Hollywood Sinners (41 page)
Authors: Victoria Fox
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #Contemporary, #General, #Victoria Fox, #Jackie Collins, #Joan Collins, #Jilly Cooper, #Tilly Bagshawe, #Louise Bagshawe, #Jessica Ruston, #Lulu Taylor, #Rebecca Chance, #Barbara Taylor Bradford, #Danielle Steele, #Maggie Marr, #Jennifer Probst, #Hollywood Sinners, #Wicked Ambition, #Temptation Island, #The Power Trip, #Confessions of a Wild Child, #The Love Killers, #The World is Full of Married Men, #The Bitch, #Goddess of Vengeance, #Drop Dead Beautiful, #Poor Little Bitch Girl, #Hollywood Girls Club, #Scandalous, #Fame, #Riders, #Bonkbuster, #Chicklit, #Best chick lit 2014, #Best Women’s fiction 2014, #hollywood, #Romantic Suspense, #Mystery, #Erotica, #bestsellers kindle books, #bestsellers kindle books top 100, #bestsellers in kindle ebooks, #bestsellers kindle, #bestsellers 2013, #bestsellers 2014
TEMPTATION ISLAND
WELCOME TO PARADISE:
Only the rich are invited… only the strongest survive.
Fame. Money. Success. Lori wants them, Aurora is being destroyed by them and Stevie’s got them at her best friend’s expense.
These three women are drawn unwittingly to the shores of Temptation Island, all looking for their own truth. But they discover a secret so shocking, there’s no turning back. It’s wicked, it’s sensational. Are you ready to be told?
“Guaranteed to get you
seriously hot
.”
Cosmopolitan
“
Laden with mystery, scandal and sex
, Victoria Fox’s glossy novel
gives Jackie Collins a run for her money
and has all the ingredients for a great beach-side read.”
Irish Tatler
WICKED AMBITION
Some will do anything for fame.
Others will do
anything
to bring the famous down.
For Robin, Turquoise and Kristin, the spotlight shines brightly. They’ve reached the glittering heights of stardom, and are adored the world over. But in the shadows lies the truth…
Not everyone is happy about their success. Not everyone wants the best for them. Some want to reveal the shameful secrets behind the luxury parties and gorgeous men – and bring their dazzling worlds crashing to the ground.
Who will fall first?
“
Outrageously scandalous and sexy
– we LOVE.”
Cosmopolitan
“If you want a book with
enough sex, lies and scandal to last you an entire summer
then look no further than Wicked Ambition.”
Novelicious.com
TEMPTATION ISLAND
PROLOGUE
I
Present Day
Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean
H
ad it not been such a clear night, the moon so bright and the air so still, her body might not have been visible where it moved uncertainly, facedown, at the surface of the water. As it was, the pale skin of her shoulder glowed sickeningly in the silver light, one strap of her gown fallen and bound to her like seaweed, its jewels glinting bright as the stars that pierced the sky above.
In the distance, the low thump of music and faraway cries of merriment. The megayacht twinkled on the horizon, its outline lit gold against the black ocean, a winking diamond guillotining the depths. The grand vessel was scene to the birthday party of the year: a lavish, abundant celebration for which no expense had been spared. On board, a host of VIPs, from Hollywood stars to Olympic idols, from dazzling supermodels to the government’s elite, from singers, actresses and dancers—beautiful people the globe over—to the cream of the entrepreneurial world, partied as midnight came and went. All were oblivious to the quiet outside, around, below: unaware that, beneath their feet, a secret was drowned, soundless and stifled in the endless deep.
She had not been dead long, half an hour at most. The tide was strong, had rocked her body towards the shore, gently so as not to wake her, the water kissing her cold skin. Her arms were spread wide, her hair tangled like the ropes of a shipwreck, once bound to great beauty but now cut loose on the strange unknown. Her dress had been torn in the struggle, a red slit bleeding uselessly where the dagger had entered.
If she had been asleep, the coarse shingle would have woken her now. A scratch to the belly before, with a final, sad push, the water deposited her. Quiet as silk, it noiselessly retreated.
A little way down the beach, a small boy was hunting for sea turtles. His father had told him they came in to lay their eggs at night, leathery things whose shells shone white in troughs of sand. He wasn’t supposed to be here—Miss Jensen, the housekeeper, would murder him—but it was boring waiting inside the mansion. He squinted at the yacht, hundreds of miles away, it seemed, and wished he could be there instead of here. They told him that one day it would all be his: his great inheritance. Crouching at the water’s edge, the palm of one hand cradling his chin and the other blindly raking the beach, it was hard to believe. His knees were damp from where he’d been on them, combing the smooth, still-warm sand for that final, important discovery.
His fingers curled round it instinctively at first, like a baby’s around its mother’s thumb. It felt like net, the ones he caught crabs in, but it clung to him too unhappily for that, as if by holding on it could force him, maybe, to look.
When he did, he knew it was bad. His fist was buried in a knot of wet stuff, too sticky, too like cobweb, too…human. Strands of it across his skin, darkened by its journey over the water, a thickness so much like hair, and the solid bump of skull beneath; the yielding scalp.
The boy’s scream ruptured the quiet. It came from somewhere in him that until then he hadn’t known existed, somewhere basic and raw. The island gasped with the force of it, trembling in the vastness of its ocean pillow, and seemed to open one eye in recognition, as if it knew all along it was about to be discovered.
