Dasha woke with a start, the clicking of heels on the tiles of the hospital floor reminding her of muffled gunshots. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her pounding heart. Slowly, painfully, she sat up, reaching for the water on her nightstand. The process was made awkward by her other hand being cuffed to the bed. She'd been transferred the day before. She'd waited as long as she could manage before finally giving away her condition. She'd been in so much pain, the poison twisting her guts; the fever raging through her that she'd raved with hallucinations. Screamed obscenities at the prison staff as they strapped her to a gurney and moved her. She took long sips of water, pulling it through the paper straw. It felt like heaven against a throat raw from days of vomiting. Her hand shook as she set the water down. Collapsing against the pillows, she forced herself to stay awake, to keep alert. She was here for a reason. Someone had poisoned her. Not some
Saskia loved everything about school. She loved the books, she loved her laptop, she loved taking notes, she even loved exams. When Jozef deemed it safe enough for her to return to the University, she'd immediately registered for her winter classes. It took some cajoling to get into a few of them, given her late attendance, but she managed a full course load. Saskia loved university and opted to spend more time on campus than off. She ate in the cafeteria, she studied all over the place, wherever she could find a sunny nook. She spent time in the library almost every day, soaking in the atmosphere. It was the university that made her return to Prague bearable. The shining goal of finishing her linguistics degree. As a child she had grown up with tutors, only attending classes with other students in her two years of boarding school. That had been different from the university. The students were similar age and background, and class sizes were limited to a handful
Jozef sat in the window of his hut, looking out at the incredible cerulean blue of the ocean beyond. When Shaun had found out that Jozef had never spent time near the ocean, except briefly when he was on mission, she'd insisted they choose an oceanside setting for their honeymoon. It had been four months since Jozef had murdered his aunt, and he still thought about that moment. Her confessions, her reaction to his being there. He felt intense anger when he thought of her killing his parents and her attacks on Shaun, but time had given him a better perspective. She'd grown up in the mafia. She'd been highly intelligent and motivated. Like Jozef, like his uncle, like the best in the business. Perhaps if she'd been born a man, given her own organization to play god with, she might have channeled her abilities into better use. Her death made him think long and hard about himself. He wasn't much different. He killed too. She used death and destruction to manipulate w
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
"Mom, I'm fine, really." Shaun took a long thirsty gulp of water before hurriedly wiping her mouth and putting the bottle back in the fridge. She flexed her shoulder blades, wincing a little at the crackling sound and the tight, pinched feeling in her neck. She was on day three of a four-day twelve-hour rotation. She shook her head. It wasn't like she stuck to her working hours. She worked when there was work to be done, and she went back to her tiny boarding room when she could no longer stand up and keep her eyes open. "I read in the news that there was a bombing close to the hospital last night. Did you hear it?" Fatima asked anxiously over the phone. Shaun frowned in concentration. She tried to get her tired brain to remember if anything had happened the evening before. Usually after long shifts she would go home and eat a quick, cold meal, take a lukewarm shower with appalling water pressure, then pass out until her next shift began. Still, she had t
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
"Of course," she readily agreed, then she hesitated. "But what will you do with me after? W-will you let me go?" He stared down at her, and her heart sank even further. Of course he wouldn't let her go. At least he wasn't outright lying to her. He seemed to understand her though, so either he could read lips or he wasn't hearing impaired. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked bluntly. He pointed at her, then toward the man on the ground, then signed, fix him. "He needs a hospital!" she snapped. No hospital. "Then I can't fix him, I don't have what I need. I think he's had a heart attack and there's no way to treat that kind of illness without the proper medical equipment." She sat back on her haunches and lifted her hands helplessly. The man was going to die in that dirty basement, and she was likely going to die alongside him. Her captor pulled his gun from the holster underneath his leather jacket and pointed it at her head. She fl
"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