Title: Inferno
Author: Kathryn Kelly
Release Date: March 10th 2015
Amazon AISN: B00U3DW1WE
CreateSpace ISBN 13: 9781507723661
Smashwords ISBN: 9781310199202
Are ISBN: KTHKLX0000006
I’m
a rocker with the eyes of the world on me. Waiting for my triumph or my
downfall…just waiting.
Most of my life is in my hands. My destiny? That’s
another story. My destiny isn’t as debt free.
My band, Phoenix Rising, arrives in Houston to cut a
new album. Before we perform our first concert in the city and I choose my
groupies of the night, I’m thrust into debauchery. Sleeping with a gorgeous
woman twenty years older than me has its perks, especially when her husband
orchestrated the encounter and eagerly watches. To me, performing is
performing. If a man wants to share his wife, who am I to stop him?
Unfortunately for me, I don’t make a clean getaway
as I leave the McCall mansion. Georgie, their sixteen-year-old daughter, is in
the midst of her own intrigue, sneaking home in the middle of the night after
an evening of drugs and sex with her older brother’s best friend. In her, I see
me. She’s lost and drifting. Her hedonistic parents insist she’s old enough to
make her own decisions. Instead of time and love, they give her money and things.
I’m a twenty-five-year old international superstar
and I know better. I’m cocky and arrogant. I know it so I own it. Somehow, I’ve
always bested the fates. I have all to lose—my reputation, my career, and my
freedom. Her mother’s jealousy forces my hand and I take Georgie on the tour.
This is our story and our secret relationship and
the destruction of my life. You know the adage about secrets? Three
may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Wise words from a wise man. If
only I had listened. Secrets have a way of revealing themselves in the harshest
way.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE INFERNO:
Inferno was inspired after I read a news article
about a much older man who fell in love with a girl when she was 16. My
imagination took over from there and Georgie and Sloane were born. The ending
to the real story was sad and heartbreaking. However, Georgie and Sloane will
ultimately find happiness.
Short
Excerpt
Hooking
a finger inside my mesh T-shirt, she shakes her head. She really likes touching
me. If I did relationships, I’d get her number. Give the paparazzi another
reason to chase me and attempt to pick apart my actions. They’ve supposedly
pegged my type. What would they say if I introduced her as my lover? Young and
dark-haired. I can’t think of a better way to fuck with them.
“You aren’t an addict anymore.” Her voice breaks
into my contemplations. “You’ve been clean since you demolished the record
company’s studio and you’re halfway through the American leg of your tour.
You’re not messing that up. I won’t allow it.”
Her defiance makes me laugh, although my heart
hammers. While I consider using her for my amusement, her concern for me is
genuine. “It isn’t for me. It’s for a special friend.”
“That porn star you’re dating?”
Fuck, she really does follow my life closely. “I’ve
never dated one porn star.” Although I fucked several on the plane ride to
Houston. “I want the fucking baggie. Now.”
Again, she denies me with a shake of her head. I
suspect she’s used to getting her way. Is it because she’s spoiled or ignored,
I don’t know. I do know what she
needs, though. Discipline. Structure. Focus. At one time, I found it in my
music. Lately, not even music has been enough to subdue my restiveness.
Asshole steps beside her. “Powder belongs to me,” he
says tightly, a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding nose, his eye already
swelling. “It’s my decision who gets it or not and I’ve chosen her.”
Cursing, I dig in my back pocket and offer him all
the hundreds I have.
“Sloane, please.” Her tortured whisper will haunt
me. The care and concern infused in it is more than I get from anyone. “Do you
swear it isn’t for you?”
I nod and, as quickly as I came upon her, she
leaves. Just like that. A delicate star brightening my life one moment and an
elusive angel floating forever away the next.
Long minutes later, I sit with the coke, fighting
the urge to do a line. My hands actually shake.
“Sloane,
please…”
Her plea bounces in my head and her scent remains on
my fingers, my lips, and in my mouth. For her, the sad, little temptress, I
find the nearest bathroom and flush the blow. Then, I splash water on my face.
It isn’t cold at all, so it doesn’t give my system the shock it needs to snap
back from my encounter with her.
I regret not forcing the issue about her name. All
it took was one look from me to get my dick into her mouth. I’m sure one, cold
command for her name would’ve produced results, too. Maybe, I didn’t want to
know it. A name is so personal. This way, our sex remained simple and
unencumbered with expectations.
She said I’d forget her name, so she never bothered
to offer it to me. But, she’s a younger, softer, feminine version of me. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember the
unidentified waif with the gorgeous purple eyes.
LONG
EXCERPT:
It’s been written, that, for the
life of the flesh is in the blood…For it
is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.
The pain sliding across my belly
represents the flesh, the blood, and the atonement. The weakness of my flesh, his flesh, the heat in my blood, has
merged into the life I’m struggling to bear. I want this as an atonement. His,
too, but I know it isn’t. Forgiveness for what I’ve done isn’t on the horizon.
If I could make it right, I would.
Except making it right means I wouldn’t be laboring to bring his child into the
world. Confused, I shudder and cry out at another sharp ache, wanting this over
with. After writhing in labor for over twenty hours, I don’t know how much
longer I can continue. I’m not dilated fully yet, but neither the baby nor I
are in distress, so suffering through it is my only option.
How mistaken I was that I’d feel the
agony only in my womb. It’s everywhere and it’s wearing me out. “I can’t do
this anymore,” I complain, twisting at the cramping and the intense pressure
spreading across my lower abdomen and back.
From where she’s seated in a
comfortable rocking chair, Grandma’s unyielding eyes narrow. “You’re not fully
dilated yet, dear.”
“Please,” I whisper. The wounded
animal noises I’ve emitted for hours has hoarsened my voice. My pinned up hair
is plastered to my head, long strands sticking to my face and cheeks. “Do
something.”
She snorts. If not for my
predicament, I’d mark this date on the calendar in my official remembrance of
Helen Sanderson’s low-browed sound. According to her, ladies are prim, proper, and elegant.
“Grandma.”
The entreaty in my tone earns me a
pinched glare.
“I’m not the one who did this to
you. My assistance in this matter only gets you so far. I’ve done all that I
can do.”
She nods to my delivery suite, the
best money can buy, courtesy of her. Soft lighting, wood furnishing, a gorgeous
view of downtown Houston. Music plays as a method of relaxation for me when, in
reality, it tears me in two. I’m not sure why she requested to have his songs included in my playlist. Then,
I remember.
She’s related to Mom. They’re both
sadistic this way.
Sloane’s voice lulls me, soothes me,
and breaks me. But it’s always been that way between us. From my first
encounter with him when my brother’s best friend snuck me into a party I
shouldn’t have attended. Fake IDs, a little makeup, and a lot of money works wonders.
“Court ordered DNA will prove he
fathered your baby. Lock him away for years to come.”
When Grandma discovered my
pregnancy, it sounded as if she’d made some type of agreement with Sloane. He’d
thrown at me that she’d find a boy my age to claim paternity.
Double agony seizes me. Oddly, my
emotional distress overshadows the physical torture. He lied to me. Again.
Tears rush to my eyes. Despite our
history, I don’t want Sloane labeled in horrible ways because of his
relationship with me. “Emancipate me,” I croak out, wishing the idea had come
to me months ago when a haze of drugs claimed all my reasoning to remove my
craving for love and search for someone to matter to. “Let me take control of
my own life.”
“It doesn’t change your age,
Georgiana,” Grandma scoffs.
“I’ll do anything except give up my
baby for adoption.” For weeks, she’s attempted to secure my agreement for a
closed adoption. “Whatever else you want.” My pulse thumps more frantically now
than the hours I’ve suffered through labor. “Just help Sloane. Please,” I add.
Mouth pursed, she studies me.
“You’ll never see him again?” she asks after a moment.
“As if he’d want to see me,” I
mutter, unable to stop the words. The pain of how he feels about me makes me
dizzy. “He hates me.”
“He never cared about you in the
first place. He used you to make your mother jealous.”
A sob escapes me. “That isn’t true!”
“He had an affair with your mother,”
she states coldly, a fact I already know. “He wanted more with her than she was
willing to give, so he flaunted you in front of her. In the end, he rejected
her and destroyed her.”
Mom and I might not have anything
else in common but Sloane’s rebuff. Images run rampant in my head of the two of
them together and Sloane doing the things to her that he did to me. Nauseated,
I dry heave. I haven’t had solid food in over a day. By the time I went into
labor, it had been five or six hours since I’d eaten.
“No more talk of emancipation,”
Grandma says briskly. “You’ll be eighteen in a matter of months. It’ll take
longer to finalize the legalities of freeing yourself from…” She waves a hand,
her diamond tennis bracelet sparkling as much as the matching ring she’s
wearing. Earrings, similar in style, are in her lobes. The straight strands of
her silver hair are situated behind each ear. Money. Power. Ruthlessness.
That’s Grandma. “You’ll do as I say to help your mother along.”
Bitterness assails me. No one really cares about my life. This is all
to appease Mom and avenge her bruised heart and ego. My nostrils flare. After
allowing another contraction to slide through me, I glare. “If helping her
along means giving up my baby, then I’m not doing it. Disown me.”
Grandma clenches her jaw and huffs,
tapping her fingers on the rocking chair’s wooden arm. Seeing I’m not backing
down, she offers a terse nod and reiterates, “No more contact with Sloane.”
Weak and exhausted, I capitulate
even as I wonder what makes her think Sloane would accept a call or visit from
me. Humiliation aside, he supposedly used me to get back at Mom. Yes, he and
Mom slept together, but I don’t believe he ever cared for her as much as he did
me. However, with Grandma’s unyielding stipulations on me, I better understand
Sloane’s ability to walk away from me when Grandma demanded it. That still
doesn’t explain her renewed determination to make him suffer.
“Seeing you and Sloane together will
only send Cassandra into another spiral.”
“Mom has Dad,” I point out. “It
shouldn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“Grandma—“
“It’s your choice,” she interrupts.
“His future, his career, is in your
hands.”
Sloane’s music is his life. If
there’s any chance for his band to be saved, I have to take it. “Whatever you
want. Just help him.”
Satisfaction gleams in her eyes. I
turn away, unable to bear it.
The baby kicks as my uterus squeezes
and contracts and another groan falls from my lips at the hard wave of
suffering. I second-guess my decision for a natural childbirth. Once I deliver,
I’ll never think about having another baby again, or having sex again, or
falling in love again. Sloane’s it for me, no matter how easily I was replaced.
I understand his actions. I do. My age, his secrets, and lifestyle doomed us
from the beginning.
Another pain hits me and I groan,
tears slipping down my cheeks. Throughout it all, I wait for my hospital door
to open, but it never does.
I’m alone, except for Grandma to
torture me, but without my baby’s father at my side. A small photo of him and
me is tucked away in my wallet, a selfie I snapped when we were happy and free,
secluded at his Denver mansion. It helps to forget his hatred of me. Not that I
really blame him.
I single-handedly ruined one of
rock’s favorite sons and the baby inside of me is the proof.
My 4.5 Star
Sloane is this 25
year old hot as hell rock star. Anyone and every knows who he is...well they
know what has been printed in magazines, but they don't know that real Sloane.
This man plows through women and doesn't even think twice about walking away
when he is finished with them and why would he?! He is freaking Sloan from Phoenix Rising. This man is dealing with a great deal of
mess in his life and he has the wrong people by his side in his small circle
and there is nothing he can do about it.
Georgie is a beautiful 16 year old girl who had parents
that can careless about her. Her mother is a big witch that cares more about
looking and being young than her own daughter, who in fact needs her. Her
father would rather buy her a car and diamonds then acutally sit down and talk
to her. Georgie is on the fast track to self-distruction and she is headed
there super freaking fast.
Sloane and Georgie met at party and well let’s say they
really don't do too much talking but then again she did lie to him and tell him
that she was 18. ( he didn't touch her like you think) After the encounter he
is drawn to her. A beautiful broken, drunk, drugged up young women and when he
looks at her he sees his own demons. He can't shake her and he needs to save
her or at least keep her safe.
Now I can't tell you how they run into each other again
but when you read this book you will be shocked of the turn of events. There is
so much more to this story then you think. It is more than some rocker star that
falls for a 16 year old of vice versa. It is about lies, heart-break, deception,
hate, rage, jealousy, betrayal, murder, secrets, and love. There are also more
characters in this story and let me tell you...they will blow your mind on how
heartless and greedy they really are.
I loved this book and yes I stayed up until 3 in the
morning because I had to finish the book… I needed to know what in the heck was
going to happen next.
Kathryn
Kelly is living her dream and writing books. She's always been an avid reader
and still devours books in her spare time. She also enjoys football,
socializing, music, eating, and jokes. In her head, she's the ultimate biker
babe. In reality, she's an ordinary girl-next-door and a native New Orleanian.
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