The Paper Swan Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products and locales referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Copyright ©2015 by Leylah Attar

  Editing by Lea Burn

  Proofreading by Shh Mom’s Reading

  Cover Design © Hang Le

  Formatting and Interior Design by Christine Borgford, Perfectly Publishable

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978–0-9937527–8-0

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  PITCH 73 PUBLISHING

  Table of Contents

  THE PAPER SWAN

  DEDICATION

  Part 1: SKYE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  Part 2: ESTEBAN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Part 3: SKYE

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Part 4: DAMIAN

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  Part 5: SYKE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For my father

  IT WAS A GOOD DAY for Louboutins. I hadn’t planned on wearing statement heels on the runway to death, but if this was it, if I was going to be killed by some random psycho with a thirst for blood, what better way to go down than with red-soled ‘fuck yous’ to my murderer?

  Because fuck you, asshole, for turning me into the victim of a senseless crime.

  Fuck you for the indignity of not letting me see your face before you blow my brains out.

  Fuck you for the cable ties that are so tight, they’re cutting deep, red slashes across my wrists.

  But most of all, fuck you because no one wants to die a day short of their twenty-fourth birthday—blond hair shiny from a fresh cut, nails gelled to perfection—on the way back from a date with a man who just might be “the one”.

  My life was set to be a series of standing ovations: graduation, wedding, a house worthy of being showcased in a slick magazine, two perfect kids. Yet here I was, on my knees, a sack over my head, the cold barrel of a gun against the base of my skull. And the worst part? Not knowing why this was happening, not knowing why I was going to die. Then again, since when did these things make sense? Random or meticulously planned? Murder, rape, torture, abuse. Are we ever able to truly understand the ‘why’ or do we simply yearn for labels and boxes to organize the chaos we can’t control?

  Financial Gain.

  Mental Disorder.

  Extremism.

  Hated Bitches with Acrylic Nails.

  Which of these motives would my homicide be filed under?

  Stop it, Skye. You’re not dead yet. Keep breathing. And think.

  Think.

  The rough, coarse smell of burlap invaded my nostrils as the boat swayed in the water.

  What do you do, Skye? Esteban’s words rang loud and clear in my mind.

  I fight.

  I fight back and I fight hard.

  A laugh-sob escaped me.

  I had shut Esteban out for so long, but there he was, climbing into my head, unexpected and unannounced as always, sitting on the ledge of my consciousness as if it were my bedroom window.

  I remembered taking an on-line quiz that morning:

  Who is the last person you think of before you fall asleep?

  Click.

  That’s the person you love the most.

  I thought of Marc Jacobs and Jimmy Choo and Tom Ford and Michael Kors. Not Esteban. Never Esteban. Because unlike childhood friends, they stayed on. I could let myself fall for their seduction, bring home their glittery creations, and go to sleep, knowing they would still be there in the morning. Like the Louboutins I’d debated over earlier—the flirty, fuchsia ones with satin straps around the ankle or the towering half d’orsay golden pumps? I’m glad I chose the latter. They had spiked heels. I tried to see them in my head, picturing tomorrow’s headline:

  ‘KILLER SHOES’.

  The image would feature a deadly, lacquered heel sticking out of my abductor’s body.

  Yes, that’s exactly how this is going down, I told myself.

  Breathe, Skye. Breathe.

  But the air was dark and musty inside my hood, and my lungs were collapsing under the weight of doom and dread. It was just starting to sink in. This was happening. This was real. When you’ve led a charmed life, something kicks in to insulate you from the shock—a sense of entitlement, as if this too, would be looked after. Holding on to that gave me a sense of bravado, of flippancy. I was loved, valued, important. Surely, someone was going to swoop in and save the day. Right? Right?

  I heard the rack slide back on the gun, the kiss of the barrel now steady against the back of my head.

  “Wait.” My throat hurt, my voice raw from screaming like a banshee when I’d come around and found myself trussed up like a wild hog in the trunk of my car. I knew because it still smelled of tuberose and sandalwood, from the perfume I’d spilled a few weeks before.

  He’d grabbed me in the parking lot as I was getting into my sky blue convertible—pulled me out and slammed me, facedown, against the hood. I thought he’d take my bag, my wallet, my keys, my car. Maybe it’s a protective instinct; maybe you just focus on what you want to happen next.

  Just take it and go.

  But that’s not what happened. He didn’t want my bag or my wallet or my keys or my car. He wanted me.

  They tell you it’s better to yell ‘Fire’ than ‘Help’, but I couldn’t get either word out because I was choking on the chloroform-soaked rag he had over my nose and mouth. The thing with chloroform is that it doesn’t knock you out right away—not the way you see in movies. I kicked and struggled for what seemed like an eternity before my arms and legs went numb, before darkness overtook me.

  I shouldn’t have screamed when I came around. I should have looked for the trunk release, or pushed the brake lights out, or done something that journalists want to interview you about later. But you can’t shut Panic up, you know? She’s a screaming, thrashing bitch, and she wanted out.

  It made him mad. I could tell when he pulled over and opened the trunk. I was blinded by the cold, blue glare of the streetlight over his shoulder, but I could tell. And just to be clear, he dragged me out by my hair and stuffed my mouth with the same chloroform-soaked rag he’d used to overwhelm me.

  I gagged on it as he forced me out towards the quay, my wrists still tied behind my back. The sweet, pungent smell was not as powerful, but it made me queasy. I almost choked on m
y vomit before he pulled the rag out of my mouth and slipped a sack over my head. I stopped screaming then. He could have let me choke to death, but he wanted me alive, at least until he was done with whatever it was he’d abducted me for. Rape? Captivity? Ransom? My mind ran wild with a kaleidoscope of gruesome clips from news reports and magazine articles. Sure, I had always felt a pang of compassion, but all I had to do was change the channel or flip the page and I could turn the ugliness off.

  But there was no turning this off. I could have convinced myself that it was a vivid nightmare, except the raw tingles on my scalp, where he’d ripped my hair out, stung like hell. But pain was good. Pain told me I was alive. And as long as I was alive, there was still hope.

  “Wait,” I said, when he forced me to my knees. “Whatever you want. Please . . . just. Don’t kill me.”

  I was wrong. He didn’t want me alive. He wasn’t locking me up or demanding a ransom. He wasn’t ripping my clothes off or taking pleasure in making me suffer. He’d just wanted to bring me here, wherever here was. This is where he was going to kill me, and he wasn’t wasting any time over it.

  “Please,” I begged. “Let me look at the sky one last time.”

  I needed to buy some time, to see if there was any way out. And if this really was the end, I didn’t want to die in the dark, suffocating on the fumes of fear and desperation. I wanted my last breath to be free, filled with the ocean and surf and sea spray. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend it was Sunday afternoon, and I was a gap-toothed little girl, collecting seashells with MaMaLu.

  There was a moment of stillness. I didn’t know my captor’s voice or his face; there was no picture in my head, just a dark presence that loomed like a giant cobra behind me, ready to strike. I held my breath.

  He lifted the bag and I felt the night breeze on my face. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, to find the moon. And there it was—a perfect, crescent shaped slice of silver, the same moon I used to watch when I fell asleep as a child, listening to MaMaLu’s stories.

  “You were born on a day when the clouds were big and swollen with rain,” my nanny would say as she stroked my hair. “We were ready for a storm, but the sun filtered through the sky. Your mother held you by the window and noticed the gold flecks in your little gray eyes. Your eyes were the color of the heavens that day. That is why she named you Skye, amorcito.”

  I hadn’t thought of my mother in years. I had no memories because she’d died when I was young. I didn’t know why I was thinking of her now. Perhaps it was because in a few minutes, I would be dead too.

  My insides rattled at the thought. I wondered if I’d see my mother on the other side. I wondered if she’d greet me like the people on talk shows attested to—the ones who claimed to have been there and back. I wondered if there was another side.

  I could see the twinkling lights of high-rise condos on the harbor, the traffic trailing its way like a red snake through the downtown core. We were docked in a deserted marina across from San Diego Bay. I thought of my father, who I’d conditioned not to worry, to just let me be and breathe and live. I was an only child, and he’d already lost my mother.

  I wondered if he was having dinner out in the courtyard, perched on a bluff overlooking a quiet cove in La Jolla. He had mastered the art of drinking red wine without soaking his mustache. He used his bottom lip and tilted his head just so. I was going to miss his bushy, gray whiskers even though I protested every time he kissed me. Three times on my cheeks. Left, right, left. Always. It didn’t matter if I had just come down for breakfast or was leaving for a trip around the world. I had closets full of designer shoes and bags and baubles, but that’s what I would miss the most. Warren Sedgewick’s three kisses.

  “My father will pay you whatever you want,” I said. “No questions asked.” Pleading. Bargaining. It comes easy when you’re about to lose your life.

  My declaration earned no response, except for a firm nudge, forcing my head down.

  My killer had come prepared. I was kneeling in the center of a large tarp that covered most of the deck. The corners were chained to chunks of concrete. I could picture my dead body being rolled up in it and dumped somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

  My mind rebelled against the image, but my heart . . . my heart knew.

  “Dear Lord, bless my soul. And watch over Dad. And MaMaLu and Esteban.” It was a prayer from the past, one I hadn’t uttered in years, but the words formed automatically, falling from my mouth like little beads of comfort.

  In that moment, I realized that in the end, all the hurts and grudges and excuses are nothing more than floaty apparitions that scatter like pale ghosts in the face of all the people you loved, and all the people who loved you. Because in the end, my life boiled down to three kisses and three faces: my father, my nanny and her son—two of whom I hadn’t seen since we took the dry, dusty road out of Casa Paloma.

  Who are the last people you think of before you die?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the click, the cold, lead-weighted inevitability of death.

  Those are the ones you loved the most.

  IT WAS DARK. PITCH DARK. The kind of darkness that’s surreal—deep and still and vast. I was suspended in its emptiness, a speck of awareness with no hands or feet or hair or lips. It was almost peaceful, except for the dull throbbing that kept flowing in and out of me. It rolled over me in waves, louder, stronger, until it was crashing and pounding inside of me.

  Pain.

  I blinked and realized my eyes were already open, but there was nothing around me—nothing above me, nothing below—just the pain, hammering away in my head. I blinked again. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing. Not a shape or a shadow or murky vagueness. Just absolute, engulfing darkness.

  I bolted upright.

  In my head.

  In reality, nothing happened. It was as if my brain had been severed from the rest of me. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, or my tongue or my toes. But I could hear. Sweet Jesus, I could hear, even if it was only the sound of my heart racing like it was about to burst right out of me. Each frantic beat amplified the pain in my head, as if all of my nerve endings ended there, in a thumping pool of blood.

  You can hear.

  You can breathe.

  Maybe you’ve lost your sight, but you’re alive.

  No.

  No!!!!!

  I’d rather be dead than at his mercy.

  What the fuck has he done to me?

  Where the fuck am I?

  I had braced myself for his bullet, but there was a moment of silence after I’d said my prayer. He picked up a strand of my hair and stroked it gently, almost reverently. Then he whipped me with the butt of his gun, a sharp whack that felt like he had split my skull. The San Diego skyline tilted and started disappearing in big, black blotches.

  “I didn’t give you permission to speak,” he said, as I keeled over from the blow. My face hit the deck, hard and fast, but it seemed like everything was happening in excruciatingly slow motion.

  I caught a glimpse of his shoes before my eyes closed.

  Soft, hand-tooled Italian leather.

  I knew shoes, and there weren’t too many of those around.

  Why didn’t he pull the trigger? I thought, as I blacked out.

  I didn’t know how long I was unconscious, only that the question still sat with me, like a dragon at the mouth of a cave, refusing to budge, ready to unleash the fire of all the monstrous possibilities that were worse than death.

  Why didn’t he pull the trigger?

  Maybe he planned to keep me blind and drugged and tethered to his side.

  Maybe he wanted to cut out parts of me and sell them.

  Maybe he’d already scooped up my insides and it was just a matter of time before the anesthesia wore off.

  Maybe he thought he’d killed me and had buried me alive.

  With each passing thought, pain transformed into Terror, and let me tell you, Terror is a bigger bitch than Panic. Terror
swallows you whole.

  I felt myself sliding deep inside her belly.

  I smelled Terror.

  I breathed Terror.

  Terror was eating me up raw.

  I knew my captor had given me something, but I didn’t know if the paralysis was temporary or permanent.

  I didn’t know if I’d been raped or beaten or hideously mutilated.

  I didn’t know if I wanted to find out.

  I didn’t know if he was coming back.

  And if he did, I didn’t know if this, whatever hellish state I was in, was better, safer, easier.

  Terror continued stalking me through the labyrinth of my mind, but there was one place she could never get me, one place I knew I’d always be safe. I turned into that corner in my head and shut myself off to everything but MaMaLu’s lullaby.

  It wasn’t really a lullaby. It was a song about armed bandits and fear and danger. But the way MaMaLu sang it—soft and dreamy—always soothed me. She sang it in Spanish, but I remembered the meaning more than the words.

  Down from the Sierra Morena mountains,

  Cielito lindo, they come

  A pair of black eyes,

  Cielito lindo, they’re contraband. . .

  I saw myself in a hammock, blue sky above me, Esteban giving me an occasional absentminded push, while MaMaLu sang as she hung clothes up to dry. Those afternoon naps in the gardens of Casa Paloma, with my nanny and her son, were my earliest memories. Hummingbirds buzzed over red and yellow hibiscus, and bougainvillea spilled from fat, unkempt hedges.

  Ay, yai, yai, yai,

  Sing and do not cry,

  Because singing cheers us up,

  Cielito lindo, our hearts. . .

  MaMaLu sang when Esteban or I got hurt. She sang when we couldn’t sleep. She sang when she was happy, and she sang when she was sad.

  Canta y no llores

  Sing and do not cry . . .

  But the tears came. I cried because I couldn’t sing. I cried because my tongue could not form the words. I cried because MaMaLu and blue skies and hummingbirds defied the darkness. I cried as I held on to them, and slowly, one step at a time, Terror retreated.