Unbroken

Also By Michelle D. Argyle

The Breakaway

Pieces (The Breakaway #2)

Out of Tune

If I Forget You

Streets of Glass

Monarch

Catch

Bonded

True Colors & Other Short Stories

MDA Books

Unbroken / Second Edition

Copyright © 2018 Michelle D. Argyle

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, printing, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Summary: Fourteen years after her kidnapping, Naomi seeks closure with each of her former kidnappers.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Edited by Diane Dalton

Cover design and formatting by Melissa Williams Design

Cover photograph © MNStudio, Shutterstock

To every true Breakaway fan.

Thank you for sticking with me on this journey

I

September

This is one of those days, Naomi said as she removed her chef’s hat, set it on a nearby chair, and began unbuttoning her stiff, white jacket.

Alan, the restaurant manager and owner, grinned at her. He was Italian, with deep olive skin, black hair, and warm brown eyes. One of ‘those days’? But today’s your last day. Was it really so bad?

They were standing in Alan’s office across from the main kitchen. The sharp scent of garlic permeated the air, glazed with the warm aroma of yeast from the starter dough for tomorrow’s baguettes.

No, it wasn’t bad. That’s not what I meant. Naomi sucked on her bottom lip as she untied her neckerchief then slipped off her chef’s jacket and draped both over her arm. The jacket was stained with sauce and butter and who knew what else. She wasn’t usually this messy in the kitchen, but she had been training the new head chef for the past nine hours. She glanced up at the ceiling.

I don’t know how to explain it, she said. Days like this are supposed to feel important, but then they’re never what I expect.

Alan’s dark eyebrows came together in a thoughtful frown. They were speckled with a hint of gray that had yet to show anywhere else. He snapped his fingers. You mean milestones, he said as he leaned against the edge of his desk. Right?

Naomi nodded, but felt the word milestone wasn’t quite right. Today marked her last day at La Preferita, the Italian restaurant where she had worked for the past five years. She’d made it all the way up to head chef, but now there were even better things on the horizon. The day was over, her last hour worked, her last goodbye only seconds away. It felt ordinary, not like a milestone at all.

She wasn’t sure how to explain to Alan that it was one of those days simply because it fell flat in comparison to what it should be.

For her, milestones were not foreseeable, or even anticipated. They slammed into her out of nowhere, like the day almost seven months ago when Alan had called her into his office and offered her a job in Rome, starting as soon as she could get a work visa. His brother owned several restaurants there, one of which was slowly going under due to poor management.

Do you want the position? Alan had asked.

Bam! Milestone.

Or then there was the day she had graduated from USC with a BS in Business Administration and had gone to celebrate at a local pizzeria with Finn, her boyfriend at the time. She had looked down at the pizza on her plate, disappointed in the quality of the pale, under-baked crust and the too-sweet sauce, and realized she felt more passionate about figuring out how to make a perfect pizza than about figuring out how to save her complicated long-distance relationship with Finn. 

Bam! Milestone.

It was a mediocre pizza, not her hard-earned diploma, that had cemented that day in her heart.

I’m sad to see you go, Alan said as he stepped away from his desk and gave her a brief hug. But you’ve been veering toward management for the last few years, and Gianni needs someone like you over there. The restaurant will sink without a competent manager. I know you’re the one.

Naomi hugged him back. He smelled like pastry dough, the same way he’d smelled the first day she had met him five years ago in this same office, when she was fresh out of a New York culinary school, her head full of grand expectations of what her career would be like in a professional kitchen.

I’m happy I listened to my father, she said as she stepped away from Alan. That business degree is paying off after all. Who knew I’d end up wanting a management position even more than head chef?

Your culinary background is invaluable too. With business experience, it is brilliant. Your father is a smart man to have helped you down that path.

Naomi caught the sparkle in Alan’s eyes. Her father was much more than a smart man, and Alan knew it. Her father was a global business giant, now more so than ever, even close to his retirement. If he chose to retire, which didn’t seem likely.

Good luck, Naomi. Give me a call when you’ve settled in.

I will.

As she walked out into the parking lot, she took a deep breath of salty air and smiled. La Preferita had been exactly what she’d wanted after culinary school: a job in a restaurant south of San Francisco, right near her parents’ house. She had her own apartment, her own life, and she had built it step by step, falling at times, but always getting up again. Nobody she met now cared about her past because nobody knew about it. She had changed her last name a long time ago, something she wished she had done right after the trial that had put her kidnappers behind bars. She hadn’t realized back then how straightforward it could be to change her life. Finn had helped her see that.

He’d helped her through so many things. She wondered what he was doing now.

Slipping into the driver’s seat, she tossed her hat and other clothes on the back seat and started the engine. She pulled out her phone and scrolled down to Finn’s phone number. The last time she had called him, she had been in Parma, Italy during a nine-week study abroad course as part of her culinary schooling almost six years ago.

She remembered it clearly, sitting in her small, dorm-like room with her roommate, Lindsay, her hands sweating as she looked out the window at a building across the street. It looked so much like the apartment building where she and Jesse, her former kidnapper, had stayed so long ago when she’d run away with him to Rome. The building was tall and ancient and pale yellow. What had she been thinking going back to Italy to study cuisine with all those memories of Jesse wrapping around her, squeezing?

Nobody had figured out who Naomi was or what she had been through, or why she refused to go out with them on the weekends to clubs and shops and landmarks.

But then she had called Finn and they’d talked for three hours straight and Naomi had asked herself why they had both decided to break up before she’d started culinary school. But deep down she knew why. Their relationship had been rocky before then, stretched too thin between Massachusetts and California, filled with emails and texts and chats and hurried visits here and there. Their new, inexperienced love simply wasn’t strong enough to withstand the distance, and nothing would change that. Finn was wrapped up in school at Harvard, and Naomi had her own grand ambitions. Other things had simply mattered more.

Still, almost eleven years after she’d kissed Finn on the beach the night they’d decided to take a chance on each other, she missed his friendship—that closeness she had yet to find again with anyone else she’d dated.

But she had to move on, especially now. It was possible. There were great things on the horizon to distract her.

Turning off her phone, she tossed it onto the passenger seat and backed out of the parking stall. Finn was in the past, like everything else. Her past had shaped her