THE DIAMOND SECRET

Ayr, Scotland

PROLOGUE

Few objects on earth can inflame the lusts of man as certain jewels will. They contain the one beauty that never fades or dies or changes; they embody power, sex, money. A single jewel, small enough to cradle in the palm of your hand, can be equal to the worth of a third world nation. They’re eternal, undying, mysterious, storied.

And nothing can bring out the evils of man like the lust to possess a particular jewel…. - Sylvie Montague, addressing Estate Jewelers International

There's always a man, isn't there, when things are about to hit the fan? In my case, there were three. One I’d loved a very long time. One had betrayed me. And one swept me into a drama I only half-wished to escape.

The adventure began when I opened my suitcase in a hotel on the west coast of Scotland and learned that that somewhere over the Atlantic, someone had switched bags with me. Instead of two dozen pairs of (expensive!) thongs and a pair of red leather pants, I found a diamond.

A very large diamond.

Large and legendary, so infamous that I could not, for a long space of breaths, do anything but stare at the spectacular beauty of it, tucked in cotton batting by some unknown person.

I picked it up knowing two things. One: it was no accident that I, jewel expert Sylvie Montague, should be holding in her hand 80-something karats of medieval diamond.

Two: it was undoubtedly stolen.

Standing in a hotel room that smelled of the sea, I held the jewel in my hand, breathless, and tried to think when the bags could have been switched. I'd carried mine on the plane from San Francisco, and had shoved it into the very last remaining space in the overhead compartment. I couldn’t think of anyone opening before the end of the flight, when I’d opened the bin myself and pulled it out.

But somewhere, someone had switched it. In my hands was a diamond I had certainly not packed. My hands shook as I held it up to the light. My heart pounded.

It was unmistakable.

Katerina's Blood.

Oh my God.