The Unforgiven: The Hidden Series, #4

By JO CHUMAS

FIVE STARS FOR THE UNFORGIVEN

 

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING

 

"This book has it all! Scandal, suicide, espionage, assassination, kidnapping, romance, and sweet revenge just to name a few. Rana Maddox has only one mission to accomplish and in order to accomplish it, she must find her brother Alexandre. I thoroughly enjoyed this third and final chapter of The Hidden Series, everything came together clearly. I'd recommend this book to anyone! Oh, and I think I'm in love with Harry Dean!"

 

"Really exciting, page-turner. A spy thriller with loads of action. Final in the Hidden series. Have read all three now in the series and feel very satisfied."

 

THE UNFORGIVEN

 

London-Istanbul-Bucharest - July 1968

One sexy French spy codenamed Domino who plays by nobody's rules. A vicious gang called the Black Scorpions who plan to eliminate her from the face of the earth. One missing, presumed dead scientist who holds the key to the world's survival in his hands. And a decades old vendetta that started in Cairo, Egypt with one family. In 1968 Europe, nowhere is safe, no one is who they say they are, and everyone is the unforgiven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 8dpress
• Release date: Oct 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393681274

Book preview

HELLO

Thank you for checking out my novel The Unforgiven, Book 4, Part 1 in The Hidden Series. I hope you enjoy it.

FIVE STAR REVIEWS FOR THE UNFORGIVEN

What readers are saying

Really exciting, page-turner. A spy thriller with loads of action. Final in the Hidden series. Have read all three now in the series and feel very satisfied.

**

Brilliant trilogy of stories, The Unforgiven being the thrilling finale of revenge. The Unforgiven is the third of a trilogy, the first book being The Hidden and second The Zephyr, all beautifully written by Jo Chumas who is a brilliant story writer. Her story telling is such that you imagine you are there with the characters, some are very likeable and others you would not want to meet down a dark alleyway. Her research is commendable as the stories are entwined with historical events and fictional links. All three are quite different, but linked in the original story through the life of Aimee Ibrahim and her mother Hezba in Cairo. The Unforgiven is where revenge eventually takes place with Aimee's daughter Rana who has the spirit of both her mother and grandmother and the strength of these women are threaded through all the books. I really recommend reading all three in order. They are very enjoyable, I could not put them down as they are very cleverly descriptive with suspense and a thrilling conclusion. I was really sorry when I finished the last of the trilogy, The Unforgiven.

**

This book has it all! Scandal, suicide, espionage, assassination, kidnapping, romance, and sweet revenge just to name a few. Rana Maddox has only one mission to accomplish and in order to accomplish it, she must find her brother Alexandre. I thoroughly enjoyed this third and final chapter of The Hidden Series, everything came together clearly. I'd recommend this book to anyone! Oh, and I think I'm in love with Harry Dean!

*****

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PROLOGUE

London, England - May 1955

The young girl with dead green eyes and dark brown plaited hair was given a drawing pad and some coloured pencils after breakfast. Nurse had found the items in a drawer of a desk at one of the nurse’s stations. It was important the girl be made to sit up in bed today and do some activity.

On her early morning inspection of the strange little girl, the nurse had noticed a slight change to her expression; a more natural flickering of the eyes, more blinking, some sign of being in the world, and this was a big improvement because up until that point the girl had lain so still and had blinked so little that the nurse had been concerned on the odd occasion that she might have died.

The strange little girl had not spoken since being admitted to Great Ormond Street two weeks before. This, in itself, might have been nothing to note of any pressuring concern other than some evidence of psychological trauma, except that the girl would never look at the nurse or the doctors who had tried to coax a response out of her. Blank eyes staring out to the middle distance, immobile features and a rigid body had greeted each examination.

Nurse had assessed the little girl as about twelve or thirteen years of age. There were small, emerging signs of puberty there; tiny buds of breasts pushing through, a smattering of black hairs on her lower arms and legs, but otherwise there was nothing much to report, no sign of abuse or neglect, a frame that was sufficiently covered with the correct percentage of body fat to height and weight, no discoloration of the skin, no bruising or sallowness which indicated any underlying disease or trauma.

An interview with the man and his wife, who had brought her in, had revealed not much at all. The couple had found the child wandering the streets, alone, obviously distressed—she had been sobbing—and needing assistance, near their house, dressed in a coat and hat with a small suitcase in her hand, they had said. She was not from the neighbourhood. She had never been seen before in the locale and nothing was known about her.

The girl refused to speak, but a few low murmurings had spilled from her lips. The husband hadn’t been able to understand her. The man’s wife had tried to decipher the girl’s mumblings without success. Despite desperate coaxing, the girl would not answer any questions or say anything coherent.

Investigations were underway to get to the bottom of things but that was outside the nurse’s responsibility and duty of care. The nurse’s role was to monitor the girl, provide her with the medical assistance as and when the need arose, and to wait further instructions.

The nurse had heard nothing more on the subject. She wrote her reports every day, noting that the child, whom she had secretly nicknamed ‘the strange girl’, although to her face she called her Lily, had never once looked at her directly.

Nurse often felt a flicker of sadness that nothing was known about Lily, that a child could be abandoned like that. What would possess a family to abandon a child and not come looking for her, after the guilt had built to such a crescendo? But the nurse stopped these feelings coursing through her. It was not professional to form an attachment; no good could come of that. But it perplexed her that nothing had been found about the child, her identity, her family, where she had come from or even whether she was English.

The small suitcase the girl had carried had been completely empty, strange indeed that a child should be carrying an empty suitcase. Perhaps she had been robbed? Perhaps something unthinkable had occurred. Not one shred of a clue had been found within the suitcase. The police had examined it for evidence but had reported nothing to the hospital. The doctor had told her that the leather suitcase, upon examination, had appeared to have been manufactured in England, but this didn’t give much of a clue. That was all that she had been told.

The girl certainly didn’t look English. She had the look of a gypsy, the nurse thought, her skin a soft, olive colour, though her hair was a nice, sedate dark tone, pale enough to be pleasing to the eye. Still that skin colour gave her a foreign look and those green, empty eyes and black eyelashes made her look very foreign, not English at all. The subject of the empty suitcase had been dropped. It wasn’t nurse’s business to enter into this type of discussion with the doctor, or to ask questions.

The nurse had tried to get Lily to talk. She had stood by her bed and had asked her questions but the girl had not even registered the nurse’s existence. It was likely that she couldn’t speak English and that the couple who had brought her into the hospital had been right. Very likely the strange girl was a foreigner with mucky blood.

‘Try to draw something Lily,’ the nurse said. ‘Drawing a picture is a nice thing to do.’ The girl’s eyelids flickered but she didn’t move, didn’t change the direction of her vacant stare. She lay on her side, sucked inside some outer zone of contemplation. There was no movement of her mouth, no tensing of any muscle. When the nurse was forced to roll her over to wash her, those green pools became watery, focused on the middle distance.

At meal times the strange girl refused to eat, so the nurse would spoon-feed her. As though grateful, Lily would very reluctantly accept morsels of food administered to her this way and the nurse sensed an overwhelming sadness pulse with every mouthful swallowed. She would chew, she would swallow, she would drink water, that was something but her expression would not rest anywhere but on the middle distance.

At that moment the girl lay on her side, as usual in her clean starched-white hospital robe. Nurse had plaited her hair that morning and had then rolled her on her side, putting a red colouring pencil in her hand, propping the artist’s pad under her arm. ‘I’ll come back later to check on you, Lily dear.’

At the door to the ward, the nurse looked back at the strange girl. She noticed the girl was pumping the colouring pencil with her fist but she hadn’t moved. Nurse wanted to find Dr Mitchell. She wanted to talk to the doctor about Lily; about how no progress was really being made with her, despite this morning’s flickering of the eyes. She wanted to find out what the hospital had planned for her. The girl was not physically unwell. All her tests were normal. There was something wrong with her mind, that much was obvious. So Great Ormond Street wasn’t the place for her. Lily should be moved to the psychiatric wing of an appropriate hospital. The other girls in the ward had started laughing at her and nurse felt sorry for her. Nurse wasn’t sure how much more she could do. A mental institution would make the correct diagnosis and the girl could be cared for there for the rest of her life, if she were backward and had been abandoned by her parents.

With these thoughts at the forefront of her mind, the nurse stopped and turned, deciding to abandon her search for Dr Mitchell. She stood still in the stark, antiseptic corridors of Great Ormond Street Hospital and gathered her thoughts. Something was forcing her back to check on the girl. She felt hot for a minute, anticipating tragedy, the inhalation of the crayon, perhaps, deliberate asphyxiation perhaps, to end things.

Nurse looked at her wristwatch and adjusted her white starched headpiece. Lily had been left on her own for ten minutes, enough time to do herself in. As she entered the ward it didn’t appear that Lily had moved at all. The nurse gratefully saw the rise and fall of her back, from behind. She went up to her and stood in front of her, forcing a weak smile. She examined the pad. There was something, a smattering of strokes of colour on the page, some slashes which on closer inspection appeared to be words. This was excellent progress. The nurse smiled inwardly, muttering a brief prayer for Lily.

She said some words to the girl and reached for the drawing pad but the girl snatched at it. Those vacant eyes became flashing circles of hate staring up at her. The nurse stood back from the girl and let her be, but she saw a jumble of letters had been written in hard black crayon and the girl was circling the words with a vicious fist, piercing the paper with violent red slashes of crayon. The words spelled out the unforgiven.

CHAPTER ONE

London, England - July 1968

Michel Salins, codenamed Raincoat, hated any change of plans. Tonight’s mission had been relayed via urgent coded telex. This type of action was beneath him and hot anger tensed his muscles. He resented the instruction, resented being away from the front line of action in Istanbul, resented cancelled flights in the name of his brother-comrades, but