For the foreseeable future, I'll be largely working on two Naomi Clark projects. But I've got a few Amber stories in various stages of completion that I want to get finished in the not-too-distant future too, so I've decided if I can hit my daily word count goals for the main projects, I can dabble away at the side projects too. The one I'm most eager to finish is The Last Sin, a Mafia romance (though very different to MR. RED) that I'm really in love with. It's set in a city I really want to visit (Krakow), and I'm a tiny bit in love with the hero. So, just to keep myself accountable and hopefully whet your appetite for it, I'll be sharing snippets as I go along! Starting today! So here's your first look at The Last Sin...
Marya awoke to darkness and the chilling sound of a woman begging. She flitted desperately between Russian, Polish, and English, but the meaning never changed. Don’t do this. Let me go. Help me.
A man snapped back in a language Marya couldn’t place, but she didn’t need to understand it. His meaning was clear, punctuated sharply by the crack of a fist hitting flesh. The woman yelped, then fell eerily silent.
She couldn’t think too hard about the silent woman or the invisible man and what they meant. Instead Marya took stock of herself as best she could. She sat on cold, wet stone strewn with something that smelled of animals and shit. Her hands were cuffed at her back, her arms aching dully. When she stretched her legs, her feet hit a wall. She tasted blood on her tongue and there was a slow, burning throb at her temple. She thought that might be where one of her abductors had hit her, but her memory of the abduction was still fuzzy.
Abduction. Oh God, she had been abducted. Her, of all people. She could almost laugh. A mob boss’s daughter, swept up by human traffickers. It was ridiculous. It was unreal.
It was terrifying.
Her eyes adjusted a little to the smothering darkness, and she saw she was in a small, crude cell. Probably in a basement somewhere. All around her would be similar cells, housing women just like her, ready to be shipped off to China or the Ukraine, or even just back into Russia, sold as sex slaves to the highest bidders. She suppressed a sudden urge to vomit, only because she knew she’d have to sit in it. She was suppressing a lot of urges – the urge to weep, to scream, to make threats. Do you know who I am? she could ask her captors, but she bit her tongue until she tasted fresh blood. Because what if they did know who she was, and that was exactly why she’d been taken?
A man snapped back in a language Marya couldn’t place, but she didn’t need to understand it. His meaning was clear, punctuated sharply by the crack of a fist hitting flesh. The woman yelped, then fell eerily silent.
She couldn’t think too hard about the silent woman or the invisible man and what they meant. Instead Marya took stock of herself as best she could. She sat on cold, wet stone strewn with something that smelled of animals and shit. Her hands were cuffed at her back, her arms aching dully. When she stretched her legs, her feet hit a wall. She tasted blood on her tongue and there was a slow, burning throb at her temple. She thought that might be where one of her abductors had hit her, but her memory of the abduction was still fuzzy.
Abduction. Oh God, she had been abducted. Her, of all people. She could almost laugh. A mob boss’s daughter, swept up by human traffickers. It was ridiculous. It was unreal.
It was terrifying.
Her eyes adjusted a little to the smothering darkness, and she saw she was in a small, crude cell. Probably in a basement somewhere. All around her would be similar cells, housing women just like her, ready to be shipped off to China or the Ukraine, or even just back into Russia, sold as sex slaves to the highest bidders. She suppressed a sudden urge to vomit, only because she knew she’d have to sit in it. She was suppressing a lot of urges – the urge to weep, to scream, to make threats. Do you know who I am? she could ask her captors, but she bit her tongue until she tasted fresh blood. Because what if they did know who she was, and that was exactly why she’d been taken?
