EMBERS OF TEMPTATION by Eve Rabi (Book Release)

EMBERS OF TEMPTATION  (Excerpt One) 

 

SCARLETT 

Pumping with adrenaline, I look out of the window, my ears cocked for the sound of the chopper. Where are you? Liars, cheats – where the hell are you? Better hurry, I don’t have all day.
Nearby, three technicians quietly comb my home for bugs. “It’s an emergency, the Church of Light is in grave danger!” I declared when I called them. “Pastor Colin needs your help.” The suckers dropped everything and rushed to protect their church and their pastor.
I figured, first things first – before I deliver any kind of retribution, I need to rid the place of all surveillance equipment installed by that psychopath called Clover. Or Love. Or Whatever the fuck she’s calling herself these days. Before more damage is done.
Joy Sterling indeed – I can hardly believe how dumb Sister Grace was for not checking this so-called volunteer out thoroughly. By not doing her job, she has allowed Clover to believe that she can take me on. Me, Scarlett Smyth-Murdoch-Callan, manipulator and criminal extraordinaire, probably one of the finest Svengalis to tread the Earth. She has no idea who she’s dealing with. How dangerous I am. That she is tangling with someone with an IQ higher than that of Einstein.

Such a fraud, pretending to be so helpful and supportive and reliable – coming up with the sparkling pacifier, the convenient playground – God, I feel like screaming right now!
Before you call me dumb (someone like me could be duped by an  unremarkable, unimpressionable, thrift-shopper in long skirts, vintage cardigans and sensible shoes), just remember that I have an empire to run, so I was distracted. It happens, okay? Distraction is an occupational hazard for moguls like me, so don’t even think of berating me. And … just keep in mind how quickly I derailed her locomotive of deceit.
Clover’s biggest mistake was thinking she could take me on. Her second biggest mistake is that she forgot about that greedy hillbilly named Liz. That beanpole who also, God knows why, thought that she could take on someone like me. “Give me ten thousand dollars today and two hundred thousand dollars in three days.” Yeah?

“Fetch me cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows.”

Really? Bitch, I am the director of the Church of Light, not a volunteer. And FYI, never in my whole life had I ever fetched anything for anyone.

Well, I hope she enjoyed that steak sandwich and that cup of hot chocolate, her last feast before she was deposited where she belongs – three feet under (six is not necessary). May the maggots enjoy feasting on her wiry body.

Bristling with fury, I look at the three wise men, roaming the place with their selfie sticks. Or detectors – they look like selfie sticks to me. My ears are cocked and ready for that, Found one! For that, beep! beep! beep! followed by ‘gotcha!’
More than an hour passes, and not a squeak from the men. Absentmindedly, I inspect my nails – I’ve ruined a good manicure by constantly tapping of my fingernails on the table.
As I wait, I think about Townsend, the sleaze bag. Thanks to Shane, he will soon be accompanying Liz. No one will come calling for Townsend – he’s a mere unemployed British actor working illegally in Australia, and doesn’t have any family around who will miss the creep in ridiculous red briefs. The nerve of him thinking I’d fall into bed with him. The nerve of him demanding a Maserati. The nerve of him thinking he could blackmail me. That’s always been the problem in my life – everyone around wants a piece of me. Love, Liz, Townsend, Shane – yes, even Shane the cokehead is expecting a piece of the pie I so lovingly and so painstakingly baked. Why? I’ll tell you why they demand a piece of me – it’s because I’m a woman. A powerful woman at that. If were a man, not even an authoritative one, even if I were a Weasel like Woody Allen, everyone would laud me, not blackmail me. They would expect nothing from me and be too scared to even think of asking. You think people can go up to Donald Trump and shake him down? Picture it – Trump, can you fetch me a steak sandwich? Trump, go fetch me a hot chocolate with marshmallows. Trump, buy me a Maserati.
Can you picture the look on Donald’s face? He’d stare at them with puckered lips, before he makes a call – not to 911, not to the Secret Service, not to the FBI, not even to Ivanka – no, he’d place a call to the Russians. That’s right – they’d be there in fifteen seconds to douse the person in mob-strength, flammable Vodka, light a match and throw it on them – Nostrovia! (now you know why mobsters light their cigarettes with matches. You can’t throw a lit cigarette lighter at a body, can you?).
“Sister Callan?”
I spin around to look at the men. “Yes?”
“All done,” the head of the bug-finding team says. “Nothing to report.”
“What? That can’t be right!”
The man shakes his head, his comb-over causing a breeze in the process. “Not a single one.” He waves the selfie stick like a flag.
“Are you sure? There must be surveillance devices.”
“Nah. We’ve combed the place for them. Nothing. Checked, doubled checked – nothing. Not even one of those cheap nanny cams.”
“And you’re certain of that?”
“Positive. We would have caught them by now. The place is clean.”
“Mm.”
“Luckily for everyone, right?”
No, not luckily. If there aren’t any camera’s around, just how did the bitch gain access to my computer files and my money? She’s gained access to just about everything and everywhere in the house, except the basement. It’s startling to think of the damage she’s done without the use of old fashion surveillance cameras.
“Ah, well, okay then.”
The men stare at me.
What? Surely, they’re not expecting to get paid? It’s the friggin’ church, for crying out loud! Have some goddamn respect!
“The Church of Light thanks you,” I say in a dismissive voice, before I turn away from them.
The men look at each other, shrug, before they slowly shuffle out of the house.
The moment they leave, I log onto my laptop, and holding my breath, I double-check my off-shore bank account. Maybe, just maybe, the money is still there. Please, please, please, let my money be there!
As I look at the screen, a feeling of utter devastation follows – the money, the one I’ve worked so hard for, has definitely vanished. My heart shatters and the pain is physical. Clover … I’m going to slice her up if I don’t get my money back. She has it. There’s no way someone can spend sixteen million dollars in such a short space of time. My guess is that she’s stashed it somewhere. In another bank account in Switzerland. (When did she get to Switzerland? How did I not notice her absence?) If she does not want to die a painful, prolonged death, she will return my money.
With my ear cocked and listening out for the sound of the chopper, I walk over to the bar, fetch a bottle of vodka (which is the only fetching I do, by the way), and take a couple of swigs from it.
What? Like you don’t drink from the bottle?

*****

CLOVER

In the chopper, Clover shifts about in her seat. Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up! Questions zip through her mind:
What’s happening to Angel?
What will happen to her and Colin?
Will the evil witch shoot them on sight? Has she already shot Angel? Buried her …
At the thought of her baby being hurt, at the recollection of the drawing of the child on the fridge, the cold hand of dread squeezes her heart. Please God …
Colin reaches over and slowly removes her hands from her head. She looks at him, unaware that she was holding her head. He nods – Relax, it’s going to be okay.
Clover squeezes her eyes shut, before she opens it again and looks out the window. She whiles away the time tallying her deceptions: among others … the secret DNA test of Colin and Angel, the hidden suitcases, Colin’s secret recovery, stealing Joy’s identity to worm her way into the church and hiding her real identity, stealing back Colin’s love and affections, and the grand prize – stealing millions of dollars from the wicked witch of darkness. People who steal that kind of money usually goes to prison or ends up having their throats slit. There are more crimes that she committed, too many to name, that make her believe she should run, that she should never have boarded the chopper. If it wasn’t for her baby in the clutches of that psychopath, she would never return to the Church of Light. No, she’d run and hide, leave Colin and bolt for her life.
At the sight of the church, her anxiety soars.

*****

Release date: Coming soon!

More excerpts to follow soon! Follow this blog to avoid missing out. You want to keep up with Scarlett’s underhandedness, believe me!

This is one of the books in the Girl on Fire Series. Read The Other Woman (an epic and jaw-dropping collision between a betrayed wife and a cunning seductress),  which is available on #KindleUnlimited, Please read before you read this book. 
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The Wrath of Temptation – Hell Hath No Fury …(Book Teaser)

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Alkwari rides her bicycle along a dirt road leading to her home in the bush. Wari, as they called her for short, wears a long kaftan, tattered leather sandals, beads around her neck, and a number of bracelets on her wrists. Her face is the colour of honey from a mixture of white Australian and Aborigine blood, and is dotted with white.
Sweat pours down her face as she pedals the long trip home from the town centre, something she undertakes every couple of months. Normally it’s not that hard a trip, but today she, is weighed down by the satchel of newspapers she carries on her back.

Wari was born in the bush, miles from nowhere, and has spent all her life in the bush. The hermit has no idea how old she is, and it doesn’t matter to her. The remoteness means that she has to fend for herself and live off the land. That’s not a problem for Wari, as she lives off dead animals mainly. She is adept at trapping animals, killing them, skinning them and using their carcasses for food. The rest of the animal is used to make medicine. Other hermits living in the bush sometimes travel to her for medicine, bringing food to barter with.

Wari arrives at her home, a shack made of corrugated iron and wood, and locks her bicycle with a chain and padlock to a tree. Her bicycle is her only luxury, her only means of getting into town, and she cannot afford to have it stolen by scroungers.

Clutching the satchel of newspapers, she draws aside a curtain made of discarded plastic sheeting and enters the dimly lit room. The room is bare, except for a mattress and the bottles of medicine made by Wari, which line the edge of the room.

A man dressed in just a pair of boxers lies on the floor. Extremely thin with a heavily scarred face and body, he jumps to sit up at the sight of her. “Did you get them? Did you?”

Wari nods, then throws her satchel at him.

He catches it, hurriedly opens it and scans the newspapers, his eyes bright and shiny with excitement.

The man is Lieb Sault. Once a patient of hers, he now is someone who shares her bed. It was more than two years ago when she found him lying on her doorstep. At first, she thought he was an animal that had been mauled by another. He was covered in blood and dirt, and barely alive. When she realized it was a wounded man, she took him in and began healing him with her homemade medicine. He had lost a lot of blood from the chest wound. She had plugged his wound with special herbs and given him medicine for the pain.

For the first three months, she’d enter the room and look to see if his chest was still rising and falling. Each time she saw that it was, she was amazed. It was a miracle the man with the deathly pale skin was still alive.
Over time, he had begun to move. When he opened his eyes, she saw that they were grey-blue. Once he sat up in bed, she knew he was going to be okay. Shortly after that, Wari began to share Lieb’s bed.

Being in the middle of nowhere suited Lieb. He needed time to heal and recover. He also needed the dust he had raised by helping Scarlett escape, to settle, before he could even think of returning to his former life.

He had no idea when, how or where, but he knew that one day, Scarlett would return to prison and he lived for that day. That would be the day he would be at the prison waiting for her, to look the woman who betrayed him in the eye. The woman who made him give up everything for her – his kids, his wife, his home, his job, his life – everything, only to deceive him in the end, then murder him. He would return, and make her days a living hell.

Every time he scanned the newspapers, he looked for news of his prisoner. (Yes, she was his prisoner and she would always be his personal prisoner.) He lived for that day when he reads that she has been, arrested and thrown back in prison.

That’s why it was important for him to read the papers. Whenever Wari went into town, Lieb would ask her to bring him back newspapers. Why he was so interested in the news, Wari had no idea. She had always got him paper though. Even though the newspapers were old, they made Lieb happy. Wari wanted to make him happy so that he’d stay. She had no idea who he was, what his name was or what had injured him, and she didn’t care. She just wanted him to stay with her.

Lieb holds his breath as he reads. Has she been caught as yet?

According to the newspapers: no.

Lieb nods to himself. Still out there, living your life, are you? Well, enjoy it while you can.

Disappointed, he walks out of room and into the harsh sunlight of a sun-baked land. After blinking to adjust to the bright light, he walks over to a pile of rocks, picks the two large ones from the pile and lifts them above his head several times. As he exercises, he thinks of his obsession. Revenge will be sweet. He will see to it. She thought he had died, but she was wrong. Lieb Sault will be back. Assault will be back.

He drops the two rocks, picks up two heavier ones, and lifts them above his head. Over and over again he lifts them until his muscles burn.
When he is done, he pulls open his pants and looks at his penis. It is hard as the rock he has lifted. Just thinking about Scarlett, could make him rock-hard. That made him happy, it made him feel virile and young again. He hated how old he felt when he couldn’t get an erection. Now, thanks to Wari’s medicine, his penis now works. Every day he drinks her vile potions for potency. What is in them, he has no idea and he doesn’t really care – as long as they work, he’ll drink them by the gallon.

He removes all his clothes and allows the sun to scorch him. He would need to lose the paleness and acquire a tan. She liked her man tanned. Despite the burning sensation, he stays in the sun, forcing his face up to the skies. She would be impressed at how bronze he was, find it sexy and become turned on. The thought of her being turned on with his improved physique is exhilarating.

He looks out into the expanse and takes a deep breath. Some men kidnap women and hold them prisoners in their basements for years, to do whatever they want to do to them. He would do the same. Except that he would do it legally – he’d have his personal prisoner shackled and chained in a hole in prison, to torment and abuse at the drop of a hat, and he would take great pleasure in doing that to her. The best part of it all? It was legal, and he would never have to worry about going to prison for kidnapping and torture.

He couldn’t wait for that day – the day when he goes back to his job as prison chief warden and once again, become revered and pandered to.

In preparation for the day he leaves this God-forsaken place, he’s evaporated some of the jars of medicine in the sun, creating a fine powder, which he has packed into plastic bags. It would be easier to carry bags of powder when he leaves, rather than jars of liquid. He has to take the powder with him, for the type of punishment he has planned for Scarlett, his penis would need to work on demand.

He looks down and nods at this erect penis. “Soon. It will be worth the wait. She will be worth the wait. Trust me.”

End of Excerpt. 

Release date: 16 January 2018

………………..

The Other Woman (an epic and jaw-dropping collision between a betrayed wife and a cunning seductress), which has an overall 5-star rating on Amazon U.K. and Amazon Aus. Fans of Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will love Eve Rabi’s tales of love, lust and revenge. To read The Other Woman, click on the image below.

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