Empire of Sins

Nine-year-old Paige North believes her father, Daniel, can fix anything. He fixes broken toys. Bad days. Nightmares. And whenever Paige or her little brother Stephan is afraid, their father reminds them of the one rule their family lives by: Norths stick together. But when Paige’s beloved mother, Elaine, becomes seriously ill with cancer, even Daniel cannot fix what is happening to her. As Elaine’s health deteriorates, Daniel begins noticing things that do not make sense. Medical records change. Questions go unanswered. Information about Elaine’s experimental treatment appears to be missing. And when Elaine herself realizes that something about her medication has changed, Daniel’s grief turns into suspicion. Someone is hiding the truth. His search for answers leads to a powerful pharmaceutical company and eventually to the Wells family—a wealthy dynasty whose influence stretches through medicine, banking, investments, politics, and businesses most people never realize they control. The Wells live by one rule of their own: The empire belongs to the family. And protecting that empire may be more important than protecting the people whose lives helped build it. Elaine dies when Paige is only nine and Stephan is three. For the next few years, Daniel holds his children close and tries to rebuild what is left of their family. But he never stops investigating what happened to his wife. Then Daniel gets too close to something dangerous. When Paige is seventeen, her father is sent to federal prison for a crime she is convinced he did not commit. Without him, everything falls apart. The stepmother Daniel married hoping to give his children another mother reveals who she truly is. An abusive man enters their home. Paige does everything she can to protect Stephan until, at nineteen, she finally takes her little brother and leaves. She has no safety net. No wealthy relatives coming to rescue them. No inheritance she knows about. Only college tuition, rent, groceries, her father’s legal bills, and a younger brother depending on her. Paige needs money fast. So the brilliant biochemistry student who dreams of developing better cancer treatments takes a job she never imagined she would have. She becomes an exotic dancer. By day, Paige is one of the brightest students in her program, quietly developing promising cancer research. By night, she becomes someone else beneath the nightclub lights. Stephan has no idea. Paige intends to keep it that way. She tells herself dancing is temporary—just another sacrifice until she can finish school, keep a roof over their heads, and find a way to bring her father home. Then she meets Dale Wells. Handsome. Powerful. Confident. Born into money Paige cannot even imagine. Their meeting happens by chance. Dale does not know Paige is a dancer. Paige does not know he belongs to the very family connected to the mystery surrounding her mother’s treatment and her father’s imprisonment. And neither realizes their families were tied together long before they ever met. As Paige and Dale are drawn closer, Paige begins uncovering pieces of a past someone worked very hard to bury. A missing flash drive. Altered treatment records. Hidden patient ledgers. Millions of dollars that never reached the families they were meant to help. Doctors declared dead who are still alive. Research facilities destroyed by suspicious fires. A secret pharmaceutical company hidden beneath the Wells empire. And an experimental cancer program known only as Candidate Four. The deeper Paige digs, the more terrifying the truth becomes. Her mother may not have simply been a cancer patient. Elaine may have discovered that patients were being given treatments they never fully consented to. She began keeping records. Other patients began talking. Doctors started asking questions. Then Elaine died. Daniel continued the investigation. And Daniel went to prison. Now Paige is following the same path of her parents. What will happen with the powers that be?

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