasive species, and general grounds-work was my purview. I had a staff of thirty men. But times have grown lean. The former Lord Winterborn passed away some three years ago, you know.”

  “What? No, I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m sure I did. You must have forgotten.” It was his favorite excuse for never telling her anything of importance. “Now I try to do what I can by myself. The estate previously boasted a staff of almost two hundred souls, split between the main house, the vineyard, the farm and outlying territories. But that was before my time, back in the good old days. Now it employs a handful at best. I hesitate to speak ill of anyone,” he said and Bella had to fight back a laugh. He father spoke well of almost no one, aside from Ronald Reagan and whatever historian he was reading at the time. “But the new Lord Winterborn, heir to the estate, has driven away nearly everyone with his temper. He is a vain and selfish child.”

  “What’s with this Lord thing? This is America dad. We fought a war to not have to call anyone that.”

  “Actually,” her father began, and then launched into a monologue about the argument between the Founding Fathers over titles. Bella had heard it before, so she tuned him out. Actually was the man’s favorite word.

  When he’d finished, Bella tried again. “Why do you call him by his title?”

  “Because he is technically a lord and a baron of an estate in Scotland,” her father said. “And because the previous Lord Winterborn—the proper one—insisted upon it.”

  “Does the new Winterborn insist, too?”

  “No,” her father said with a sour expression. “He seems to dislike the title. There’s nothing worse than a child ashamed of his heritage.”

  The road wound its way up the mountains slowly, in a long endless curve. Winterborn, he’d said. He’d never mentioned the lord’s name when they spoken previously. She’d wondered who he worked for, and now she’d found out. Bella knew of the Winterborns. Her firm had represented one of them in a property dispute when she was first hired on. Her ex-firm, that is. Learning to give up her old life would take time.

  “Didn’t the father die under mysterious circumstances?” Bella asked. What could she recall about the case? Very little, it turned out—she hadn’t worked on it and only remembered other attorneys complaining about what a horror Winterborn was to work for.

  “Nothing mysterious about it,” her father sniffed. “The man was quite old and fell asleep with his pipe in hand in his hunting lodge. Fire used to be a very common way to die, before the government decided to cover everything in flame retardants.”

  “Right, I remember now. Mysterious fire. No last will that could be found. And his sons spent two years in court fighting over the estates.”

  Her father frowned so hard it looked like his face was going to crack in half. “His son
s. A bunch of wastrels and layabouts. None of them are fit to fill his shoes. The Lord Winterborn—the real Lord Winterborn himself—was a great man. Hearst, Carnegie, Morgan, Edison, Winterborn—there are no men like them today. He was a titan. A man of bold ideas and bolder action. We used to walk the grounds together on Sundays and discuss plans for development, you know. He told me stories of his past. That was a man who had lived. He fought in World War One and Two, did you know that? And despite being a man of age, he was remarkably fit. His mental acuity was second to none.”

  Bella knew little about the former Lord Winterborn, but if her father gushed over him it was certain that the man was problematic. Franklin Hart loved his despots, his tyrants, his strong men who ignored basic compassion to write their names in the history books.

  “The new Winterborn, though? What’s his deal?” Bella asked.

  “Technically, he is the heir. The title is contested. As well it should be. The Lord Heir, he goes by Dorian. He has achieved nothing in his life but the frittering away of a small fortune and the amassing of great debts. He was the youngest of the real Winterborn’s sons. And the driving away of the household staff by means of his irritable and loathsome temper.”

  Dorian Winterborn, she was sure her firm—her ex-firm—had represented an Alexander Winterborn, so a different brother. There were thirteen of them, they said.

  Her father segued into a discussion of the local history, the estate’s history, and Winterborn’s success as a businessman, but Bella had a hard time following it all. Before she knew it, she was asleep and then being woken by her father nudging her with an elbow.

  There was no moon in the sky, only starlight to see by. A stone house, three stories tall and very wide, stood before her with a narrow garage attached.