I stare at the screen, reading the email over and over again, trying to understand how and why he is involved with any of this.
Thank you for reading DARK INTENTIONS! I hope you enjoyed Jacqueline and Dante’s love story. Their story continues with DARK REDEMPTION…
He saved my mother’s life. Now, I owe him a debt. But I don’t even know who he is.
Dante Langston is man of extreme wealth and privilege and just as much darkness.
What I don’t yet know is that he already knows me.
He has been watching and waiting. He needs to stay away to protect his secrets but he can’t.
What happens when I find out the debt I owe is to him?
What happens when I find out the other secrets that he is much more desperate to keep?
1-Click DARK REDEMPTION now!
Can’t get enough of Jacqueline and Dante? Grab the FREE BONUS scene now!
Grab the FREE BONUS scene now!
Sign up for my newsletter to find out when I have new books!
You can also join my Facebook group, Charlotte Byrd’s Reader Club, for exclusive giveaways and sneak peaks of future books.
I appreciate you sharing my books and telling your friends about them. Reviews help readers find my books! Please leave a review on your favorite site.
I am thrilled to offer a sneak peak of BLACK EDGE, a bestselling full-length dark contemporary novel about a secret auction and the lengths that people are willing to go for love….
“Here it is! Here it is!” my roommate Caroline yells at the top of her lungs as she runs into my room.
We were friends all through Yale and we moved to New York together after graduation.
Even though I’ve known Caroline for what feels like a million years, I am still shocked by the exuberance of her voice. It’s quite loud given the smallness of her body.
Caroline is one of those super skinny girls who can eat pretty much anything without gaining a pound.
Unfortunately, I am not that talented. In fact, my body seems to have the opposite gift. I can eat nothing but vegetables for a week straight, eat one slice of pizza, and gain a pound.
“What is it?” I ask, forcing myself to sit up.
It’s noon and I’m still in bed.
My mother thinks I’m depressed and wants me to see her shrink.
She might be right, but I can’t fathom the strength.
“The invitation!” Caroline says jumping in bed next to me.
I stare at her blankly.
And then suddenly it hits me.
This must be the invitation.
“You mean…it’s…”
“Yes!” she screams and hugs me with excitement.
“Oh my God!” She gasps for air and pulls away from me almost as quickly.
“Hey, you know I didn’t brush my teeth yet,” I say turning my face away from hers.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go brush them,” she instructs.
Begrudgingly, I make my way to the bathroom.
We have been waiting for this invitation for some time now.
And by we, I mean Caroline.
I’ve just been playing along, pretending to care, not really expecting it to show up.
Without being able to contain her excitement, Caroline bursts through the door when my mouth is still full of toothpaste.
She’s jumping up and down, holding a box in her hand.
“Wait, what’s that?” I mumble and wash my mouth out with water.
“This is it!” Caroline screeches and pulls me into the living room before I have a chance to wipe my mouth with a towel.
“But it’s a box,” I say staring at her.
“Okay, okay,” Caroline takes a couple of deep yoga breaths, exhaling loudly.
She puts the box carefully on our dining room table. There’s no address on it.
It looks something like a fancy gift box with a big monogrammed C in the middle.
Is the C for Caroline?
“Is this how it came? There’s no address on it?” I ask.
“It was hand-delivered,” Caroline whispers.
I hold my breath as she carefully removes the top part, revealing the satin and silk covered wood box inside.
The top of it is gold plated with whimsical twirls all around the edges, and the mirrored area is engraved with her full name.
Caroline Elizabeth Kennedy Spruce.
Underneath her name is a date, one week in the future. 8 PM.
We stare at it for a few moments until Caroline reaches for the elegant knob to open the box.
Inside, Caroline finds a custom monogram made of foil in gold on silk emblazoned on the inside of the flap cover.
There’s also a folio covered in silk. Caroline carefully opens the folio and finds another foil monogram and the invitation.
The inside invitation is one layer, shimmer white, with gold writing.
“Is this for real? How many layers of invitation are there?” I ask.
But the presentation is definitely doing its job. We are both duly impressed.
“There’s another knob,” I say, pointing to the knob in front of the box.
I’m not sure how we had missed it before.
Caroline carefully pulls on this knob, revealing a drawer that holds the inserts (a card with directions and a response card).
“Oh my God, I can’t go to this alone,” Caroline mumbles, turning to me.
I stare blankly at her.
Getting invited to this party has been her dream ever since she found out about it from someone in the Cicada 17, a super-secret society at Yale.
“Look, here, it says that I can bring a friend,” she yells out even though I’m standing right next to her.
“It probably says a date. A plus one?” I say.
“No, a friend. Girl preferred,” Caroline reads off the invitation card.
That part of the invitation is in very small ink, as if someone made the person stick it on, without their express permission.
“I don’t want to crash,” I say.
Frankly, I don’t really want to go.
These kind of upper-class events always make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I ask.
“Eh, I took a day off,” Caroline says waving her arm. “I knew that the invitation would come today and I just couldn’t deal with work. You know how it is.”
I nod. Sort of.
Caroline and I seem like we come from the same world.
We both graduated from private school, we both went to Yale, and our parents belong to the same exclusive country club in Greenwich, Connecticut.
But we’re not really that alike.
Caroline’s family has had money for many generations going back to the railroads.
My parents were an average middle class family from Connecticut.
They were both teachers and our idea of summering was renting a 1-bedroom bungalow near Clearwater, FL for a week.
But then my parents got divorced when I was 8, and my mother started tutoring kids to make extra money.
The pay was the best in Greenwich, where parents paid more than $100 an hour.
And that’s how she met, Mitch Willoughby, my stepfather.
He was a widower with a five-year old daughter who was not doing well after her mom’s untimely death.