Kimberly Belle
On Sale Date: June 3, 2025
9780778310945
Trade Paperback
$18.99 USD
320 pages
ABOUT THE BOOK:
USA Today bestselling
author Kimberly Belle returns with an exhilarating new thriller about an
American expat whose startling discovery plunges her into the glamorous but
deadly world of Amsterdam’s diamond industry, and the one woman who may hold
the answer.
Rayna Dumont is getting a fresh start in Amsterdam. Following a nasty divorce, she takes a jet-setting new job and embraces the single life. All seems to be going well until she wakes up in the bed of Xander van der Vos, her one-night stand from the night before, only to find him brutally murdered in the room next door. To make matters worse, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds are missing from his safe. Quickly, Rayna becomes the prime suspect and is thrown into a deadly game of cat and mouse with forces beyond her wildest imagination.
From her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is enraptured by the case. The wife of Thomas Prins, CEO of the House of Prins and Xander’s former boss, Willow is too familiar with what it’s like to be the outsider in the elite world of luxury goods. But as the House comes under scrutiny, tensions rise in her already strained marriage and Willow starts to wonder if Rayna might be the solution she’s been looking for.
As both women dive into the dark underbelly
of the diamond industry, their hope for survival hinges on navigating a web of
power and revenge. And as Rayna fights to clear her name, will she unravel the
truth or find herself another victim?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kimberly Belle worked in marketing and nonprofit fundraising before turning to writing fiction. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Kimberly lived for over a decade in the Netherlands and currently divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam. She is the bestselling author of over eight novels, including The Marriage Lie, Dear Wife, The Personal Assistant, and The Paris Widow.
SOCIAL LINKS:
Author website: https://www.kimberlybellebooks.com/
Facebook: @KimberlyBelleBooks
Twitter: @KimberlySBelle
Instagram: @kimberlybellebooks
BUY LINKS:
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-expat-affair-original-kimberly-belle/21808290?ean=9780778310945&next=t
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-expat-affair-kimberly-belle/1146225159?ean=9780778310945
Books A Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Expat-Affair/Kimberly-Belle/9780778310945
EXCERPT:
Part One
“A diamond is forever.”
—Francis Gerety of N.W. Ayer &
Son for De Beers
RAYNA
My eyes snap open on a jolt, and I
blink into a room that’s as dark as a cave. For the first few blissful seconds,
my body relaxes into a scene that feels all too familiar. The spicy scent of
male on thousand-count sheets. The cushion of a criminally expensive mattress
cradling my bones. A down-filled comforter skimming my naked skin like a lover.
And then I remember.
Not my bed. Not my home. Where the
sheets were criminally soft but the bed cold and lonely, even though there were
two people in it.
Correction: there were three people,
though you better believe I didn’t know it at the time.
Stop. Abort. This is not the time to
be thinking such things, when you find yourself in another man’s bed and when
there’s definitely another woman in your old one. Fourteen months and a
whole ocean between me and the ashes of my old life, and that man can still
muscle his way into my head when I least want him there. Despite everything
that brought me here, to a new life on the other side of the planet, Barry
still holds that power, dammit.
I shove him from my mind and swipe
my limbs across the rumpled cotton, making an angel on the feather and foam. On
the other side of the bedroom wall, water clatters onto slick marble tiles.
Xander, owner of this fine bed and plush penthouse apartment, taking a shower.
Snippets of last night flash in my
head, lighting up some of the darkness that’s lived there since the divorce.
The bar, the restaurant, the fish washed down with a bottle of perfectly
chilled Chablis, champagne bubbles tickling the back of my throat, making out with
Xander on the freezing terrace, our bodies tangled under his thick duvet, the
sky and the stars and the glittering lights stretching into the darkness like a
carpet of diamonds. My head rolls on the pillow to face the far wall, where the
tiniest strip of daylight pushes through the floor-to-ceiling drapes. The
fabulous but freezing terrace on the other side of that wall of windows where I
stood, pressed against the glass railing, staring out at the view.
I push up onto an elbow and blink
around the dim bedroom, wondering how long Xander’s showers typically run. My
gaze drifts to the open bedroom door, and a strip of lit-up runner in the
hallway. Puffs of steam waft across the plush burgundy carpet like a nightclub
fog machine. Apparently, pretty long.
“Does this hookup come with coffee?
Oat milk if you’ve got some, and I wouldn’t say no to a croissant.”
This new Rayna, she’s cheeky. The
kind of girl who wakes up the morning after a drunken one-night stand with no
regrets. Zero. Not a single one.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand,
and I roll onto a hip and pluck it from the charger. My roommate, Ingrid, the
gorgeous, lanky blonde I met on craigslist when I answered her ad for a spare room.
Ingrid works in the city center, at a shop that doesn’t open until late
morning. In the few months we’ve lived under the same roof, I’ve never seen her
conscious before ten.
I frown, swiping with a thumb to
answer. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, seeing as I’m here and
you’re there, I’m guessing nothing.” She yawns, loud and breathy into the
phone. “I take it the date was a success.”
Ingrid knows all about the date
because she was there, eating breakfast in the kitchen when the notification
hit my phone that Xander had swiped right. She plucked my cell out of my hand to
study his profile picture, a close-up of his face bathed in late-afternoon sun.
“Cute,” she said, handing my phone
back. “If you don’t swipe right, I will. Though I’m not sure about that bio.
73% gentleman. 27% rogue. What does that even mean?”
I took in Xander’s sharp jawline,
wide-set eyes, crooked, close-lipped smile that made him look like he was
holding on to a secret.
“I don’t know, but I’m intrigued.”
He was handsome enough that I
swiped right, too. Almost immediately, another notification pinged my phone: It’s
a match! And two seconds after that, a message.
Hello, Rayna
with the red hair. How is your day so far?
Perhaps a bit overeager but
friendly enough, and not the least bit icky. The perfect first message as far
as I was concerned.
After that, the day was a blur of
back and forth. First via Tinder, then on WhatsApp, then through comments on my
Instagram.
Nice wings, he left under a shot
of me last summer in Nashville, standing against a wall with a painted mural of
a butterfly. Next time you go to Music City, #ImIn.
I smile into the phone. “Yes,
Ingrid. The date went very well.”
“Are you still there?” she says, her
voice perkier now. “Are you with him right now?”
I wriggle higher on the pillow,
listening to the water on the other side of the wall. I hadn’t heard him slip
out of bed, hadn’t so much as stirred when the shower started up, which says a
little something about the state I was in last night.
“No.” There’s a soft whirring and
the wall to my left shifts, the blackout shades working on what I assume is a
timer. They travel up a wall of steel-and-glass windows, letting in a mauve,
early morning light. “He’s currently in the shower.”
Ingrid squeals, and the sound does
something to me. My old life was filled with moments like these, early morning
gossip fests about the night before, trading anecdotes about our lives and
families and men. Since moving to Amsterdam, my address book has become a lot
slimmer, but whoever said women in Amsterdam are notoriously difficult to
befriend has never met Ingrid. From the moment I wheeled my suitcase into her
apartment, she’s been nothing but friendly—and Lord knows I could use a friend.
“Why did you answer the phone?” she
says now. “Get your ass in there. What is it you Americans say? Do it for the
team.”
She hangs up before I can correct
her.
I toss my phone to the bed, telling
myself that Ingrid is right. I should get in there, mostly because it’s
the opposite of what the old Rayna would do. The old Rayna would be chastising
herself for spending a night with a man she just met and slinking out of here in
shame. The new and improved Rayna, though—Rayna 2.0—she knows how to have a
good time.
On the other side of the wall, the
shower is still going, the steam still creeping along the hallway runner. New
city, new life, new me.
I push back the covers and slide
out of bed. “Hey, lover. You got
room
in that fancy shower of yours for me?”
LIKE
THE REST of this place, Xander’s bathroom is a work of art. A great wash of
veiny brown and cream marble stretched across the floors, climbing the walls,
plopped onto floating cabinets and molded into sinks. LED lights blaze down
from sleek spotlights in the ceiling, a light so bright it stops me in the
doorway. I stand there for a minute, blinking into the steamy space.
A towel is tossed carelessly on the
floor next to a bath mat. A tube of toothpaste lies on the edge of the sink on
the left wall. The shower is still going, tucked behind a marble wall and a
door of steamed-up glass, a steady clattering that echoes in the room. A tiny
frisson of electricity crackles under my skin. He’s been in there an awfully
long time.
“Xander?”
No answer.
I take a tentative step forward,
and my bare foot lands in a tepid puddle. That’s when I notice the rest of the
floor is wet, too, big pools of water like someone sprayed the marble with a
garden hose. Next to the big square tub, a dented shampoo bottle lies on its
side, burping up a purple-tinged goo, thick and slimy. A good ten feet from the
shower door.
“Everything okay in there?”
Everything is not okay. Of this I
am certain. I know it with every ounce of my being even if I can’t quite name
what’s wrong. An instinctual kind of alarm bell, like running up to the edge of
a cliff. I know it long before I step onto the drenched bath mat and tug open
the shower door.
The first thing I see is a foot,
male and knobby. Don’t look don’t look don’t look. It’s like an
out-of-body experience—me screaming the instruction at myself from above, but
it’s too late because I’ve already seen the foot and the angle is all wrong.
Xander’s toes are pointed to the sky. Like he fell, maybe, whacked his head on
the way down. Knocked himself unconscious and landed flat on his back.
Except no. This is more than
unconscious. This is utterly, horrifyingly still. Despite the steaming water
beating down on his motionless body. Despite me nudging his bare foot with
mine.
My gaze wanders up his body. His
long, lean legs, his athletic torso. One hand is curled in a loose fist on his
chest, the other arm, his right, is stretched across the floor as if he’s
reaching for something. For a full five seconds, I watch swirls of pretty pink spiral
toward the drain before I realize what it is: blood, leaking from the stump
where his pointer finger used to be.
But the finger isn’t the worst, not
by a long shot. Xander’s eyes are open, but they’re wide and red and empty. His
mouth hangs in a yawn or maybe a deep breath he can’t catch because his neck .
. .
Oh my God. His neck. A thin band of
opaque plastic is wrapped around it like a tourniquet.
It’s a zip tie. A fucking zip
tie.
I scream and lurch backward, one
foot catching in the mat, the other skidding across the water-slick floor. My
arms flail, and my feet fly upward. I land on a hip, hitting the marble hard
enough to rattle my teeth.
Holy shit.
I scrabble forward on my hands and
knees, and maybe it’s all the booze, but last night’s dinner comes up in a
sudden and sour wave, a perfectly cooked piece of halibut on a bed of creamy
peas and haricots verts. It lands on the marble with the water and the blood
and
the purple-tinged shampoo, splashing on my knees and thighs.
I stagger to a stand and stumble
back toward the hall, but the floor is wet and the bathroom is spinning and
this is really happening. Xander is really dead. Someone really killed him
while I was sleeping in the next room.
Not dead. Murdered.
No comments:
Post a Comment