A Circle of Secrets

By Joy Sigmon

A perfect stranger affects the lives of three families in a scandalous web of deceit. The three families deal with their own secrets as they work hard to conceal their flawed lives. Their personal struggles feed into their inability to trust one another with their blemished lifestyles, compounding their secrets into a toxic explosion. They each move about in their daily schedules as normal until devastation strikes like lightning, bringing all of their lives to crash and burn. Then in an instant one by one their lives unfold, right into the headlines of a national media chronicle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483632711

Joy Sigmon

Joy Sigmon is a native of Cincinnati Ohio. She attended The University of Cincinnati Clermont College where she earned her Associate’s degree in Applied Science. She continued on at the University of Cincinnati’s main campus in pursuit of her Bachelor’s Degree. Her passion for writing led to her drive to write her first novel Regret “The Decision she made.” She provides her readers with a colorful drama-suspense read that grabs their attention into her mesmerizing metaphoric delivery of entertainment. Look forward to more page turners by this talented author.

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Copyright © 2013 by Joy Sigmon.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013907574

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4836-3270-4

                 Softcover      978-1-4836-3269-8

             Ebook         978-1-4836-3271-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 07/29/2013

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

***KEM***

***Sha’Ron/Melody’s Photo Shoot***

***MELODY***

***SAMARA***

***LEONA***

***MELODY***

***SAMARA***

***SHA’RON***

***SYANNA***

***LEONA***

***SYANNA & KEM***

***KEM***

***SYANNA***

***KEM***

***SYANNA AND THE GIRLS***

***KEM***

***MELODY***

***KEM & SYANNA***

***KEM***

***LEONA***

***MELODY***

***SHA’RON***

***SAMARA***

***SYANNA***

***KEM***

***SHA’RON***

***KEM***

***KEM***

***MERCEDES AND TRENAE***

***THE RELEASE***

***SAMARA***

***MELODY***

***SYANNA***

***MELODY***

***The girls unite***

I’d like to dedicate this book to Nicole Samuel.

I bet you didn’t think this was about you huh? Well it is very much about you.

Nicole… I’d like to thank you for your support. Words will not explain the gratitude I have in my heart for you. The words from my mouth and the expression in my heart are unparalleled. So… I’ll just express my gratitude by delivering this dedicated work in your honor. I salute you. I salute you for displaying an unselfish act of praise, wanting to share something you enjoyed and found pleasure filled with others. The day that I heard that you plugged my novel Regret the decision she made on twitter, was a day filled with surprise and enlightenment. Especially since I did not have a twitter account to witness it, and the information was passed on to me. You have no idea the light you sparked in me. You are a motivator. You were the first, and others did follow. But your impact is undying in my heart. God bless you and I hope you enjoy the read!

GOD BLESS TO ALL OF YOU!!!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Matthew 5:14-16

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

I have been blessed with many talents and abilities. In the past, I hid them, or just filtered them slightly. My recent enlightenment has informed me that all gifts and talents are to be shared. So, my obedience has forced me to share in my gift of lyrical expression. My passion runs very deep for my love of story telling. I couldn’t be happier to be blessed with a talent that provides entertainment and enlightenment to others. I feel honored to be a producer of such work. It is with great pleasure that I provide you with my second Novel. It has been a daunting task removing the obstacles that stood before me. But Isaiah 54:17 spoke to me and said: No weapons formed against you, shall prosper.

I’d like to thank Clarence Sigmon Jr and Jo Ann Sigmon for always believing in me. Although you’re no longer here, you’ve always instilled love, belief, and support in me. You made me believe that anything I wanted to accomplish, I could. I wish so dearly that you were here to witness the flower that blossomed from the seed you planted, but I know you see it. I love you and thanks for always supporting your children in whatever in life they endeavored.

Thank you Lisa Spears for encouraging me to complete this Novel. Your interest was what I needed to put fire under my… aspiration to get me moving. I appreciate you very much and you don’t know how much your interest in my work means. Thank you Lisa, for your continued support.

Big thanks to Raquel Giles, your expression of how you enjoyed Regret gave me so much inspiration. You inspire me. I appreciate your support and hope that this novel is all that you’ve waited for.

Carmen Walker,

It’s finally here! You’ve been waiting for it, and now you have it. I can’t thank you enough for your support. You were so enthusiastic about my first novel, and you continued inquiring about this one. I love you and you know that. And your support of me shows me what real sisterhood is about. Thank you sis for all of your support and love!

Bertha Walker,

You have been a dedicated friend for so long. You were probably one of the first friend’s that purchased my book. You have always been supportive of me and my family. You are a very good friend and also family to me. I love you and thanks for always being supportive. I will always be grateful that you are my friend.

To my lovely daughters,

You three are amazing! You are the greatest gift from God and I appreciate the support that you three surround me in. Thanks for being my loudest cheerleaders. GO… sweeties!!

Mack Strum,

You are a great friend. I thank you for always being supportive of me. We’ve been friends for many years and your support never runs low. I appreciate you stepping out of the box and reading Regret. I know that you do not have an affinity for reading. But I gotcha didn’t I? I guess you’ve been recruited to the book reader’s club now. Huh? Thank you for your kind words, and praises, and thanks for your support.

To my sponsor,

You are the glue that put it all together. Without your support many readers would go without a fun, entertaining, and meaningful read. You have always supported me and I love you for that. You are the best! And I hope you enjoy the read!!

To Xlibris,

Thank you for publishing my work. Thanks for placing care in your product for authors who need that publishing push of support. Thanks Xlibris!

To my readers,

Thanks a whole bunch for supporting me. I hope that this read is entertainment and enlightenment for you all. I hope that it blankets you in storytelling bliss. And I hope that you share your enjoyment with others.

Syanna Benard: A beautiful non-practicing attorney who struggles with her suspicions about her husband. Syanna dedicates her life to her husband, children, and friends. She takes extreme measures in trying to figure out if Kem is who he says he is. Syanna’s suspicion explodes into a painful reality.

Kemron Benard Sr: A well-known attorney, who loves his wife and family, faces an uncertain future. He works hard to protect and provide for his family, but disgrace steps in and threatens his family relationship and his affluent life.

Leona Baxter: A prominent real estate agent who is best friends with Syanna Benard and Melody Mandero. She faces challenges with her relationship with her husband and with the upbringing of her daughter Samara. She leans on the support and comforts of her friends to keep her grounded. A drastic family discovery spins her life into a devastating twist.

Brian Baxter: Brian is Leona’s husband and father of Samara. Brian is a well known entrepreneur. He is the owner of Tiger’s Paw Den and his success blows his ego sky high. His high level status puts him at the center of selfishness that pushes his wife into a disturbed state of mind, which results in a tragic end.

Samara Baxter: Leona and Brian’s teenage daughter. Samara receives a parental pass that places her in a world of misbehave. She delves into a lifestyle that is beyond her scope of knowledge that results in some serious consequences.

Melody Mandaro: Syanna and Leona’s best friend and famous model. Melody fights to hold on to her descending marriage. Some of her own demons come to surface as she copes with her depleting union.

Mike Mandero: Melody’s husband and entrepreneur. Mike runs his family counseling business out of his home. He uses his insecurities to bring about accusations towards his wife that places a partition between them. His inner demons direct him into the path of destruction that brings shame upon him, and destroys friendships.

Sha’Ron Langsford: Sha’Ron is the lead performer at the Tiger’s Paw Den Gentlemen club. Sha’Ron attracts many fans by her bubbly charisma and extraordinary talent. But everyone is not pleased with her offensive sarcasm and scandalous nature. Sha’Ron pulls girl power energy from her two besties: Mercedes and Trenae. But it is not enough for the fate of Sha’Ron, stemming from her immoral concepts of life. Sha’Rons wicked ways explodes into the most definite and destructive outcome possible.

Mercedes Paris: Sha’Ron’s best friend who also works at the Tiger’s Paw Den. She and Sha’Ron are like sisters. Mercedes left hand puppets to the moves of Sha’Ron. Old habits never die as Mercedes attempts to provide Sha’Ron some constructive advice that falls on deaf ears of a veteran that won’t change her old ways. Mercedes advice proves accurate leaving her with a heavy heartache.

Trenae Trotter: Sha’Ron and Mercedes best friend and employee at Tiger’s Paw Den. She is the right hand puppet string of Sha’Ron. Trenae follows the lead of both Mercedes and Sha’Ron, hoping to accomplish the status of them both.

A perfect stranger affects the lives of three families in a scandalous web of deceit. The three families deal with their own secrets as they work hard to conceal their flawed lives. Their personal struggles feed into their inability to trust one another with their blemished lifestyles, compounding their secrets into a toxic explosion. They each move about in their daily schedules as normal until devastation strikes like lightning, bringing all of their lives to crash and burn. Then in an instant… one by one their lives unfold, right into the headlines of a national media chronicle.

To be or not to be . . . now this is the question?

If you place your ear to this story

You just might hear a lesson

There is no shade of grey, only black or white.

Just make sure the choices you make, will be the choices you like

In this story here, they’ll be hearts that need healing

Secrets revealing

and strong heartfelt feelings.

But I have to be true in what is really going down.

Once a secret is revealed, there is no turning around.

The night was young… tender… cool… yet undeveloped. But there was nothing unusual about the dead calm echoing throughout. This was always the introduction to the night scene on Batemen Ave. But this calm was different. Seeps of cries, sniffles, and sighs broke loose in spurts breaking moments of silence. It had too. Because what happened on Batemen Ave on this night… was not an ordinary occurrence. Blue and red sirens rotated silently, flickering… marking the area of the scene, because Sha’Ron was dead, deader than anyone would have ever expected. And it wasn’t her current ailment that removed her from this place, nor was it due to the countless near death experiences Sha’Ron had encountered throughout her life.

This was horrific. The whole stretch of Batemen Ave was occupied with grieving souls. A long line of yellow tape marked the no crossing zone in regards to the investigation. Onlookers were packed in so tight; they were pressed up against the yellow tape. This was for real, and real serious. Mostly everyone loved Sha’Ron, with the exception of a select group of people who she somehow rubbed the wrong way by her sharp delivery or those that didn’t take the opportunity to get to know her. She was fun, crazy, quirky, and charismatic. But she also did not take any mess. She would get you told in a finger snap of timing. She was OTR’s girl, and she would be missed. Who in the world would do something like this to Sha’Ron? Why would they do it in such a horrific fashion? That’s what District One and the Cincinnati Homicide Unit wanted to know. And so did fans, family, friends and residents of Over the Rhine…

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Tell me it’s real… This feeling that we feel… tell me that it’s real… Don’t let love come just… to pass us by… try, it’s all we have to do… it’s up to me and you… To make this special love, last forever more… K CI & JO JO sang helping Syanna get her immediate thoughts across.

It was 12 am Friday morning, and Kem was still not home. This was becoming an all too familiar occurrence for Syanna, as Kem’s late had become his new on time. She knew that his career often carried him into long hours through the night, but she felt that the hours were stretching longer and longer. This brought about a strong suspicion, and her constant suspicion was driving her nuts.

The reflection of the burning flames from the fully lit fireplace bounced off of Syanna’s half naked body and the four walls of Kem and Syanna’s opulent bedroom. The checkered marble asymmetrical design placed her in a daze of wonder. She felt boxed in her thoughts just as the fire flames that were contained within the walls of its casing. Syanna was up. She was up searching frantically through Kem’s dresser drawers, suitcases, business papers and whatever he touched that could provide her the clues of his whereabouts as she anticipated his arrival. She had become obsessed with figuring out the mystery that surrounded him. She was losing her mind over it. She would operate like a person without an issue in her everyday life, but in her mind, she was always consumed with finding out what Kem was up to. She loved Kem. But his mystifying ways were wreaking havoc on her mental state.

Syanna set bedside slumped over with her elbows resting on her knees. Papers shuffled chaotically across the floor. Her tears drizzled down her beautiful smooth cocoa chocolate face. Her praying hands formed a triangle around the bridge of her nose and down through her mouth and chin, as the tears slid down her smoothness through the grooves of her fingers. Her eyes only saw the inside of her, as they were closed in peace in order to visualize the image of her husband walking through the door. She was in deep thought. And it was these times that she would get what she wanted.

Syanna had come to the conclusion of a self admission. She admitted that she was weak. She knew that she was vulnerable for her husband. She knew that her husband was a busy attorney who put in long hours in his practice. But the hours often times appeared to be extreme according to her knowledge of being an attorney herself. She was in fear. Fear that her hunches could be nothing more than paranoia. Fear that she could possibly run a perfect husband scarce from all of her qualms. And it was this fear that allowed her to show forced forgiveness of her husband within a moment’s notice. She would not lose her husband over something she did not have proof of, and this was her logic and she would stick to it. But she never gave up on finding out about the possibility of a looming secret.

Syanna was not stupid. She kept her eyes open. They were only closed for the length of time that it took to blink and sleep. Her eyes were to the front, back, and sides at any other point of the day. She focused on her commitment to her husband rather than his neglect of her. She knew that her husband loved her. In her mind, she was not accepting his neglect, but instead she was accepting his love. So with this conviction in mind she calmed herself into believing he was near. So that is what she believed.

She shifted her body into an upright position, wiped her weeping eyes, pushed her shoulders back, and took a deep breath. Sigh! She allowed a full stretch to pull her out of her slump disposition. I need to just pull it together she mumbled to herself. As Syanna adjusted in her mind what she believed, she could feel the excitement of her husband’s love surrounding her. She was leaving her mourning behind. Syanna always went through this cycle when she was waiting for Kem. She began reorganizing Kem’s jumbled belongings that she recklessly disseminated throughout the floor in her rampage. She knew that Kem wouldn’t be much longer.

"Your . . . love . . . is . . . wonderful . . . Yeah. And I . . . don’t want to lose you . . . So, baby . . . Soon . . . as . . . I . . . get . . . home . . . I’ll make it up to you . . . baby, I’ll do . . . what I got to do…" Syanna sang along with Faith Evans, placing thoughts of Kem’s reassuring love into her. She could feel him near. So near, that her body began tingling from the friction of his closeness. Kem’s presence always brought Syanna’s insides to warmth. She could smell the aroma of Kem scent in the air. She was Kem encompassed and she knew it. She felt that something sneaky suspicious was going on with her husband, but she wanted him. She couldn’t help it. She loved him. She couldn’t bear the thought of being away from Kem. Her love for him stretched in lengths that met the size of life. Syanna always tried to put the infidelity possibilities in the back of her mind. She regretted the day that the truth would be revealed, but she knew that day would surely come. She hoped that she was experiencing a sucker attack episode of paranoia, because if she was, she would deal with the ridicual behind that diagnosis happily.

Despite Kem’s spurts of tardiness and missing moments, he layered on his love in substantial amounts when he was loving Syanna. So substantial that the layers smothered her in denial of the hunches that strongly shook her into intuition proof. She loved Kem, and he loved her too, but his time away from home was becoming more frequent than before.

Syanna tidied up the room and grabbed her book from the night stand. She climbed back into bed and set propped up with her back pressed up against the large headboard in a seated position. She pulled the lavender sheets over her legs and cushioned herself with large plush pillows. She placed the book on top of the pillow positioned on her lap, and opened the book to the page she last read. She began skimming the paragraph of where she last left off, but her mind was too concentrated on the whereabouts of Kem. She couldn’t focus.

Where is he? she asked herself becoming more anxious by the moment. Why does he do this to me? He knows how I worry. Oh my goodness… What if he is no longer attracted to me? I mean… I have collected a couple of grey hair strands, and gained a few pounds, but I think I still do okay Syanna thought looking away from her book into the wall sized mirror dominating the right side of her. Oh man… I hope that his love for me isn’t dying. My love still has plenty of life for him. All of this is so confusing… because Kem is still all over me. His flame for me appears to be torch high. We have so much in common… both meeting when we were both in law school. We passed the bar on the very same day by the exact percentage point. Both of us are one of two children. We both enjoy nature even if I’m terrified of insect, bugs and creatures. We think alike, and we love alike. Man… I don’t get this… But I hope whatever is going on doesn’t break up our thirteen year bond. I really hope that my instinct is misinforming. Syanna wondered.

Syanna could not rest her busy mind, so she decided to get up. She pushed the large plush pillows to the side and pulled the crisp lavender sheets off of her half naked body. She rose out of the bed and slipped her feet into her comfortable cotton slippers. She placed her unfinished novel on her nightstand as she decided against the cotton slippers. Naw… I think I need to bring sexy for my husband. He always is in the mood for sexy she muttered. Sexy thoughts flooded Syanna’s mind. She was feeling her husband. I mean… what am I thinking anyway? Kem loves him some me. And ewww… Syanna moaned giving herself a sensual hug and rub to her shoulders at the very thought of Kem. My husband is so damn fine! With that beautiful brown skin that flows evenly throughout his chiseled body. Those strong pectoral muscles that hold me comfort firm throught the night. Six pack in tact, with beautiful smile of pearly whites, and… that sexy deep soothing voice. Ewww! I want my man!" Syanna moaned letting out a spoiled pout.

But she knew Kem was close, he had to be, he would never allow her worry to go on for too long. Syanna decided to grab her purple red bottom high heel stilettos. She knew that they always got him in the mood. She moved over to the bay window wall and lit the candles that lied in each window sill. She slipped out of her cotton slippers and slid on her stiletto heels en route to the kitchen. She sashayed slowly through the living room admiring the vastness of her space.

Wow I am so grateful for this life lord. Thank you she said paying homage for her blessings. The white marble floor was immaculate. She placed a hug to the huge gold and white vase with Chinese print that placed her in memory of their China experience. He bought her many memoirs from there. She walked up to