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Summary
Summary
In this riveting sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller, Maestra , femme fatale Judith Rashleigh once again leads readers into the mesmerizing and dangerous underworld of Europe's glamorous elite.
Since opening her own art gallery in Venice, Judith Rashleigh--now Elisabeth Teerlinc--can finally stop running. She's got the paycheck, lifestyle, and wardrobe she always dreamed of, not to mention the interest of a Russian billionaire. But when a chance encounter in Ibiza leads to a corpse that is, for once, not her own doing, she finds her life is back on the line--and she's more alone than ever. It seems Judith's become involved with more than just one stolen painting, and there is someone else willing to kill for what's theirs.
From St. Moritz to Serbia, Judith again finds herself maneuvering the strange landscapes of wealth, but this time there's far more than her reputation at stake. How far will Rage take Judith? Far enough to escape death?
The second installment in an unforgettable trilogy, Domina is the next sexy, ruthless, and decadent thriller from mastermind L. S. Hilton, and an adventure that will push Judith further than even she imagined she could go.
Author Notes
L. S. Hilton is the author of the New York Times and internationally bestselling novel Maestra . She grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris, and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. Hilton has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster, and is presently based in London.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Much of the thrill is gone for fierce femme fatale Judith Rashleigh, as well as readers, in bestseller Hilton's disappointing sequel to 2016's Maestra. Judith has triumphantly morphed from a London art auction house lackey to glamorous Venice gallery owner Elisabeth Teerlinc-with several dead bodies along the way-and is poised to savor the fruits of her felonious behavior. But a series of mysterious break-ins escalating to the murder of her Russian teacher, Masha, the closest thing to a friend she has, convinces the seductive schemer that she's far from home free, and it may take every shred of cunning she possesses to survive. Puzzling out who might be gunning for her plunges Judith into a high-stakes art-for-arms scam apparently involving ruthless Russian oligarch Pavel Yermolov, Serbian war criminal Dejan Raznatovic, and a (probably) fake Caravaggio. Though Hilton hasn't lost her gift for climactic set-pieces, particularly the blood-soaked pair that bookend the novel, too much of the extended cat-and-mouse maneuvering in between remains overly convoluted and less than satisfying. Agent: Toby Mundy, TMA Creative Management (U.K.). (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A woman with a murderous past reinvents herself as an art dealer in Venice only to have everything she thought she left behind come roaring back.Judith Rashleigh shed her identity, along with a stack of corpses, at the end of Maestra, (2016), vowing to start clean as Elisabeth Teerlinc, an innocuous gallerist new to Venice with a bland Swiss past. Except Rashleigh's appetites can't be quenched by low-level art. Then there are her sexual desires: the sex hereand there's a lotis more tedious than erotic, more cringeworthy than titillating. Rashleigh, as Elisabeth, is approached by Russian billionaire Pavel Yermolov to value his extensive art collection, which includes pieces only rumored to exist. She politely declines, telling Yermolov she's not qualified for the task. It's never a good idea to say no to a powerful Russian, and soon she's being blackmailed into producing a drawing she's positive doesn't actually exist. The extended metaphorthe mysterious Caravaggio is a stand-in for Elisabeth herself, who also doesn't truly existis weak at best. Soon she's off on a multicity European tour, from Venice to Paris to Belgrade, making sure to have narrative-halting sex everywhere she goes for no other reason than to prove she can. (She can. It grows tiring fast.) Since this is the second installment in a planned trilogy, the ending is the expected cliffhanger, but the reader feels so little for the character that the promise of a conclusion in the third book is of little consolation. This is a series of vignettes, not a novel, poorly strung together by a litany of fine clothing and even finer art and punctuated by uncomfortably sticky sexual encounters. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The sequel to Hilton's masterful Maestra (2016) finds Judith Rashleigh living under an assumed identity in Venice, where she operates an art gallery. When strange things begin happening (objects in her home seem to move from place to place when she's not there, for example), Judith is forced to confront a terrifying truth: someone knows who she really is and what she has done the lies, the murders. She has only one chance to save her new life: find a lost painting, one that most experts agree never actually existed, and turn the tables on her blackmailer. The second part of a projected trilogy, the novel ends on a seriously dark note, and, in fact, the book is overall considerably darker than Maestra. It's also even more impossible to put down, more twisted. The concluding installment in the trilogy can't come soon enough for fans of psychological thrillers.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2017 L.S. Hilton PROLOGUE I only wanted to get it over with, but I forced myself to go slowly. I closed the shutters at all three windows, opened a bottle of Gavi, poured two glasses, lit the candles. Familiar, recognisable, comforting rituals. He set down his bag and removed his jacket slowly, hung it on the back of a chair, watching me. I raised my glass and took a sip without speaking. His eyes played over the paintings as I let the silence between us lengthen until he fell into it. 'Is that an . . . ?' 'Agnes Martin,' I finished for him. 'Yes.' 'Very nice.' 'Thank you.' I kept the small, amused smile playing on my lips. Another pause. The thick stillness of Venice at night was broken by the sound of footsteps crossing the campo below, we both turned our heads towards the window. 'Have you lived here long?' 'A while,' I answered. The cockiness he had shown earlier in the bar had vanished, he looked awkward and painfully, terribly young. I was going to have to make the first move, obviously. I was standing, holding my glass with my elbow crooked across my body. We were two steps apart. I took one, holding his eyes with mine. Could he see the message there? Run , it said. Run now and don't look back . I took the second step and reached out to caress his stubbled jaw. Slowly, still keeping his gaze, I bent forward to his mouth, nuzzling him, letting the sides of my lips brush his, before his tongue found mine. He didn't taste as bad as I'd expected. I pulled out of the kiss and drew away, threw my dress over my head in one movement, dropping it to the floor, followed by my bra. I brushed my hair off my shoulders, drawing my palms slowly over my nipples as my hands fell to my sides. 'Elisabeth,' he murmured. The bathtub was positioned at the foot of the bed. As I held out my hand and led him around it towards my Frette sheets, I felt a stifling wave of weariness sigh over me, an absence of that which had once been so familiar. There was no rage left in me, nor any flicker of desire. I let him get on with it, and when he was done I sat up with a giggle in my voice and my eyes all starry. I couldn't have him dozing off. I flopped forward on the dampened sheet, dropping the limp condom with its sad little weight of life on the floor, and reached out for the hot tap. 'I feel like a bath. A bath and a blunt. Shall we?' 'Sure. Whatever.' Now we'd fucked he'd lost his manners. 'You wanna do those pics?' I'd managed to dissuade him from taking selfies when we'd had drinks earlier. He was already fumbling in his discarded jeans for the sodding phone; it was a miracle he hadn't tried to Instagram his own climax. I'd forgotten, for the few moments he humped away inside me, what a total dick he was. This suddenly felt so much easier. 'Snap away, lover. Just a second though.' I trotted naked to the dressing room and scrabbled in a drawer for a packet of Rizla, pausing to connect the Wi-Fi scrambler as a precaution. No more real-time updates for him. I added some cold and a dollop of almond oil to the bath and opened the heavy antique linen press for a couple of towels. The sweet scent of the oil rose around us in the steam. 'Hop in,' I said over my shoulder as I busied myself loosening the tobacco from a cigarette. My Hermès scarf, the turquoise-and-navy Circassian design, was knotted around the strap of my handbag. I crossed behind him as he eased into the water. 'Just getting a light,' I murmured. 'Here.' I put the joint between his lips. There was nothing in it, but he'd never know that--while he inhaled I got the scarf round his neck and pulled it up tight beneath his ears. He choked instantly on the smoke, splashing his hands into the deep tub. I braced my feet against its edge and leaned back against the bed, pulling harder. His feet flailed in the water, but there was no purchase on the oily porcelain. I closed my eyes and started counting. His right hand, still absurdly holding the sodden roll-up, was straining to grab at my wrist, but the angle was wrong and his fingers merely fluttered against mine. Twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . . Nothing but the anaerobic fizz in my muscles as we struggled, nothing but the deep rasp of my own breath through my nostrils as his body thrashed. Twenty-nine, this is nothing, thirty, this is nothing . I felt him weakening, but then he managed to work a finger and then a fist between the scarf and his Adam's apple and catapulted me violently forward, but the release sent him under and I twisted over the rim of the tub, getting my left knee on his chest and pushing down with all my weight. There was blood in my eye and in the steaming water, but I could see bubbles popping at the surface as he thrashed. I let go the scarf and reached blindly down for his face and neck. He was twisting his jaw, the yellowed overbite snapping at me. The bubbles stopped. I slowly got my breath back and my face relaxed from its rictus strain. I couldn't see his face through the pinkish milk of the bathwater. I was gingerly easing my pelvis forward when the water slopped up in a wave just before he reared up at me. I fell against him in a straddle as his head strained desperately upwards. I managed to take him under again with my elbow, then manoeuvred myself so that I had one leg on each of his shoulders. We stayed like that for a long time, until a teardrop of blood from my face plopped into the bath. Perhaps it was the clarity of that one, tiny sound. Perhaps it was the mist of almond oil in the swirling steam, or the cooling scurf on the water's surface. That cold afternoon, that endless silence, that first dead thing under my hands. The fault-line inside me split into an engulfing crevasse, and with a force that seared the breath out of me, I was there. Time was suddenly compressed, the past condensed and returned to me. I had left her so long ago. She had never been part of the life I had told myself, but I was seeing her as though for the first time . Numbly I reached again into the deep water, but I found only a stranger's flesh. This had been necessary, although I couldn't now remember why. His hand bobbed up and I paddled the fingers with my own, a watery little tune. It might have been a few minutes that I watched the ripples, it might have been an hour. By the time I came back to myself, the water was chilled. When I eventually hauled him up from underneath me his eyes were open. So his last sight on earth would have been my gaping cunt. His slippery skin was pinkish, puffed out like new bread, the lips already tinged grey. His head lolled back; in the candlelight his throat seemed unmarked. Gripping the side of the bath, I climbed out, legs shaking. As soon as I'd let him go he slid back under and I had to fumble for the plug beneath his bobbing hair. While the water drained, I hunched in one of the towels. When his chest was clear I rested a hand against the heart. Nothing. I rolled up from the waist and stretched. The floor was soaking, the rim of the bath smeared with blood and specks of tobacco. More hot water to clean him down. I had to embrace him from the side to heave him over the edge of the bath. The corpse was limp and floppy. When I had him laid out I covered him with the other towel and sat next to him cross-legged on the floor until he was cold. I peeled back enough of the towel to expose the face again, bent in and whispered in his ear. 'It's not Elisabeth. It's Judith.' Excerpted from Domina by L. S. Hilton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
