Delphi Bloodline, Book 3
Romantic Suspense
Date Published: September 4, 2020
Publisher: eXtasy/DevineDestinies
While Athena tries to decide whether to take her relationship with Kas
Skoros to another level, she encounters two dangerous villains, a cunning
murderer and a child trafficker.
After Detective Ochoa’s cousin, Detective Inspector Villalobos,
persuades Athena to help him with this baffling case, she realizes a truth
that horrifies her and threatens both her and Kas. While at a crowded
Christmas festival in the Sierra foothill town of Grass Valley, they
encounter a man who attempts to kidnap Kas’s nephew. It was
Athena’s lapse of attention which nearly causes this tragedy and
threatens to destroy her relationship with Kas. Only their seeking of
justice can right this wrong, and they risk their lives to do so.
Other Books in the Delphi Bloodline Series:
Athena’s Secrets
Delphi Bloodline, Book 1
Publisher: eXtasy/DevineDestinies
Published: May 2019
Athena Butler, the twenty-year-old descendant of an ancient bloodline of
psychics, yearns to live a normal life. She wants a career in art, a
boyfriend, independence. Her clairvoyance has taught her, however, that
people can be false and dangerous. Although warned to keep her psychic gifts
a secret, she’s recruited by law enforcement to help search for a
serial killer and to uncover a terrorist cell that threatens her own
diplomat father.
She bonds with an intriguing, handsome man, Kas Skoros, who knows her
secret and accepts it. Of the same bloodline, his own mother is precognitive
and predicts they are meant to be together…someday. Kas realizes that
life is too uncertain, but he can’t resist his growing passion for the
strange young woman.
Still, they face obstacles beyond their control. Can Athena and Kas
overcome these obstacles? More importantly, can Athena stay alive long
enough to fulfill her dream of a normal life?
Amazon
Athena’s Fears
Delphi Bloodline, Book 2
Publisher: eXtasy/DevineDestinies
Published: August 2019
Kas Skoros, his marriage to Alex’s former fiancée now annulled
and no longer intimidated by Athena’s psychic gifts, begs her to move
to San Francisco and manage an art gallery that his family’s company
owns. However, burned once, Athena holds him at arm’s length.
Athena is enticed to consult in another serial killer case. As time passes
and secrets are leaked, others—including the killer’s
brother—find out that Athena is the one who’s helping the
police. Meanwhile, a strange young woman on a motorcycle appears to be
stalking her. Warning bells go off as Athena realizes the woman is not who
she seems to be.
Amazon
Excerpt
Bloody hell.
Athena closed her eyes momentarily against the bright sunlight glittering
off the San Francisco Bay waters. She inhaled a whiff of briny scent spiced
with a hint of pine from nearby trees. With a little more effort, she made
another attempt to shut off the mental channel through which her strangely
gifted mind often surged. The ebb and flow of too many people and their
thoughts caused her head to ache like the bloody devil. Like turning off a
spigot and thank god her mother had taught her how to do this. Only this
morning, walking amid the crowds along the Embarcadero, she was having
difficulty.
One middle-aged man, pulling two rolling suitcases towards a yellow cab,
whipped around. Anger creased his face as the woman by his side opened the
cab’s passenger door and climbed in.
So much for this damned cruise! Nothing can save this rotten marriage. Dead
as a doornail! Good riddance to it!
The man disappeared inside the cab but not before Athena had glimpsed a
private look into their doomed marriage.
With a slight, sad shake of her head, she tried to shut off the Flow
channel again. The noisy crowds disembarking from the cruise ship terminal
at Pier twenty-nine jostled her as she stepped around rolling suitcases and
the slow-moving elderly. She continued walking briskly along the Embarcadero
southward.
Too much human noise.
Hurrying up, she retraced her steps on this morning constitutional, as her
British father called it. This morning walk had become a habit, first
initiated by her father years ago, and she’d looked forward to
accompanying him on these walks as a schoolgirl in London and wherever else
the Foreign Service had taken them. Her thoughts traveled to her parents in
Milan, where her staunchly patriotic father served as British Consul General
and where her clairvoyant, Italian-born mother served the local carabinieri
and polizia di stato as an investigatory consultant. Her mother had taught
her the importance of helping law enforcement in any way she could. Athena
still questioned the wisdom of using their gift in that way. In her
experience, that kind of association always backfired.
At any rate, she would make plans to visit them at Christmas time. How she
missed them!
That is, if Kas didn’t need her at the gallery. Christmas was a
little more than six weeks away and she hadn’t yet booked her flight.
She’d moved to San Francisco only two months ago, and as agreed, had
taken over management of the Stargazer Tower’s art gallery, situated
at street level on the southwest corner of the forty-floor building.
Kas—Keriakos Alexander Skoros–had begged her to join him at the
Stargazer and well, didn’t love take precedence over all other
concerns?
Lately, it seemed to. Falling in love again, rather never falling out of
it, seemed to have a physical effect she had no control over. Call it a
flood of endorphins in the brain, but she was its helpless captive.
Je m’en fou. Sono pazzo.
Being able to say, I’m crazy, in two foreign languages didn’t
change her situation one tad.
She opened her eyes and glanced to the right. After two months in the city
by the bay, she had already developed a kind of mental map of the area.
Lombard Street, that famously crooked street, emptied into the bay at this
point, just before Green Street. The local TV stations transmitted from the
red brick building across the boulevard that ran parallel to the Embarcadero
and the piers. The Exploratorium was on her left, a delightful techie museum
that she’d already explored with Kas. Broadway came up next, she
reminded herself, part of her city-map self-quiz. San Francisco was a small
city compared to London, barely one million inhabitants eclipsed by her
hometown’s eight-point-eight million in central London and twenty-six
million in greater Metro London. Still, San Francisco was new to her and she
was doing her best to sort it all out.
The Waterfront restaurant next to the Pier five building, where Kas had
taken her to dine numerous times, was open even now, eight o’clock in
the morning, but her favorite breakfast place was the Marketplace at the
Ferry Building. Inside were restaurants, food booths, boutiques, all housed
in a hundred-year-old building that had miraculously survived the 1906
earthquake. Fifty yards away, she caught the wafting of aromas from inside
the Marketplace.
Ah, her favorite stop!
Then, like the darkness from a grisly underworld, she looked across the
bustling boulevard at Washington Park. A water sculpture that looked like
carved, gray granite blocks arose from the green grass. It was a place she
avoided since her first walk through the park, as the mad and drug-induced
ramblings of the homeless scattered about in sleeping bags and under
makeshift cardboard covers and ratty tents bombarded her mind and caused her
excruciating mental pain.
Help me, Mommy! They’re crawling all over me, help me.
I’m gonna kill that bitch…next time she comes to suck my
dick…ain’t givin’ her no ten bucks! Gotta kill her before
she kills me…
Athena quickened her step as a man in rags left his tent, stood up and
screamed at her from across the street. He raised his fist in a threatening
gesture.
Hey, bitch! Whatcha lookin’ at?
A woman of indeterminate age emerged from her cardboard hovel, orange hair
all askew, her dirty pants and flannel shirt hanging off her gaunt frame
like a discarded garment on a clothes hanger. She wept into her raised arm,
spotted Athena and turned away, her sobs now audible.
What could Athena do in the face of this open human misery? Nothing. And
the lingering guilt she felt added to her fear and pain.
About the Author
A retired high school English teacher, Donna has written and sold twelve
novels over the past fifteen years. She currently has three series in print:
The Jake Bernstein FBI suspense series; the Born To Sing series, about
professional singers; and The Delphi Bloodline romantic suspense series,
featuring clairvoyant artist Athena Butler.
Contact Links
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