Velvet Storm
by
Alice Bell
Rockin’ round the world on sex and
adrenalin
Rocked by a deathbed revelation
The nurse gently
removed the oxygen mask. Vivica’s eyes
were hardly open and her battered face was twisted with pain. She was quiet for a few moments and then
looked up at her daughter, fixing her bloodshot blue eyes on Velvet’s
tear-stained face. She took a deep
breath.
‘Your
father...’ She closed her eyes with the
pain. ‘Velvet, I have to tell you
this. Spider’s not your father.’ She grasped Velvet’s hand. ‘Your real father was a man called Valiant
Hardcore.’
Velvet Storm knows exactly who she is – as the red-hot drummer of the world’s greatest rock band, her name is on everybody’s lips. She may be the only girl in the Ridgebacks but she knows how to party like the guys – Jack Daniel’s runs through her veins – and she lives life to the full against a backdrop of studios, stadiums and starry-eyed groupies.
But
then in the midst of a spectacular European tour, she is called back to England. Her mother Vivica has been in a head-on
collision and is being treated for burns in the local hospital. Returning home to see her parents for the
first time in four years, Velvet’s world is turned upside down by Vivica’s
deathbed confession: Spider Hanratty, the
man Velvet believed to have sired her, is not her natural father and suddenly
her whole identity is called into question.
Devastated
by her mother’s death and as relations with Spider hit an all-time low, Velvet
sets out to find her real father. Valiant
Hardcore was a renowned architect who once had a glittering career. But his life took a disastrous wrong turn
when his most celebrated building collapsed and twenty-six people died. Hardcore shouldered the blame and spent time
in prison; now he has disappeared and Velvet can’t even find out if he’s alive
or dead.
As
her quest spans the globe, Velvet encounters a duplicitous author who can’t
tell the truth, a plastic surgeon with a secret obsession, a Russian trapeze
artist with an insatiable hunger and an irresistible Japanese tattooist. And while she hunts for a father who doesn’t
even know of her existence, the Ridgebacks are torn apart by the pressures of
fame and the temptations of their rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Determined to clear her father’s name,
deceived by the man she thought she loved and shattered by a succession of
tragedies, Velvet finally comes to understand who and what are most precious to her...
