Broken Souls Read online

  BROKEN SOULS

  LOSS IS IMMEASURABLE, BUT SO IS THE LOVE LEFT BEHIND!

  S. A. THOMAS

  CONTENTS

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  The Final Part

  Books by S. A. Thomas

  Like This Book?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preview of Broken Hearts Healed

  Broken Souls

  * * *

  Text Copyright © 2022 by S. A. Thomas

  (Samantha Ave Thomas)

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  This book or parts thereof shall not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher except for the brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted material that would violate the author’s rights.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Developmental Editing: Karen McKellar

  Line Editing, Copy Editing & Proofreading: Belinda LaPage

  Cover Design: Angie Alaya

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Dear Reader,

  Broken Souls is part two of the Broken Trilogy. It is not a standalone novel.

  Broken Promises is part one and Broken Hearts Healed is part three. You need to read Part one to understand the characters and events.

  I hope you enjoy this trilogy!

  Love always,

  Samantha

  CHAPTER 1

  “Would you like anything else?” the man asked. His blue eyes sparkled on his kind face.

  “No, thank you,” she said, glancing at his name tag which read ‘Jack’.

  “So, you work over at the hotel?” he asked, squinting and reading her name tag, “Savannah.”

  Jerking her head back for an instant, she nodded. It was liberating for her as she started to get used to her original name again. She had escaped and fought her past, but her present still made her doubt her abilities now as a single, pregnant mother.

  Sitting in the Tipsy Cow restaurant for the third time in a week, her son, Lucas, munched on his pasta. She pondered how her life had changed in a matter of months. A week after being discharged from the hospital, her entire world had moved from one city to another. Packers and movers emptied her apartment in four hours and moved everything into the new house. The name tag on her uniform now read Savannah Flores instead of Nyah Rodriguez. Her location changed from the vibrant city of Downtown Vancouver to a small village on the island called Cowichan Bay. She was no longer the General Manager of the Lexington Hotel but a front desk agent at the Cowichan Bay Ocean Hotel. Jeremy Lipster, her stalker foster father was no longer in the picture. She was free and unafraid. However, hearing her birth name called after eight years made her shudder along with the memories that came back with it.

  Outside, the rain came down hard. The wind lashed sheets of water against the glass. Branches bent in the wind while the dark sky flashed bright with lightning and thunder boomed. Savannah noticed the pouring rain.

  “That’s going to be $21.79, dear,” Jack said.

  Savannah fished around for the money and left $25 in the billfold. She got up, and while helping her son into his raincoat, she looked around the restaurant.

  A man was sitting at the corner table, drinking his beer. His shabby and unkempt appearance matched the tone of the restaurant.

  “You’re new here?” Jack asked while handing over the change in the billfold.

  She nodded.

  He smiled and said, “I’m Jack Bortelini. Nice to meet you both.” Towering over her, he had greeted her son and her with a warm smile when they had entered the restaurant, drenched.

  Lucas was about to speak, and Savannah immediately nudged him, shushing him. She thanked Jack, and while she was leaving, she saw the gruff man at the corner table, staring at her and Lucas. With his eyes narrowed at them, she slipped her right hand in her pocket and held her son’s hand while hurrying out of the restaurant.

  Through the rear-view mirror, she glanced at Lucas while driving home. “I’m so sorry for everything, Lucas. For everything.” The consequences of her actions were what he had to live with for no fault of his own. He was too young to understand, and she felt horrible for putting him through this. “I hope you are happy here.”

  “I am, Mama. I promise you, I am,” he said and smiled.

  Seven years old and mature for his age. My wonderful little boy! Children did bounce back a lot faster than adults. She pulled into the driveway of her house, and they hopped out of the car. They could hear Oreo’s eager barks from inside the house.

  The weekend zoomed by with household chores, church, and the village’s activities. Each weekend had something new in store. That weekend, there was a fair. Lucas sat on many rides and won a stuffed toy after he played the ring-toss game. When they reached home, he placed Winnie the Pooh with his collection of other stuffed animals in his room with great pride.

  On Sunday, the two of them watched a movie. With Lucas’ head on her belly, he suddenly shrieked when he felt the baby kick. “Whoa, Mama! Did you feel that?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Yes, I did,” she replied. “That’s your baby sister. She’s strong, isn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Is she hurting you, mama?” he asked innocently.

  “No, sweetheart, she’s not. She’s just letting us know that she is here too, and she can’t wait to see us.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her too, Mama,” he said, squealing.

  They watched the rest of the movie, and Lucas drifted off to sleep.

  After turning on the house alarm, she checked to make sure the front and the back door were locked. Even though she knew that Jeremy, the danger, no longer existed, her living in fear for so long made her take precautions. Escaping to Vancouver from him after he killed his wife when she was young, she was still haunted when he tried to kill Caleb and her recently after kidnapping his nieces. She still woke up with nightmares of him being alive, coming for her or coming for Lucas. It would be etched there forever, but it also made her confident that she took care of the situation and became stronger from it.

  She picked Lucas up and headed upstairs to his room. After tucking him in, she entered her bedroom. She checked her phone for emails and messages, but nothing new had popped up about her mother. Now that she was pregnant, finding her became even more imperative. She lay in bed and, just before falling asleep, she took out the photo frame from under her pillow.

  It was a picture of Caleb and her at the New Year’s dance.

  CHAPTER 2

  Lucas started Grade Two in September in the new school which was minutes away from the house. While getting him ready for school, she cringed as the memory replayed in her head of the day she picked him up from summer camp with Oreo. He had got worried about seeing her hand in a sling. Brushing it off, she told him that she got injured at work. She bit her lip and then informed him that they were not going back to the apartment.

  “What do you mean, Mama?” he had asked innocently.

  “We’re moving to an exciting new village. It’s called Cowichan Bay.”

  “But why do we have to move?” he asked, sniffing and wiping at his nose with tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “Well, sweetheart, I lost my job. We can’t afford to live there anymore.”

  “Ok. So why don’t you get a new one? We can still live at home while you look for a new one, or we can move to a smaller place but still stay in the same area,” he asked with his arms crossed.

  Tirelessly explaining to a seven-year-old took more out of her than the morning sickness. “I’m sorry, but we can’t. I have no other choice, and I would like you to get on board.” She looked at him through the rear-view mirror. “You will love the new place. It is a house, and it has a backyard. You can run around with Oreo.”

  “I don’t want a house. I want my friends and my school and my teachers,” Lucas yelled.

  “You’ll make new friends, I promise. The place we are going to is beautiful,” she said, trying to sound opt
imistic.

  “What about Caleb? I wanna talk to him.”

  “That’s not going to be possible. He will no longer be in our lives,” Savannah said, swallowing hard. Caleb’s betrayal and his relationship with Caroline were what made her leave. That was something she couldn’t reveal to her son.

  “But why?” Lucas demanded.

  “Caleb and I are no longer together, and it’s best if you don’t keep in touch with him either.”

  He went quiet. “I hate you, Mama.”

  The words stung her. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she quickly brushed it away.

  Lucas didn’t speak to her for the rest of the drive. With a frown plastered on his face, he stared out the window. When she had pulled up to the new house three hours after, he had still not said a word to her. He silently got out of the car, and with hunched shoulders, walked into the house. Once he saw his room with Oreo by his side, his eyes grew wide. “It’s exactly like my old room, Mama.”

  She nodded. “Do you like it?”

  He bobbed his head and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to say that to you earlier.”

  Savannah hugged him. “I know you didn’t.” The turn of events with his emotions made her feel better.

  Lucas continued to explore the other rooms. “Mama, there’s a pink room here,” he shrieked.

  She entered the room. The white crib was placed against the light grey wall which had a stencil of flowers on it. Sunlight poured in through the light pink curtains. Creating a soft, sweet, and feminine nursery, she had chosen the pieces carefully for her daughter, just like she had chosen for her son. “This is for your baby sister, Lucas.” She had visited a private clinic that did an ultrasound and confirmed that she was having a baby girl.

  He covered his mouth with his hands. “A baby sister!”

  She waited for his reaction. Inside, her stomach was knotted. She didn’t want him to get upset again.

  Instead, a slow smile crept across his face. He jumped up and down and squealed. “Thank you, Mama. Yay!” Then his face turned serious. “Is Caleb the father, Mama?”

  She’d had talks with Lucas when he was younger explaining to him about boundaries and what is appropriate when he met strangers and how they touched and interacted with him to keep him safe. She had monitored him whenever he used the laptop or cell phone and also explained to him about families and genders.

  “Yes,” Savannah answered.

  “Does he know, Mama?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you think if you tell him...” Lucas paused and lowered his head. “Then maybe he might come and stay with us, and we can be a family?”

  She wished it were true. She wished it were possible, but she knew it wouldn’t be. He had broken her heart. He had cheated on her and lied to her. She didn’t want him just because they had a baby together. Even if he came back knowing about the baby, maybe he would cheat on her with someone else. That would then cause more pain and hurt. She wished she could explain this to her son, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to shatter the relationship that Caleb had built with him.

  Instead, she said, “I wish it was possible, but it’s not. I know, and I understand that you’re upset because of this. I am really sorry.” She knelt in front of him. “Caleb and I unfortunately have moved our separate ways. We have wished each other love and happiness and kind thoughts. I would like you to do the same.”

  Lucas’ head hung, and his eyes watered.

  “Can I tell you something, though?” she asked. He nodded in approval seconds after. “You’re going to make an amazing big brother. Emma can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Really, Mama?”

  “Truly, sweetheart,” she said, hugging him.

  Hand in hand, they explored the rest of the house, and she heard him gasp when they entered each room.

  “It is just like our old home, Mama. Everything looks the same.” Tipping his head to one side, he said, “Except now we have stairs inside the house. And levels.”

  She laughed at his innocent remark and gave him another hug. “I love you, Lucas. Always remember that, okay?”

  “I love you too, Mama.” He squeezed her back.

  “Let’s go make some friends. What do you say?”

  Nodding excitedly, they both held trays of goodies and walked out.

  Now, looking at him smiling, she combed his hair and got his backpack ready, happy that he was adjusting to his new environment. Since the neighbours’ children whom he played with every day also went to the same school, it eased him into entering new territory with a smile and friends in hand. It also helped her because he would stay at one of the neighbour’s houses until she came to pick him up after work.

  Heading to the hotel after dropping Lucas to school on Monday morning, she parked her car in the hotel staff lot. She walked through the staff entrance, glad that she didn’t need to decide what to wear every day. In the reflection in the locker room, she wished she had a better-looking uniform while adjusting her ill-fitting white shirt and red waistcoat. She shook her head and then tied her hair. Another day, another dollar.

  “Welcome back, Mr. and Mrs. Ryerson,” Savannah said. “It’s so good to have you back with us.” She handed them the keys. “Executive Lounge access is open all day, and we will be serving afternoon tea and snacks shortly.” She smiled while informing them about this new change.

  Checking guests in and out, and answering the phones, became monotonous to her. “Yes, Mr. Stanilov,” she said, picking up the phone, “How can I help you?” After listening to his request, she said, “No problem, I’ll send the shaving kit up right away.”

  Nothing exciting had ever happened in this hotel, unlike at the Lexington, which had drama every day to keep her on her toes. The demands of that job were incomparable to this one.

  “Savannah,” the front office manager said to her. “I need you to make sure the washrooms are clean.”

  “But the housekeepers are supposed to take care of that,” she replied.

  “Well, they are not doing a very good job, so you need to make sure that it is done,” the balding man in his late forties insisted. “Along with the trash in the bins.”

  Desperate to keep the job, she complied and did what she was told. Even though she had savings she could fall back on for a couple of months, she needed this job. She had applied for many when she had moved into the new house. Sitting down at her dining table and circling job opportunities in the local newspaper every day was something she had not done in a while. Waiting in line and attending interview after interview, only to be rejected, made her feel miserable when she arrived home and hit the answering machine button.

  “Thank you for coming in today. However, we regret to inform you that you have not got the job. We wish you good luck and will keep your file in mind for any future opportunities.” The slew of messages sounded the same to her after a while.

  After three interviews, she finally acquired the front desk agent job, and she was grateful. Though the predictable rhythm of waking up, dropping her son to school, working, coming back home, making dinner, and hitting the sack bored her; it brought stability in her son’s life. That was what was important to her. That was what mattered.

  Her children. Lucas and her unborn daughter, Emma—a name chosen by her father.