Excerpt from Sarim's Scent by author Juliette Springs

Juliette Springs is the alter ego of a thirty plus, special education teacher, who lives in Southern United States. She is a mother of three (two teenage girls and a wild three year old). She holds a M.A. in Special Education and a B.A. in English. Juliette loves the paranormal (especially vamps) and is enthralled with the Vampire Diaries, Harry Potter, Twilight and True Blood.

Excerpt from Sarim’s Scent (available @ www.SoulmatePublishing.com)

Victoria ignored the concerned, covert glances from the few in attendance at the open grave site. Damn them all, she thought, my mother is dead and it was that bastard’s fault.  She would avenge her mother's death. She would destroy the man who reduced her mother from a strong, vibrant woman to a lifeless, weak one. Even if it meant his death or the death of everything he loves. Ever since her mother passed, three days ago, Victoria was obsessed with finding the selfish son of a bitch called her father. He was responsible for her mother wasting away into nothing. When he left he'd shattered her mother's heart and her mother never got over it. Inevitably his departure caused her mother's mental and physical breakdown.

  Instead of mourning at her mom’s small graveside funeral, she was consumed with raw hatred and bitterness. She knew she was making the others nervous. They could probably feel the anger emanating from her.  She hadn’t shed a tear, made a sound or turned her gaze away from the casket, since the service started twenty minutes ago. It was the only way she could keep focus. Mom was everything to me, she whispered to herself, my only family. Her eyes blinked rapidly in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. Inhaling deeply she let her lungs feel with fresh air, with eyes closed, her body relaxed as she exhaled slowly. They were close and had gotten closer during her mother's last years. If she thought of her mother as gone, Victoria knew she would lose what little control she had left.  Sunlight hurt her eyes as they opened. Pain was good, she was back in control. 

Victoria had spent ten of her twenty-two years caring for her mother as she had suffered from an unknown blood disease, which caused her body to slow production of hemoglobin. Victoria had never seen her mother healthy and active since the onset of her illness. Experts couldn't name the disease and didn't know how to treat her symptoms. The only thing that helped her mother was the blood transfusions she received whenever her blood count dipped dangerously low. Her mother received them at least twice a year. In the instances when her mother's body rejected the transfused blood (which happened often), she immediately received another one. Sometimes Victoria’s mother spent two months out of the year in a hospital bed because of her body's refusal to cooperate.

Victoria had seen it all. She had watched her mother go from vibrantly beautiful to sickly and weak. She had to live with the fact there was nothing she could do to stop it. She remembered how her mother's pale, gaunt face lit up whenever she talked about her father.  Like a good daughter, she listened. Now her mother was dead. She would be an even better daughter and avenge her mother’s death. 

There were other reasons she wanted to find her father. She had questions. Questions she dared not ask her sick, fragile mother. Questions no one could answer except the man she needed to find, her father. The yearn to find him was a huge weight pressing down  on her shoulders. 

At first, Victoria had no idea where to start looking for him. Her mother told her he wasn't from the Boston area or even Massachusetts. It was said he had a New York sort of accent, but the child support database had found no one with his name there. Something kept pulling her to go to North Carolina. She couldn't explain why, but Victoria knew he was there. Even though her odds were slim, Victoria knew she would find her answers, once she crossed over into the Old Tarheel State.

She also knew her father had a triangle tattoo on the side of his neck. He never answered her mother's questions about what it was, what it stood for, or how he got it. Her mom assumed it was a tattoo representing a symbol of a gang.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." As the preacher spoke, Victoria’s mind flew back to the present.

 Her eyes still dry, her gaze still focused on the casket. Grief was a foreign emotion right now. Tomorrow she would leave home to travel to the unknown North Carolina. She had to find the man who was her father not only for vengeance but for another reason.  A strange design on the side of her neck had appeared on the first day of her period when she was thirteen. One she didn't have tattooed.

Juliette Springs

The darker side of romance

www.darkersideofromance.com

Follow me on Twitter @JulietteSprings