I love something to ponder! The 2nd book will be even more awesome als the 1st book. I can feel it! :-D
I hope so, I've been working very hard on it!
🙂
While we're waiting, here's some more expansion upon what's coming with book 2 of Hell Week Yearbook. Having read the first book, you know the plot twist, book 2 fleshes that out much more, as going forward it plays a greater and greater role in the story.
Roxi and her father live in a home in Westport, Connecticut. As the second book of the Hell Week trilogy established, Mr. Andrews is a corporate lawyer, working at a large firm in nearby New York City. Mr. Andrews specializes in handling work for clients who own American businesses but live overseas.
What none of them realizes is that when Roxi was just a baby, for reasons we don't yet know, Mr. Andrews began doing various work for organized crime. Despite such a risky endeavor, Mr. Andrews is a cautious man, having strategized his way out of the poverty of his youth to a law degree and the respect of his current job. He handles his criminal activities with the same meticulous precision that he brings to all things.
It was exactly this that brought him to the attention of his current boss, the man he spoke with on the phone in HWYB #1. That person is a mysterious individual known only as "the white-suited man." Nine years ago he made a deal that severed Mr. Andrews' ties to his previous thug employers to become his right-hand man. Mr. Andrews handles many aspects of the work, such as meeting with those seeking to have the white-suited man fund their criminal businesses or to make introductions. He also is involved with the group that was present during the auction with him, called The Gata Club, on the white-suited man's behalf.
Mr. Andrews is particularly involved in what his boss likes to call "Moneyball," because it's about finding new talent for his criminal empire. This is done by finding ordinary people who are in serious financial trouble due to criminal behavior, like gambling debts or stealing from work or such. He refers to himself as Mr. Gabriel to them, referring to himself as their guardian angel here to potentially deliver them from their trouble with people who are unbound by the law. Mr. Gabriel then pays their debts on behalf of the white-suited man, and they are then part of his silent workforce. Maybe they're a plumber that will be called upon to assist with some heist or to help in the building of a secret facility, or an auto mechanic that will need to perform specialized modifications to a vehicle, "Mr. Gabriel" places these people who think themselves law-abiding on retainer so that at a moment's notice if someone is needed, they will be called in.
As a meticulous and cautious man, Mr. Andrews has feared what might happen to Roxi, should the worst happen to him. While the first book gives the impression he doesn't care about Roxi, in truth he wants Roxi to always earn her own victories so that she will believe in herself and her ability to triumph. Roxi, for instance, earned a partial scholarship for her college education at his insistence, to prove to herself she was smarter than she often liked to act. She doesn't know that the remainder of her tuition and her allowance are being paid out of a trust through his law firm, so that if he is arrested and his assets seized, Roxi will be taken care of.
Mr. Andrews' major personal indulgence with his criminal proceeds is the six car garage just off the kitchen. It's designed so that three cars pull in from the left, and three cars from the right. Starting from the 12 o'clock position and going around he has:
-1980 Lamborghini Countach (black)
-1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (red)
-1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible (black with custom red flames)
-1994 McLaren F1 LM (yellow)
-1953 Jaguar XK120C Roadster (white)
-1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (red)
All but the McLaren he restored himself (that was a retainer by the white-suited man, as there are only half a dozen of those in existence). The garage naturally is set to be fully equipped complete with hydraulic lifts to perform any repair or maintenance. But it's also like a museum. The floor has a beautiful painted surface, there are various bits of automotive and racing history on display, and he keep two leather recliners along with a liquor cabinet and a cigar humidor so he can sit back, listen to music, and admire his trophies. When Roxi has been very good, she can join him and spend long hours talking, usually about classic cars or about the law (you know from Hell Week #2 she's got more than a passing grasp of legal matters). On the wall are two framed photographs. One is of Roxi when she was nine, sitting behind the wheel of the Ferari in an old time racing helmet, pretending she was driving. The other of her behind the wheel on the day after she got her license, when she drove the McLaren to school.
Mr. Andrews' public wealth is not as considerable as his criminal activities would suggest. This is because he invents fictional overseas clients and buys businesses in their name using money from his criminal activities, and then in his capacity as their lawyer, manages them. This arrangement avoids attracting attention being mega-rich, allows him to justify the time he spends performing criminal activities for the white-suited man as time he is spending on his fictional clients, and to then launder money to himself by charging those fictional clients for the time he supposedly spent seeing to their businesses.
Yet the ultimate irony is that no money is worth the time that this life has robbed him from Roxi's life growing up, and his greatest wish is to get out and take her on a trip around the world to make up for all the times he couldn't be there for her because he was called away to sort out a matter for some criminal.
