At age twenty-seven,former kidnapping victim Palmer Reed has settled comfortably into her life in suburban Knoxville, Tennessee. Though still single, she owns a cozy, historic home, pursues her passion for photography, and makes decent money in her position as Director of Human Resources for a small manufacturing company. But all that changes when she joins the board of the prestigious Diamond Foundation, a Knoxville-based charitable organization dedicated to helping the victims of crime.

The foundation, headed by Marjoram Swall, a stern, graying socialite known in the community as “The Vindicator”, also includes a police officer, an assistant district attorney, a registered nurse, a state senator’s wife, and a former Miss Tennessee. Some find Marjoram’s activism extreme, but Palmer understands her passion – it was Marjoram and her husband who were victimized along with Palmer and her father in a union campaign incident twenty years prior. Palmer, at age seven, was kidnapped and tortured to keep her father from unionizing SHL Corporation, headed by CEO Scott Thurgood and his General Counsel, Robert Maloney. Now, Scott Thurgood is running for Congress and the election is just ten months away.

With the past they share, Palmer and Majoram grow close and Marjoram becomes her mentor, teaching her the finer points of running a successful non-profit. Once Palmer is in the foundation’s fold however, Marjoram reveals a bombshell – the foundation’s largest source of fundraising is not charitable contributions but blackmail, the extortion of money from criminal and unethical types escaping more conventional methods of justice. Palmer and the other new directors are at first hesitant, but become convinced of the good it does for the community after the group successfully blackmails an embezzling county finance clerk, a lusty reverend, and a dishonest judge. So when Scott Thurgood’s congressional campaign heats up, and a director’s fiancé gets evidence that could destroy the CEO’s chances, Palmer decides to pit the foundation, via blackmail, against the man who victimized her and Marjoram in the past.

Believing her mentor will be pleased, she is shocked when Marjoram erupts in anger and orders her to call it off. But Palmer has already sent the note, and in the subsequent battle, she soon discovers her mentor is not everything she imagined. Criminals immune from blackmail are dying, themselves becoming victims of mysterious accidents after justice is denied.

Now, as Marjoram’s fury is ignited by what she sees as Palmer’s betrayal in her pursuit of CEO Scott Thurgood and her investigation into the accidental deaths, Palmer finds herself the target of the woman’s deadly vengeance as well as the prime suspect in another director’s murder. In addition to her strength, it will take the faith of her current love, a reporter hot on the Thurgood case, and the help of a former love, a detective hot on the foundation’s heels, to clear her name and help the other directors escape – before they all become victims themselves.

Mysterious accidents, betrayal, and vengeance make sure that no one plays by the rules in this electrifying romp through a southern high society where extortion, murder, and lovers past and present collide. The plot leaves you asking—what would you do?

Lori Lacefield

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