My Soul to Take

By Garnell Wallace

Dark family secrets...

Dr. Sadie Bordelon comes from a long line of killers. It's family tradition to sacrifice one soul every year on Halloween to bless the people of the tiny yet prosperous Caribbean island of Bordelon Bay. As the only child of the island's current patriarch, Sadie is expected to honor the contract Michele Bordelon made with the devil centuries earlier. The demon at her back is there to make sure she keeps the family's end of the bargain, or suffer the consequences. 
Sadie daringly defies her family by saving lives, not taking them. She has no intention of becoming a murderer, despite being taunted by the demon demanding blood. The demon always finds her, no matter how far from home she runs. Sadie is haunted and beaten down until she can't even trust herself around her own patients. Stripped of everything she loved, Sadie is forced back home, though she has no intention of surrendering. She is determined to annul the contract and kill her tormentor. The only way she even stands a chance of getting out alive is by embracing witchcraft like her grandmother who was able to resist the demon's snare. 
Or so she believed.
Once she starts digging through her family's past, Sadie uncovers long buried secrets and meets demons far more terrifying than anything she'd ever faced before.
 

Two broken souls...

The last thing Sadie expected to find on her return to Bordelon Bay is Wolf Deluna, a man with a legacy almost as dark as her own. Wolf stumbles into Sadie's life barely clinging to his own. Shot while trying to protect his brothers in a drug deal gone bad, Sadie saves his life; however, it's a life she wants no part of. Yet she finds it hard to walk away from a wounded man with a broken heart and a troubled past he's desperately trying to change. Though she finds solace in Wolf's arms, Sadie fears she's just not strong enough to handle his demons as well as her own.
They are too much alike and there is no way to forge a future out of so much darkness. Yet each kiss holds a glimmer of light, each secret shared brings them closer. Can Sadie trust that out of the broken pieces of their souls, she and Wolf can find the courage to defy their fates, and create a legacy of love?
 

My Soul To Take is a paranormal mafia romance set in the Caribbean which usually conjures up images of beautiful beaches and sunshine. Just be warned, that beneath the idyllic façade, there are monsters lurking in the shadows, and nothing is ever as it seems. So the next time your drunk on island rum and sunshine, remember you are not alone. There are island residents you'd never want to meet, and God help you if you do. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garnell Wallace
• Release date: Dec 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386732310

Garnell Wallace

Growing up, I didn’t dream about being a writer, mainly because I didn’t know I could become one. I fell in love with books to the point where they became my friends, going everywhere with me like a trusted side-kick. So I still find it amazing that I can actually write books which hopefully will become treasured companions to other readers. I love writing sexy paranormal romances and I hope my stories will provide readers with a wonderful escape into a fascinating world with characters they will care about.

Book preview

Part-1-Homecoming

Chapter 1

Sadie Bordelon watched the ferry eat up the distance between her and what awaited her on Bordelon Bay. She suddenly had trouble breathing. The ocean seemed to churn more as they approached the tiny island at the bottom of the United States Virgin Islands as if someone, or something, was warning her to stay away.

She couldn’t stay away. She’d stayed away for five years, and she wasn’t back by choice now. If she didn’t return home, she would do something terrible. She had to stop it from happening, even if it meant going back to the lion’s den and fighting everything she feared. Bordelon Bay was where she would go to war, and if she died, she would do it in the place where she was born.

Sadie tried to ease her erratic heartbeat as she watched the ferry driver maneuver the boat close to the dock, which had the ostentatious title of Heaven’s Gateway emblazoned across the weather-beaten arch. It was little more than the arch and an equally unimpressive walkway onto the island. A gust of strong wind whipped her wavy hair away from her face, and for some reason, it didn’t feel natural. The dark entity which usually kept to the shadows in New York City would roam freely here. It was such a gloomy day, even for the end of October. Everything looked gray, and a mist rose out of the water. Sadie wrapped her arms around her trim waist. Why was it so cold? Something was wrong.

She considered not getting off the boat. She could just turn around and head back to New York, or anywhere else but this godforsaken place. Then old Mr. Grady reached out his wrinkled hand, and somehow her small hand found its way into his. His grip was strong, and his smile was bright, and Sadie clung to his strength as he helped her out of the boat.

Welcome home, Ms. Sadie! Mr. Solomon didn’t tell me you were coming.

Sadie stepped onto the old dock, which had been standing for almost a hundred years. She smiled up at the elderly man who’d been the dock master since he was eighteen and had inherited the job from his father. His son worked with him, and Sadie suspected one of his grandsons probably did too. That was how things worked on Bordelon Bay; children were expected to uphold long-held family traditions. Her father had drilled that into her skull for eighteen years.

I didn’t tell them I was coming.

Grady’s amber eyes lit up with excitement, and he clapped with schoolboy excitement.

Oh, I can’t wait to see Mrs. Agnes’ face when she sees you. It’s been a long time, Ms. Sadie. This town hasn’t seen you since poor Mrs. Julia went to be with our Lord.

Grady called everyone by their first names but showed respect by adding a title in front of it whether you were eight months or eighty years old. He also wore blue overalls all the time, except for Sunday when he wore his brown suit and a black one whenever there was a funeral or a wedding. Sadie had no idea how old he was, just that he’d always seemed really old to her, even when she was seven.

Still, he picked up the largest of her red suitcases like he was a strapping young man and headed in the direction of the golf cart he used to take people home or to their hotel when they got off the ferry. Sadie grabbed the handle of the smaller case, hefted her large purse on her shoulder, and followed him. She walked slowly, her little green flats making no sound on the weathered wood. She wanted the walk to last forever. She would walk to Timbuktu rather than face what awaited her at the end of the dock. A small part of her wanted to walk in the opposite direction straight out into the ocean. But killing herself would only doom her soul, and she was already in enough trouble in that department. She took a deep breath and continued walking. Once she got to her parent’s house, Sadie would come face to face with some of the biggest demons she’d left behind. She jumped on the cart after Mr. Grady had piled her luggage in the back, and she was off to face her fate.

Bordelon Bay was a town of ones and extremes; one grocery store, but it sold all local organic produce and the best quality imported goods like the high-end chains in the States and one restaurant outside of the hotel, which could compete with any Michelin Star restaurant. The large hotel was usually fully booked, and Sadie blushed when they passed it. Soon she would be at the bar with her chest out looking for men to sleep with. She’d been brought up to believe sex was reserved for marriage and she wasn’t married anymore. But she had to fornicate, and she had to do it on Bordelon Bay.

The town also had one high-end liquor store, and of course, one church lorded over by the one and only Solomon Bordelon. Most of the town’s residents were quite wealthy from the land and sea. Bordelon Bay had old money, passed down from generation to generation along with sprawling old homes and thriving farming and fishing businesses.

However, there was something creepy lurking beneath the idyllic façade of small-town life, and it wasn’t just money. Like her family, Bordelon Bay had its share of secrets and dark places. It had been nine years since Sadie had returned to her demons. Her brief trip for her grandmother’s funeral five years earlier didn’t count because there hadn’t been time to pick at the scabs of the deep wounds she’d fled from at eighteen. She couldn’t run anymore, and the only hope she had of a fresh start was to deal with her past, and that required being a Jezebel, a term her parents would stamp on her forehead if they knew what she planned to do. But she didn’t care about pleasing them; she was trying to save her life.

Sadie hadn’t told her parents she was coming because there had been no guarantee that she would come. She still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t chicken out and rush back to the ferry, which would leave in an hour. She tried to relax by concentrating on the natural beauty all around her while struggling to build up what little courage she had.

It’s good to be home, isn’t it? Mr. Grady asked. He gave Sadie a big smile.

Sadie’s smile was a little forced. Nothing seems to have changed.

Mr. Grady’s smile widened. That’s one of the many good things about this place. It’s comforting to know some things will never change in this scary world.

Comforting wasn’t the word Sadie would’ve used to describe Bordelon Bay, nor was it an oasis from the rest of the world. The most terrifying things she’d ever faced in her life, all lived on the island.

Bordelon Bay was surrounded by the most pristine blue waters and white-sand beach. Massive, centuries-old trees shaded houses and businesses, and children still played in the streets and walked to school. The residents were millionaires who lived very simple lives. The island was special if you didn’t dig too deep.

Her father always said God had blessed the land. Sadie’s father was mayor and pastor, and nothing happened in this town without his knowledge. She suspected he would know she was in town before she reached his gates.

The island was small; she would be home in no time, so she only had a few minutes to reacquaint herself with Bordelon Bay. It would’ve been rude to ignore her, and Sadie had always felt the island had a decidedly female energy. You could feel her cloying wind, in the tall reeds which covered a lot of the island, and in the majestic old houses with climbing vines and weather-beaten exteriors.

The good Reverend Solomon abhorred most representations of wealth except when it came to the ostentatious homes. The small island yielded crops and seafood in abundance and with very little effort, and everyone swore they tasted better than crops grown anywhere else, and people were willing to pay a premium for it. Sadie had proven this to be true, but then maybe she and all the other locals were biased because that was what they’d always known. It was what they knew as normal, no matter how strange it may seem to anyone else.

She couldn’t wait to taste her mother’s cooking, if her mother would have her back at the family table that is. Sadie closed her eyes. She had changed so much, and yet she already felt like the shattered teenager she’d been when she’d left. If her mother rejected her, she would be devastated.

Nothing ever changed on Bordelon Bay. There had been no new developments in five years, no other hotels except the one she suspected her father had shares in, and no luxury condos edging out the forest. Things were as they always had been.

In the center of town was the church, a gothic-style monstrosity built in the early eighteen-hundreds by her ancestor Michele Bordelon who’d escaped from slavery in Haiti in seventeen-seventy at the age of fifteen and had then led more slaves to freedom on Bordelon Bay. In front of the church where most places would have a statue of Jesus or some other blessed saint, there was a statue of Michele Bordelon. Every child living on the island learned