Of course, I could always stay at my parents’ house, which Vito had made sure had been kept like a pristine mausoleum since their deaths two years ago.
But in my mind, the house loomed like an eerie specter. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts. However, I was terrified of walking into my childhood home, once filled with my mother and father’s laughter and conversation, and finding it hollow and empty. That would flatten me.
The house needed to be sold. I know I could never live there. And my brother, Christopher, had vowed to never return to the Monterey Peninsula during his lifetime. An hour after my parent’s funeral, Christopher got in his car and before he pulled away told me I would never see him on the peninsula again. And that if he died unexpectedly, he didn’t want to be buried in the family plot.
“Cremate me and then do whatever the hell you want with the ashes. Leave them at the funeral home for all I care. As long as it’s not in Monterey. Promise me.” He stared at me until I agreed. Then he pulled away.
Watching the tail lights of his Bugatti pull away, I’d crossed my arms and thought, “Sure, I’ll cremate you and then flush you down the god damn toilet.”
It was the last time I’d seen him. As far as I knew, he had kept his promise to never return to the peninsula.
Ever since we were kids, he’d hated living on the peninsula. It was his own fault. He was cruel and antisocial and was ostracized by most of the other kids. I think that’s why my parents ultimately sent him away to boarding school. I couldn’t count on him to help me clean out my parent’s house or sell it. It was up to me.
Until I could bring myself to sort through my parent’s belongings, it would remain frozen in time. Deep down inside I knew I needed to face it sooner or later.
My crotch itched slightly and a streak of terror zipped through me again. I had always been exceedingly careful in my one-night stands, but I still couldn’t find a god damn condom from last night. All I could do was hope and pray that we hadn’t actually had sex. The curly-haired guy had even said, “I don’t take advantage of drunk women.” For some reason his decency made me feel even worse for kicking him out.
I took a drag off my cigarette and gulped my coffee, consoling myself with the thought that he was too nice and therefore too good for me, anyway. I’d actually probably done him a favor by booting him out before he started to really like me.
I spent at least an hour sitting on my balcony, feet up on the rail in my fuzzy slippers, watching the fog burn off the bay until the Golden Gate Bridge came into view and beyond that the Marin headlands. If I looked over my shoulder, I could see the new span of the Bay Bridge stretching across the Bay, gleaming in the sunlight.
Even though a lump of dread had settled in my gut, the trip to the Monterey Peninsula would be good for me. It was one of those days where I needed to drive my Ferrari as fast as I could for as long as I could.
ALSO BY KRISTI BELCAMINO
The Gia Santella Crime Thriller Series
GIA SANTELLA IS A FAST-driving, hard-drinking, karate-trained free spirit, who is gorgeous, sexy, and a young heiress. She also has a fierce temper and zero tolerance for people in power preying on the vulnerable ... especially when the injustice takes place in her neighborhood.
Late one Autumn night, violence breaks out in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, as a hate group and counter-protesters come face to face. Gia Santella rushes to the protest to help find her friend's granddaughter. Sasha Kennedy is a student journalist at U.C. Berkeley covering the protest for the school paper.
But when Sasha mysteriously disappears at the protest, Gia learns that the young woman was on the brink of uncovering a story that would blow the whole city wide open.
In her efforts to find the girl, Gia finds herself investigating more mysterious disappearances and begins to unravel a string of dark secrets that lie below the surface of her beloved neighborhood, threatening to destroy it.
But then her plan goes terribly wrong.
When Gia receives a terrifying message, she is caught in a race against time to find the young journalist before it's too late...
If she fails, more innocent people will die ...
And it will all be her fault.
GIA SANTELLA, THE FAST-driving, hard-drinking, karate-trained free spirit, has finally put her dark past behind her.
UNFORTUNATELY, the past isn't done with her yet.
In this suspense-filled page-turner, Gia travels from her San Francisco neighborhood to her mother's native Sicily.
There, in her efforts to seek justice for a senseless slaying, she stumbles across a complex underworld that knows more about her than she ever imagined.
She soon finds herself face-to-face with a tangled web of deep dark secrets that threaten to destroy everything she ever believed was true.
HE THOUGHT HE COULD get away with it. He was wrong.
Gia Santella's hunt for her best friend leads her on a road trip to Mexico where she learns that there is no refuge from evil despite sunny skies and bucolic beaches.
Many Americans flee to Baja, California to escape something—the drudgery of a 9-to-5 life. An abusive husband. A hefty tax bill.
But others go there to kill.
f ex-pats who like the advantages of living in a place where people can disappear without a trace and nobody bats an eye.
But then Gia comes to town. She will risk everything to save the innocent ...
DID YOU LIKE THIS BOOK?
Reviews are the lifeblood of this author business. Reviews, honest reviews, mean the world to me. They don’t have to be fancy, either. Nobody is critiquing you on your review. And they don’t always have to be five-star, either. What matters is that people are reading and have opinions on my books. I am a fairly new writer and don’t have the marketing push that many other writers do that gets their books out in front of other readers.
What I do have is you.
I am unbelievably lucky to have very passionate and loyal readers who take the time to let me know what they think of my books (and sometimes even where they think I could improve).
If you liked this book, I would be extremely grateful if you could take a few minutes out of your day to leave a review. As I said, it doesn’t need to be long or involved, anything will help. Thank you!
Acknowledgments
I am incredibly grateful to—and could not do this without the members of my street team, who support me, encourage me, and keep me from looking bad in print: Liz Cronk, Douglas Cronk, Sharon Long, Iris Brossard, Steve Avery, Christine Green, Mary Ann Forbes, Erin Alford, Kenneth Lingenfelter, Yolunda Altamirano, Beverlee Smith, Emmy McCabe, Mimi Ryan, John Kurtze, Emily Goehner, Annette Bermudez, Vickie Johnson, Loni Crowell, John Bychowski, and Kathy Boone Reel.
Thank you!
And huge thanks to Sarah Hanley, who is not only a breathtaking writer, but makes my covers magic!
For this book, I want to give a huge thanks to my talented and supportive friend Alex Segura, whose character Miami, PI Pete Fernandez makes a guest appearance in this book. Check out Alex’s books. You’ll love Pete!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
KRISTI BELCAMINO IS a Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Award-nominated author, a newspaper cops reporter, and an Italian mama who makes a tasty biscotti. As an award-winning crime reporter at newspapers in California, she flew over Big Sur in an FA-18 jet with the Blue Angels, raced a Dodge Viper at Laguna Seca and watched autopsies.
Her books feature strong, fierce, and independent women facing unspeakable evil in order to seek justice for those unable to do so themselves.
Belcamino has written and reported about many high-profile cases including the Laci Peterson murder and Chandra Levy’s disappearance. She has appeared on Inside Edition and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Writer’s Digest, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News, and Chicago Tribune. Kristi now works part-time as a police reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and her two fierce daughters.
Find out more at http://www.kristibelcamino.com. Find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kristibelcaminowriter/ or on Twitter @KristiBelcamino. Sign up for her VIP Reader Group HERE for information on new releases, discounts and free books.
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