DECEPTIVE INNOCENCE - Kyra Davis
Pure Sin Series
Gallery Books
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5631-8
June 2014
Fiction

New York City, New York - Present Day

In the four years since her mother died in prison, Bellona Dantes has plotted and planned, and now she is ready to go to war.  Naming herself after the goddess that drove the chariot of Mars, the god of war, Bell has set everything in place to take down one of the most powerful families in New York, the Gables.  When Bell was ten her mother was convicted of murdering her married lover, but Bell now realizes that her mother was very cleverly set up to take the fall by Edmund Gable and his son Travis.  Testimony from Edmund's younger son, Lander, as well as Jessica, the woman who shortly thereafter married Travis, helped to convict her mother, and now, more than ten years later, Bell is poised to get justice.  Beginning with Lander Gable.

Working as a bartender at a bar Lander frequents, Bell catches his eye, and after a couple of visits, she is in his home.  A sexual relationship with Lander is only half of her plan, and after she sleeps with him, Bell accepts the job of personal assistant to Jessica and Travis Gable, without revealing her connection to either party.  Sowing the seeds of distrust between the brothers, Bell does her best to keep to her revenge agenda.  With Travis it's easy, and every day spent around him reinforces her desire to destroy him.  Unfortunately, every day with Lander stirs other desires, as well as feelings she had never thought she'd have.

In DECEPTIVE INNOCENCE, Bell is a woman willing to go to any lengths to accomplish her goal of destroying the Gables family.  She's been completely ruthless in arranging her life to enact her revenge, and she doesn't care about anything but that – not even her life.  She's been pretty much on her own since she was ten, in a self-destructive spiral that only ended when she realized how her mother had been framed.  But as she gets to know Lander, she starts to care for him, and begins to wonder if he's as guilty as his brother and father.  For the first time in her life, Bell feels safe with someone, and the fact that it's her enemy is troubling to say the least.  Just when she thinks she has everybody where she wants them to be, a friend throws a monkey wrench in her plans, and Bell has to decide just what matters more, her revenge or her life.

Jennifer Bishop