The Serpent in the Garden

Charleston, veiled in Spanish moss and steeped in secrets. The powerful Legendre family is shattered by a devastating betrayal. A priceless sapphire brooch, imbued with whispered Gullah magic, vanishes along with the family patriarch, leaving behind a chilling curse and a prophecy of recurring treachery.
Centuries later, Elizabeth Hayes, Charleston’s sought-after wedding planner, finds her meticulously crafted life unraveling. Haunted by fragmented memories of childhood trauma—a raging fire, a screaming woman, the glint of a sapphire—she is thrust into a nightmare when tasked with planning the lavish wedding of socialite Amanda Croft. Amanda’s world of old money and suffocating expectations mirrors Charleston’s elite, where appearances are everything and secrets fester beneath the surface.
The theft of a diamond and sapphire necklace, a Croft heirloom eerily similar to the lost Legendre brooch, throws suspicion on Elizabeth. Whispers turn to accusations, fueled by Charleston’s insatiable hunger for scandal.  Then, on the eve of her wedding, Amanda is found dead, a grotesque mockery of bridal bliss.
As suspicion mounts, Elizabeth must clear her name and confront the chilling possibility that her fragmented memories hold the key to a far more sinister plot.  Cryptic symbols woven into the city’s fabric—a coded message etched in wrought iron, a hidden passage beneath St. Michael’s Church—become her guideposts, leading her deeper into Charleston’s layered history and the dark heart of the Legendre curse.  She uncovers Amanda’s secret affair with a historian obsessed with the curse and her fiancé’s ruthless ambition, each a player in a deadly game of power.
But the truth is far more twisted than Elizabeth could have imagined. A clandestine society, their rituals echoing the curse’s dark promise, lurks in the shadows. And Elizabeth’s connection to the Legendres runs deeper than she ever knew, making her not only the investigator but the next target.
In a city where history whispers from every cobblestone and jasmine-scented air hangs heavy with secrets, Elizabeth races against time to unmask a killer and confront a legacy that could destroy her.  For in Charleston's opulent gardens, a serpent lies coiled, waiting to strike.