Title: The Paper Swan
Series: Standalone
Author: Leylah Attar
Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Suspense
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. They lie. For 21 days she held on. But on Day 22, she would have given anything for the sweet slumber of death. Because on Day 22, she realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.
A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense. A full-length, standalone romantic suspense novel, intended for mature audiences due to violence, sex and language. Subject matter may be disturbing for some readers. Please note: this is not a love triangle.
Thoughts:
Sometimes you just feel privileged to have read a great story and discovered a new favorite author. This is one of those times. The Paper Swan had my heart racing, my mind wondering what next and my fingers flipping the eBook pages at a frantic pace. This is a story of privilege and poverty, hate and vengeance, but mostly it’s a story of deep, forever love.
Told in dual POVs, Attar’s words on the page take you to faraway places, both dark and breathtaking. They will melt even the coldest of hearts. You’ll want to 1-click The Paper Swan.
Quotes:
“How deluded we become when we start believing that everything in the world is about us. How hard we work to make things fit into our made-up theories. How blindly we follow our worked up emotions, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives, the other will die.”
“It’s not over, you know, it never has been … you will always be my forever.”
“I know. I said a lot of things. To you, to myself. Then I remembered what you said. ‘Love don’t die.” It’s true…I never stopped loving you…When I follow my heart, it always leads me back to you.”
“Because when we love, we carry it on the inside, and we can turn on its light even in our darkest moments. The deeper we love, the brighter it shines.”
“Hate was an illusion, rage was an illusion, vengeance was an illusion. They were all empty husks that he had watered and nurtured, and in the end, they bore not fruit.”
“I wished I could see myself through his eyes. Then again, Damian never looked at me with his eyes. He looked at me with his soul.”
“I want to remember this,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “If I die tonight, I want to die remembering what it was like to hold the whole world in my hands.”
“We are sand and rock and water and sky, anchors on ships and sails in the wind. We are a journey to a destination that shifts every time we dream or fall or leap or weep. We are stars with flaws that still sparkle and shine. We will always strive, always want, always have more questions than answers, but there are moments like these, full of magic and contentment, when souls get a glimpse of the divine and quite simply, lose their breath.”
“You don’t always get the treasure by holding on. Sometimes the magic happens when you let go.”
Excerpt:
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 my 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.
Grade: A+++
