Sinner's Empire Series: Sin of Silence, A Silent Reckoning, Goodnight Sinners

Dear readers, In Sin of Silence there is a character who is non-verbal and uses sign language to communicate. Over the course of a year, I researched methods of non-verbal communication, specifically sign languages. As sign language doesn't mirror spoken language, my intent was to be as authentic as possible. However, I quickly discovered that translating sign language onto the page is very difficult, especially for someone without a background in signing. The word order can be confusing, and the grammar is different from spoken language. I made the decision to go with flow over a straight translation, which is why the signed conversations in this book resemble spoken conversations. The signed conversations will be formatted in italics unless Sinner's Empire is being read as a web series, in which case formatting is not available. There are many wonderful aspects to sign language that I would love to share with you, but that would be an entire book in itself (and probabl

Oh god, they weren't blindfolding her or anything, which meant they didn't care if she saw where they were driving. They didn't care if she saw their faces. Which probably meant that they weren't planning on letting her live. Despair, fear and anger rushed through her. She didn't want to die. She was only thirty-four; she'd finally clawed her way out from under a mountain of student loan debt. She was widely considered one of the world's most up-and-coming neurosurgeons, at the head of her field in successfully using cutting-edge technology during surgery. She wasn't ready to lose all that. "Where are you taking me?" she asked, trying and failing to keep the fear from her voice. Her captor glanced at her, his icy gaze sweeping her briefly before turning away. He was sitting on a bench across from her, his elbows on his knees, his body tilted toward the men in the seats at the front. He looked completely composed, as though murdering a nurse and kidnapping a docto

"I won't fix him!" she shouted as clearly as she could through the thundering in her head, caused by his tight grip and the crazy pattering of her heart. He threw her away from him in frustration. Shaun fell sideways, but quickly crawled back to the man on the floor. Every instinct in her body was screaming at her to do something, to start working on him. To find a way to get him to the hospital where he could get the medical attention he needed. Instead, she was forced to watch him die a slow and painful death because she refused to help him if her captor was just going to question him and kill him. She eyed the tattoos on her pacing kidnapper's hands and neck and wondered how deep in the mafia he was. The part of Ukraine that she worked in had become lawless due to the removal of most forms of authority except military, who were concentrated on fighting the rebellion. For the most part, the hospital and its occupants were left alone. Unless someone needed a doc

Each breath seemed to linger in her chest for much longer than usual before puffing out through her mouth. Was this what death felt like? Time slowed down to a crawl and each sense hyper-engaged all at the same time. But then, Jozef jerked the gun away from her head and time sped back up. The warm sunshine filtered through the leaves high above their heads. The flutter of a bird's wings sounded as it took flight. Jozef stalked away from her, his shoes rustling in the dead leaves and grass. He grasped his head as indecision warred in his brain. Shaun stayed crouched on the ground, watching warily. Then he turned and grabbed her again, yanking her to her feet. Shaun swayed and thought she would go back down until he steadied her, sliding his gun hand around her back. She gasped and jerked in his arms as she felt the metal press against her spine. He growled in frustration and set her away from him. As she stumbled back, he put his gun underneath his jacket and back into it

Shaun was cold, shivering in the dark on a bare mattress in a bare room. She was hungry and she had to urinate. She hadn't gotten the sense from her captors that they intended for her to be miserable. It was more likely that they were too busy to think about her. Still, she was worried that if they forgot for much longer, she would have to start shouting. She'd been attempting to sleep, the sun having long since gone down and the only light now a dim streetlight down the road from where her room was facing. She'd tried the window, but it was bolted shut. She wondered if this room was actually meant for prisoners, given how solid the door and lock were, and her inability to open the window. She closed her eyes, drifting in and out of consciousness. She had no way to tell time, but she suspected she wasn't sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time. It was during one of these brief periods when she was snatching a few minutes of sleep that her door banged open. She ope