Giveaway! Shattered Angel by Carrie Beckort

 

With less than a month before Shattered Angel becomes available, it’s time to host a giveaway! This time you have a chance to win more than just an awesome book – how about some awesome bling to go with it?

1 Grand Prize Winner will receive:

Signed copy of Shattered Angel

Handcrafted angel wing charm necklace by Charm Philosophy

Bookmarks

2 First Place Winners will receive:

Signed copy of Shattered Angel

Bookmark

Winners will be randomly selected on Feb. 22, 2015 after the contest ends. To enter, complete one or more of the Rafflecopter requirements at the bottom of this post.

 

 Shattered Angel Synopsis:

The choice between life and death should be an easy one. However, the life that I had been given—the life I’m being asked to go back to—makes death seem like a welcome reprieve.

Before I turned eight, my mother sold me. The man who bought me trained me for the life he expected me to live. For more than ten years I was held captive, beaten, tortured—shattered. There was one person who cared about me, and that gave me the strength to hold on to the small part of me that still existed. I finally escaped, only to learn that the hold of my past was stronger than the pull of my future.

Now he’s captured me again, and he’s given me a choice—life with him, or death.

I have 24 hours to decide.

 

Excerpt:

I had escaped from him once before, but the knot in my stomach tells me not this time. The impossible isn’t supposed to happen at all, so I should be grateful that I’d attained it once and accept that it won’t happen again.

I push the thought from my mind and open my eyes. I think it’s mid-day, but it’s hard to tell. There are several high windows in the warehouse, but they’re covered with several years of grime. At least there are enough clean spots and holes to allow some light to filter through. There’s a slow drip coming from somewhere, and the sound echoes hauntingly around me. I smell something. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s not pleasant.

My breathing is short, disrupted by the occasional sob that involuntarily escapes. I know crying will only make my situation worse, but I can’t seem to stop. My hair is sticking to my face, and I desperately want to wipe it away.

I pull instinctively at my restraints again. Eventually I stop, realizing that the only thing I’m accomplishing is further depletion of my energy. My arms had gone numb hours ago from being tied behind my back for so long. They left me alone in this small room, but occasionally I can hear their muffled voices in another part of the warehouse. I’d given up on trying to hear what they were saying about the same time I’d given up on hope. My awkward position on the cold floor is uncomfortable, but at least the coolness of the concrete gives me some relief from the suffocating heat.

Something crawls across my foot, and I’m certain it’s a rat. The fact that it doesn’t bother me, the fact that I’d had a rat crawl across my foot before, causes a fresh wave of tears to fall.

The door suddenly opens and I struggle to get into a sitting position, but my lack of arms prevents me from being successful. The man I’ve come to call Goon pulls me to my feet by my hair. I bite back the cry of pain, knowing it would only give him satisfaction. He turns me around to face the door and pushes me to my knees. There’s so much hair in my face I can’t see anything. I shake my head, trying to shift the tangled mess, but it doesn’t help.

I hear footsteps from someone entering the room. They stop right in front of me and I tense, anticipating the horror I know I’m about to experience. Even though I can’t see who it is, I know it’s him. Painful memories try to surface as the scent of him invades my senses. I flinch slightly when rough hands gently wipe the hair from my face, and I look up into the eyes of the one man I hate most in the world.

I hate him so much I never gave him a name.

Giving him a name of any kind would assign him some sort of significance in my life, and that was simply unacceptable.

“It’s been a long time, Angel. Your hair is too long and you’ve gained a little weight, but other than that you look about the same as when I last saw you.” I blink and try to look away, but he holds my face firmly in place. He lowers down until our eyes are level. “Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?”

As anger wells within me, I collect all the moisture left in my mouth and spit as hard as I can into his face. He doesn’t even flinch. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, slowly stands, and wipes away the spit with the bottom of his shirt.

His hand swings fast and connects with my face in a sharp force that knocks me down on my side. Goon laughs and pulls me back up to my knees by my hair. Now there’s blood mixing with my sweat and tears. I blink my eyes in rapid succession, trying to focus and rid my vision of the bright specks of light dancing before me.

I hate seeing stars.

The man squats back down, sitting back on his haunches. He traces his finger through the blood running down my cheek and smears it across my mouth. I try to recoil but he grabs the back of my head with his other hand and holds me in place.

“After all these years apart, that’s how you decide to greet me?” He shakes his head and lets out a disappointed sigh. “I was told you were being feisty. Still, I’m going to give you the offer I came in here to make. You’ve got twenty-four hours to reflect back on your pathetic existence. I’m sure you think you’re just a victim, but really you’re nothing but a whore. You were born a whore and will always be a whore. As you reflect over your life for the next twenty-four hours, I’m certain you will see that you deserve the life you have been given. When your time is up, you’ll decide if you want to return to me . . . or die.”

Shattered Angel – Available March 2, 2015

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