Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness PDF
Preview Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness
Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness Tilly Bagshawe For Kerstin and Louis Sparr. With love. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind. —GORDON GEKKO, IN WALL STREET, 1987 Contents Epigraph Prologue THE DAY OF RECKONING HAD ARRIVED. Book 1 One WHAT DO YOU THINK, GRACIE? THE black or the blue?” Two IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER THE Quorum Ball, a Saturday. Three SENATOR JACK WARNER WOKE UP ON Saturday morning with a… Four CONNIE GRAY STOOD IN THE PLAYGROUND, watching her sons on… Five LENNY AND GRACE BROOKSTEIN’S NANTUCKET ESTATE was an idyllic, sprawling,… Six JOHN MERRIVALE TIGHTENED HIS SEAT BELT and closed his eyes… Seven LATER, THE PERIOD AFTER LENNY’S DISAPPEARANCE blurred in Grace’s memory… Eight DONNA SANCHEZ ENJOYED HER WORK AT the city morgue. Her… Nine GRACE BROOKSTEIN PLAYED WITH THE BUTTONS on her Chanel bouclé… Ten GRACE BROOKSTEIN’S CONVICTION AND LIFE SENTENCE—the cumulative punishment for all… Eleven SHE WAS SURROUNDED BY BRILLIANT WHITE LIGHT. Not the peaceful… Twelve GRACE’S FIRST YEAR AT BEDFORD HILLS passed quickly. Thirteen KAREN WILLIS RUBBED HER EYES. IT was two in the… Fourteen WARDEN MCINTOSH STORMED INTO THE CHILDREN’S CENTER. All the kids… Book 2 Fifteen DETECTIVE MITCH CONNORS RETURNED TO HIS desk in a pensive… Sixteen AS SHE CLIMBED INTO THE VAN, the warm air hit… Seventeen MARIA PRESTON FLOATED INTO THE SIXTH-FLOOR Caprice restaurant in Hong… Eighteen BEING IN NEW YORK AGAIN, EXPERIENCING the sights and smells,… Nineteen MITCH BURST INTO THE INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT. Twenty DAVEY BUCCOLA PACED HIS HOTEL ROOM like a caged tiger. Twenty-One FOR THREE DAYS, GRACE LAY LOW. She found a new… Twenty-Two ANDREW PRESTON WALKED DOWN WALL STREET with a familiar feeling… Twenty-Three JASMINE DELEVIGNE ADMIRED HER NAKED BODY in the mirror. She… Twenty-Four POLICE! OPEN THE DOOR, MS. DELEVIGNE.” Twenty-Five AS SOON AS HE REALIZED GRACE had given him the… Twenty-Six THE NAUSEA CAME IN WAVES. Twenty-Seven SHE HEARD VOICES. Book 3 Twenty-Eight MITCH PUT A HAND OVER HIS MOUTH. There was an… Twenty-Nine MARIA PRESTON TOSSED BACK HER LONG mane of chestnut hair… Thirty UPSTAIRS, PARAMEDICS LEANED OVER ANDREW PRESTON’S body, pumping the chest. Thirty-One MITCH COULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT. Thirty-Two CAROLINE MERRIVALE SAT DOWN AT HER dressing table, pulled back… Thirty-Three JOHN MERRIVALE DID NOT LIKE FLYING. Pulling down the window… Thirty-Four GRACE CLUNG TO THE RAIL of the fishing boat, wondering… Thirty-Five HARRY BAIN TURNED TO MITCH CONNORS. “I hate this shithole.” Thirty-Six THE STREETS WERE DESERTED. ANTANANARIVO SLEPT. In a week’s time,… Thirty-Seven GRACE WATCHED HER LIFE FLASH BEFORE her eyes. Was this… Thirty-Eight WHAT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER, GRACE, is how long ago… Thirty-Nine THE WOMAN IN THE HOSPITAL WAITING room whispered to her… Forty LENNY BROOKSTEIN LOOKED AT THE STRAPS on the bed and… Epilogue GRACE WALKED OUT OF THE HOSPITAL and down the street. Acknowledgments About the Authors Other Books by Sidney Sheldon Credits Copyright About the Publisher PROLOGUE NEW YORK, DECEMBER 15, 2009 T HE DAY OF RECKONING HAD ARRIVED. The gods had demanded a sacrifice. A human sacrifice. In ancient Roman times, when the city was at war, captured enemy leaders would have been ritually strangled on the battlefield in front of a statue of Mars, the war god. Crowds of soldiers would have cheered, screaming not for justice but for vengeance. For blood. This was not ancient Rome. It was modern-day New York, the beating heart of civilized America. But New York was also a city at war. It was a city full of suffering, angry people who needed somebody to blame for their pain. Today’s human sacrifice would be offered up in the clinical, ordered surroundings of the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. But it would be none the less bloody for that. Normally, the TV crews and hordes of ghoulish spectators showed up only for murder trials. Today’s defendant, Grace Brookstein, had not murdered anybody. Not directly anyway. Yet there were plenty of New Yorkers who would have rejoiced to see Grace Brookstein sent to the electric chair. Her son- of-a-bitch husband had cheated them. Worse, he had cheated justice. Lenny Brookstein—may he rot in hell—had laughed in the face of the gods. Well, now the gods must be appeased. The man responsible for appeasing them—District Attorney Angelo Michele, representative of the people—looked across the courtroom at his intended victim. The woman sitting at the defendant’s table, hands clasped calmly in front of her, did not look like a criminal. A slight, attractive blonde in her early twenties, Grace Brookstein had the sweet, angelic features of a child. A competitive gymnast in her teens, she still carried herself with a dancer’s poise,
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