Sunday Snippet: Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel by CB Hoffman

Today’s Sunday Snippet is from the Christian Mystery & Suspense novel Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel by CB Hoffman and edited by Dan Hoffman. It was published by C B Hoffmann LLC; 4 edition (February 22, 2018) and is available as a Kindle ebook (ASIN: B07B1M9W14), audiobook (ASIN: B01MU80J68) and paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1980382683).

 

About Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel by CB Hoffman

Alexa’s turbulent but secretive past haunts her as she attempts to escape a mysterious blackmailer while maintaining her growing celebrity as a fashion designer. But her skills as a former Olympic sharpshooter target her as the blackmailer’s chosen assassin to clear the path for his black market art scam. She buries herself deeper into a hole of murder and intrigue as she struggles to unravel the identity of her blackmailer before he exposes her violent past – or she is apprehended by the FBI.

Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel, by C.B. Hoffmann, the first eBook in the Alexa Silven Trilogy, is a captivating story of forgiveness, repentance and reconciliation, these Christian Fiction novels are free from sex, drugs and cussing, but are packed with action, mystery and suspense.

 

Chapter One from Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel by CB Hoffman

She was accustomed to coming here; she was an assassin embroiled in a sultry web of blackmail and deceit.  The risks were burgeoning, jeopardizing her life, her career, her very soul, if she still had one. Desperate to find links of cohesion in the blackmailer’s binding and lethal contracts, she knew she would have to uncover any related details that she could access in each victim’s background.  And though her intent purpose was to eliminate the controlling influence behind these hits, the truth remained that acquiescing to the foreboding demands of an anonymous extortionist was making her not only an accomplice but was threatening the core of her very being. And ultimately, Alexa Silven had to concede that this was not the normal career of a fashion designer, nor was it the reason she’d spent an eternity in training to become an Olympic sharpshooter. She became tenacious that she would not continue to be this ogre’s hired gun; her career and wellbeing depended on it! And her career ambitions should not have attracted dangerous liaisons; she needed to discern the root and identity of this evil entity that was pervading her life.

Nonetheless, there she was, hiding outside the familiar payoff site following her recent hit, as she waited impatiently for the police activity to subside in the city, which she knew could possibly take an hour or more. In her quest to reveal her blackmailer’s true identity, she decided to start right then and there to not only recall details of her recent past, but to discern possible clues as to why he ensnared her in this perilous venture. So, where did this nightmare begin? Alexa had to go back to that night.

She closed her eyes and vivid memories of her inevitable quarrel with her father flooded her mind.  

She was fresh out of college and wanted to take an internship to train in one of Paris’s top design houses – against her father’s plans for her to compete in the Olympics as a world-class sharpshooter. He was a preacher who’d lost his focus.

Alexa’s thoughts wandered back to the present, not only searching for details that could help her discover how Angelo knew so many facts about her, but wanting exoneration from the crushing guilt she carried in her heart each and every day.

She remembered her childhood home in Florida – she and her father arguing over her career ambitions. He confronted her with her approved French work visa and her secrecy about fashion training in Paris. She argued that he had tunnel vision and wouldn’t have listened.

He’d demanded for the Olympics to come first and that she was throwing away his dreams – ones that were deferred when he got drafted before he could compete.

Alexa asked him how she was going to make a living as a sharpshooter and reminded him it was only a hobby but fashion designing was her career choice. But it was irrelevant to her father. He’d called her a self-seeking ingrate! Their conflict ended in one inevitable burst of his temper and reprehensible lack of self-control.

She had crossed the line and there was no retreat. Her dad grabbed her regional trophy from the mantelpiece and waved it menacingly in her face. Defiantly, she had turned to her mother for support.

 

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