Author: Vivienne Diane Neal
Genre: Crime, Hoaxes
and Scandal
Release
Date: Fall 2014
Synopsis:
What happens when Christine Bailey, a
young woman from an affluent family, believes she has met the man of her
dreams, only to discover she has been living in a fool’s paradise? The
handsome, charming, and cunning Awesome Petté will not only awaken her sexual
inhibitions but will draw her into his sinister plot, which will ruin her
financially and obliterate her parents’ billion dollar empire that has been in
the family for four generations.
Prologue:
Alone in her majestic
manor, Christine Petté knew something was wrong when she came home to an empty
house and found a beautiful small chest on her husband’s desk. The wooden box,
with its intricate handcraft patterns and sparkling gems, reminded her of a
piece that one would find at an auction house or in a museum.
She never questioned
her husband’s business affairs, but some strange occurrences got her wondering
about him, his business, and his inner circle of friends.
There were bizarre
phone calls all hours of the night, secret meetings with individuals she never
knew or met and packages delivered to the house by scary looking messengers.
Then, someone broke into the house while she and her husband were dining at a
restaurant in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
Her husband’s office
was the only room ransacked. Furnishings, papers, and DVDs were scattered all
over the place, but the intruder, as far as she knew, took nothing. Two
thousand dollars in cash, a Cartier watch, and gold coins worth over five
thousand dollars were in his top desk drawer, which were all visible to the
naked eye.
“Honey, what were they
looking for, and how could they have missed those items, which were in plain
sight?” she asked, reaching for her cell phone.
As she was getting
ready to dial 911, her husband grabbed the phone out of her hand. “There is no
need to call the police. It is Halloween; it was probably some kids playing a
practical joke. Instead of adorning the house with raw eggs and toilet paper,
they decided to remove the spare key from under the doormat, let themselves in
and rummage through my office. Nothing
is missing. There is no need to get the police involved.”
A spare key under the doormat; this is
news to me,
Christine thought.
Some neighbors did
leave their doors unlocked and would place an extra key under the mat or hide
it in a flower bin. There were occasional break-ins, but major crimes rarely
occurred on the quiet block.
She decided not to
pursue the matter. Her husband’s tone,
body language and demeanor made it quite clear.
Leave well enough alone. Let sleeping dogs lie dead.
The kind of business
her husband was into might have been the reason for the break-in.
Maybe the prowler thought there were
pieces worth stealing, she told herself.
He owned a shop, which
sold second-hand junk. Often he would bring items home to restore before
offering them to customers.
Since the Great
Depression, the economy was in the pits. At the same time, gentrification was
spreading throughout the borough like locusts circling cornfields, and high-end
shops and restaurants were replacing mom-pop establishments. If three customers
came into her husband’s shop, it was considered a good day.
Why someone would come
into a home just to poke around and not steal a timepiece, coins, and cash, all
worth over eight thousand dollars, did not make any sense to her.
But if Mrs. Petté
thought these events were out of the ordinary, she would soon receive a wake up
call that will send her into a hellish tailspin, leaving her asking: How could I have missed the deception my
husband was exhibiting in plain sight?
Excerpts and purchase link will be coming soon.
In the meantime, check out her other books at the following links:
Lulu
Smashwords
Amazon
