John E Andes

While in college, Jenna Whyte incurs a substantial illegal gambling debt. To pay down the debt, the Riarca crime family requires that she collect betting books and extortion payoffs. Upon graduation, Jenna starts a career with an investment firm in Tampa, Florida. She lives with her mother and father, Commander of the Organized Crime Task Force for the Tampa PD. Her mother suffers from an intracranial aneurysm. Jenna is torn. She wants to stay at home and care for her mother, but the Riarca family has work for her to control their illegal enterprises in Florida, and she likes the cash they pay. On a business trip to Miami, Jenna experiences the brutality of her incompatible personal, professional, and clandestine lives. She cannot walk away from her family and the control over others she enjoys in her secret life. Back in Tampa, she attends a party thrown by the company president. The after party becomes a pitiless sexual exploitation. Jenna's multi-faceted life begins to accelerate on a downward spiral. Her professional career is looking at rock bottom as the FBI and the SEC investigate the investment firm and its connection to the Riarca family. Insider trading and stock manipulation bring the federal agents to Tampa who enlist the support of the Tampa PD Organized Crime Task Force. Where does she go now that her multi-faceted world ends.

In failing health, widowed patriarch, Joe Bickham looks forward to opening his family's summer cottage and spending the Memorial Day weekend catching-up with his sons, Michael and Gabriel, and their broods. Over his breakfast the morning of departure, his reverie is interrupted by the crashing of a massive roiling storm. Regardless, he thinks how everyone will enjoy the cook-out dinners, lake fishing, holiday fireworks, and the traditional croquet tournament. During the drive to the cottage, the storm seems to follows him. Upon arrival, what greets him is beyond his ken. Joe tries to explain away unworldly signs and events by ascribing them to the area's folk lore. An enigmatic character, Amon, is introduced as a distant family member. He and Joe's younger granddaughter, Agnes, make ready the fireworks to announce the beginning of summer. At night, the oldest and youngest members of the family go missing. The search for them is frenetic. The result is unfathomable.