The Devil dances in his veins…
A London Villain, an all-new standalone dark romance from USA Today bestselling author @catherinewiltcher is coming February 28th and we have your FIRST look!
Read the sneak peek below →
Prologue
Ada
They told me he was dead, and I believed them.
Then two weeks later, the first book arrived. There was no postmark, no return address, but I knew it was from him.
After that, they appeared once a month, and it was always the same novel—The Count of Monte Cristo—the one I’d been holding the day he set fire to my soul in a stolen car on the edge of darkness. When for twelve hours the world had dazzled with light and colour before they’d shrouded it in black again.
Some of the books had discreet covers. Others were straight-up classics. I was sent French versions. German and Italian. Arabic. Most were torn with age, but a few had been newly reprinted that year. No two copies were identical, but the story never changed because it was our story now. They’d turned Frankie into the villain, and me into a footnote: framed for a crime we didn’t commit, and then punished and kept apart for years because of it.
One copy was so rare it had been auctioned off for a huge amount of money—the highest anyone had paid for a first edition. The buyer was anonymous, of course. I read about him in a newspaper someone had left behind in a coffee shop. According to the by-line, the final bid had come in from Monaco.
Monaco.
I remember thinking then how sad and strange it was that for all the blood money we had, we were both still bankrupt in all the ways it mattered.
But six months ago, the books stopped arriving.
I figured he was dead now for sure, and my grief was so great that it felt like every chamber of my heart was being pierced by a ricocheting bullet.
I waited for weeks for my Bratva bastard of a husband to taunt me with the news, but his confirmation never came.
That’s when I knew the truth:
Our chains had finally broken.
The war was finally here.
Frankie was coming back for me, and the whole of London was going to burn because of it.
……
© Catherine Wiltcher 2022
Pre-order your copy today→ https://mybook.to/alondonvillain
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