Sacrifice of the Pawn: Spin-Off of the Surrender Trilogy (Surrender Games Book 1) Read online

  SACRIFICE OF THE PAWN

  Book One

  Lydia Michaels Books, LLC

  10 Canal Street, Suite 200, Bristol, Pennsylvania 19007

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  USA | CANADA | SPAIN | EUROPE | NEW ZEALAND | AUSTRALIA

  SACRIFICE OF THE PAWN

  Surrender Games 1

  Contemporary Romance

  Copyright © 2017 Lydia Michaels

  Lydia Michaels Books, LLC

  First E-book Publication: © Lydia Michaels 2017

  Editor: Elise Hepner | Copy Editor: Allyson Young

  Cover Design by Lydia Michaels Books, LLC

  Print ISBN-13 : 978-0-692-94167-6 | eBook ASIN: B0751L2QLG | ISBN-10: 0-692-94167-3

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer. WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  All characters, names, places, and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events are strictly coincidental.

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  Also by Lydia Michaels

  The Surrender Trilogy

  FALLING IN

  BREAKING OUT

  COMING HOME

  Bestselling Romance Author, Lydia Michaels,

  has written more than 35 novels.

  Discover her books at www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  DISCLAIMER

  Surrender Games is a spin-off series intended to follow The Surrender Trilogy. All books in The Surrender Games Series should be read in order after reading The Surrender Trilogy.

  BOOK ORDER

  Sacrifice of the Pawn (1)

  Queen of the Knight (2)

  DEDICATION

  For Amy Stebbins—one of the strongest women I know.

  PART I

  Isadora

  PROLOGUE

  “If the only mark I leave upon this earth is the indelible caress of my whispered name within the downbeats of your heart, I will be satisfied.”

  Fiona Summerville

  Only Dark Around the Edges

  There is a moment in every woman’s life, be her a queen or a pawn, when she is taken so off guard the game is forever changed. Isadora Patras should have been shockproof by now, but as the pieces fell, exposing her once again to the excruciating agony of loss, her hard earned fortitude slipped and she surrendered. Game over.

  Her lungs constricted around each draw of perfumed air as she pivoted away from her brother, Lucian. Dizzy, she flinched, each onlooker’s stare stabbing through her thin veneer of composure. Too many strangers.

  “Isadora?”

  She couldn’t whisper a single excuse to Lucian as she turned. She needed to escape. Keeping her head down she rushed toward the doorway, against the current of bodies approaching.

  Her life flashed painfully through her mind with kaleidoscope glimpses of her past, tilted and jagged. Broken. Upside down and disjointed. Lumbering strides clumsily carried her away from the crowd. She struggled for elegance when everything inside of her begged to run. Escape.

  A cry built in her throat, but she swallowed it back. Patrases didn’t cry—not even the female ones—according to her father.

  A thousand unfinished sentiments danced on her tongue as the agony inside seeped past her lips in a clipped whimper. The pain in her heart climbed as the sob in her throat built, each step announcing the end of her courage, the acceptance of her loss.

  A piercing buzz sounded in her ears as reality truly set in. She wasn’t going to make it. She was going to fall apart, right here, in front of all these people and the last of her dignity would be stolen, just as so many other things had been.

  I can’t handle this…

  The excruciating sorrow was hers and hers alone. No one knew the truth. They all believed the lie.

  The doorway yawned only ten feet away, but bodies cluttered the exit. She needed to get through the throng of guests before the last broken pieces of her heart shattered into dust.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured, keeping her head down and angling toward the hallway.

  A suffocating vise closed around her heart, radiating into her shoulders with crushing, agonizing waves at the slightest brush of contact. Her knees softened as she turned the corner and came face to face with another line of strangers. Too many people.

  Who were they? They were all here for him, yet she didn’t recognize a single one.

  Because he wanted it that way…

  The room tilted, the narrow hall shrinking as countless bystanders blended into one. Nausea churned through her empty stomach. Her veil of composure slipped, exposing vulnerabilities no one would understand. No one except the one person she couldn’t speak to about this.

  She swallowed down the pain as she had so many times before, but nothing came close to the agony she was up against now. This was absolutely the last time he’d ever hurt her.

  She tried to bury it, pretend it never happened, which it might as well not have, being that no one else knew the truth—except him, the one person who deserved to never see her like this. The one person she wished was here. The only person who knew the real her and accepted every imperfection she hid from the rest of the world. But asking him to accept the heartbreak she suffered for another man was simply too much. She couldn’t do that to him…

  A sob gave way, slicing through the polite silence like a frigid wind cuts through the heat of a summer day. Heads jerked in her direction. She couldn’t face their judgment, their assumptions.

  The hallway seemed to lengthen with each step. She’d never make it. Her vision tilted and she leaned into the wall. She had no choice but to face this alone. Always alone.

  Breathe!

  Her lips parted as she sucked in a lungful of air. The moment it traveled past the lump in her throat her queasy stomach revolted.

  The clashing stench of perfume and people spoiled the natural scent of the flowers. Her mouth watered. Her throat swallowed, but a jarring wooziness unleashed inside of her. Tiny beads of sweat clung to her brow, each carrying the weight of an entire ocean.

  Don’t you dare surrender here! You keep moving!

  She staggered another step, certain everyone was now staring. Never had her secrets felt as heavy as they did in that moment. His secrets. Theirs. Now, they were all hers.

  All of her polished grace was a sham, nothing but chipped layers disguising unsophisticated innocence worn thin by time. She’d never make it to the front door at this rate. It was too far.

  Pivoting in the direction she’d just come, she lurched toward a discrete pocket door hidden in the wall. Faces blurred into macabre figures as she struggled to breathe, her heart jackhammering in her chest.

  Her hands pressed into the panel, her mind not caring if she wasn’t permitted beyond this point. She needed an escape. She needed privacy, because she was breaking in broad daylight after years of fighting
for flawless composure.

  Every fundamental experience had taught her how to hide—a pawn on the run, forever racing toward the elusive dignity of a queen. She had nothing left to sacrifice.

  I surrender. I surrender…

  As the paneled door slid open she rushed inside the private sitting room and closed the world away. Her face pressed to the wood as her breath beat out of her.

  Too much pain. Too many regrets. The secrets gutted her, slipping out in retched, raw sobs. The tears came like a harsh rain after an endless drought. Relentless.

  She let go, surrendering the last of her poise to the pain. Gasping, she moaned against each brutal wave of sadness as years of silent suffering escaped in broken wails. There was no disguising it here. It was the ugly truth she’d carried for more than a decade. It was a truth she’d bear for the rest of her life.

  Her shoulders curled inward as another jagged sob escaped. Something touched her shoulders and she gasped. Her hands flew to her face, hiding tracks of tears and traces of exposed anguish as a floorboard creaked, announcing the presence of another person in the private room.

  Horrified to discover she wasn’t alone, she hid against the door, blatantly visible, but crippled by the indignity that someone was witness to her distress. She couldn’t bear to turn around.

  “Isadora…”

  Her spine stiffened as her name fell like a plea, a rasp of worry, hidden in the strong tenor of a masculine voice. Her head slowly lifted as his familiar, gentle tone penetrated her mortification and her lips parted.

  Wet lashes blinking in surprise, she slowly pivoted, no longer hiding her tears. Her heart sparked in her chest as her gaze traveled over his designer suit, past his strong jaw, and fell upon his familiar eyes.

  He’s here…

  She held his stare and her breath stuttered. There were no words for how deeply she loved him. His presence was everything. He was everything.

  Brow pinched, he delicately dragged a thumb under her lashes, visibly reading her heartache and accepting it. He pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her shoulder as she lost herself in his sheltering hold.

  Safe.

  Chapter One

  “Perhaps the freedom of flying in the boundless sky is but a lonesome fall through nothingness.”

  ~Emily Patras

  Thirteen Years Earlier

  “Where were you?” Isadora called from the foot of the grand staircase, stilling her younger brother’s fleeting steps. She held onto resolute hope to get to the bottom of his recent rebellion.

  Shirttail askew, Lucian turned with a penetrating scowl that, had she not been anticipating his defiance, would have taken her a step back. “You’re not my keeper, Isadora.”

  Her heart stammered in her chest, his words cutting to the shabby roots running beneath their family tree like corroded veins. Tangled and rotted, an abandoned place since their mother had passed away eight years ago.

  Daunting men had always overshadowed the little authority Isadora assumed, and her younger brother’s independence was rapidly dwarfing hers. But she was still his guardian, and as such, it was her sole duty to protect him—even from himself.

  “Don’t walk away from me, Lucian.”

  “Then say what you have to say so I can go to bed.”

  Of all of the Patras children, Lucian was the most intrepid, but despite his innate audacity he was far from invincible. No amount of pain seemed to slow his instinct to rise. He loomed over and around anything that stood in his way, growing taller and faster than all the rest. And the bigger he grew the less he answered to anyone .

  His shadow was sometimes a cold and lonely place in which to stand, but Isadora had survived worse and wasn’t about to be bulldozed by an eighteen year old boy. Holding her ground, she inwardly praised herself for maintaining a steady voice as she craned her neck to meet his scowl.

  “It’s four in the morning, Lucian.”

  “Then I still have a shot at getting some sleep.” Putting an abrupt stop to further scolding, he turned and continued up the stairs at a less skulking pace.

  A chill filled the grand foyer as she locked her jaw, authoritative ground slipping out from under her.

  “The rule was two o’clock,” she reminded. It was a generous curfew, a bargaining chip she hoped would end the exhausting pissing match they’d entered over his incessant need to push boundaries.

  “ Your rule,” he growled, disappearing down the long hall.

  A nerve pinched close to her heart. Her own father had marched that same path, ignoring her words as her little voice once called to him, a quiet plea for the attention she’d thought she deserved. Lucian was literally following in their dad’s footsteps and the distance between them was growing so vast, she feared it would soon be impossible to bridge.

  The tighter she tried to hold onto her younger brother the harder he resisted, but she couldn’t let go. She’d once been his equal, his ordinary sister, despite the five years that separated them. But when she became a legal adult and his caregiver their relationship changed. And now, as he entered adulthood, her role was transforming once again, into something undefined that filled her with an orphaned emptiness.

  Her shoulders jerked as his bedroom door slammed. If she didn’t ease off they might never resolve their differences and find the closeness they once shared.

  On cue, Antoinette’s door creaked open and Isadora straightened her posture, setting her features into the mask of a composed and secure woman—a façade at total odds with the uncertainty warring inside of her.

  Antoinette’s slippered feet shushed over the oriental runner until her sprouting body came into view, eyes bright as an autumn moon with irises of a whiskey hue instead of the typical Patras black. Although Isadora would never know the true color of her sister’s eyes or anyone else’s, she could always tell a pretty set despite being color blind. Her little sister had bright, curious eyes that often shimmered with mischief.

  After a rapid growth spurt, Toni was tall enough to be mistaken for a teen, but head-on she still held an honest show of innocence that faded with each passing day. She planted herself at the top of the stairs, delicate fuzz showing on her shins where her nightgown rode to just below her knobby knees. Wild chestnut curls spun in disarray around her pudgy cheeks pressed with sheet prints. She yawned with cub-like magnetism that softened Isa’s mood.

  Toni was getting so big, already in double digits, and soon she, too, would be walking away. A sharp ache cinched Isadora’s heart. The problem with raising her siblings was that if she did the job well, they’d grow up to be independent and self-assured, with little need for her.

  That was the goal, wasn’t it? She should be happy that both Lucian and Toni possessed the self-assured Patras charm she never quite mastered. The most Isadora could do was enjoy the present and try not to get too consumed with worry for the future.

  Tightening the satin tie of her robe, she forced a smile. Switching off the light, she met her sister at the top steps and held out a hand. “Come on. It’s too early to get out of bed.”

  “But I’m hungry. What time is it?”

  “Not breakfast time.” And her sister was always hungry. The joys of feeding a growing child. “Back to bed.”

  “Can I sleep with you?”

  Toni talked in her sleep. She also turned like a propeller and kicked. But there was something sacred about being wanted by one sibling when the other wanted nothing to do with her. “Sure.”

  Despite Toni’s hunger, she was half-asleep, and lurched down the hall toward a bedroom. Isadora pulled back the duvet and her sister clambered onto the mattress with the grace of a three-legged calf.

  “Your bed’s so much comfier than mine,” she groaned into the pillows. As Isadora slid under the covers Toni curled into her side, too young to grasp things like personal space. “Is Lucian in trouble?”

  She turned, seeing her sister’s eyes were closed, but her mind fighting to stay awake—curiosity for what the
“grownups” were discussing being one of Toni’s guiltiest pleasures. The truth was, Lucian had more of a grown up life than Isadora.

  Shutting her eyes, she drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know, Toni. Try to go back to sleep.”

  “He should be in trouble.” Her sweet breath teased Isadora’s shoulder. “He’s been late every day this week.”

  “And you’ve been nosy.” She kissed her forehead and shut out the bedside lamp.

  “Daddy would punish him.”

  Isadora stared into the shadows, only briefly tripping over excuses for their father. In the end she sugarcoated nothing. “Daddy isn’t here.”

  Their father hadn’t been there in so long it was a wonder Antoinette could recall a time he was present. Though it didn’t surprise her that Toni remembered their father’s temper, especially when it came to their brother, who usually caught the brunt of the man’s cruelty.

  Exhausted, mentally and physically, Isadora shut her eyes. “Shh… Sleep.”

  “I wish Claudette would come back,” her sister murmured, words slurring.

  Claudette had been the head of their household staff, but over the years she took up the additional role of nurturer, despite their father’s objections. It was a tearful day when the maid left for France. No one wanted to see her go and she didn’t want to leave, but their father wrote the checks and told her she had a job in Europe and only Europe, so they couldn’t blame her for following him.

  “She’d yell at Lucian.” Toni’s groggy words came with little inflection.

  “I don’t think Lucian needs another person to yell at him.”