The Breath of Africa

Québec, deep winter. One woman holds the threads of three continents.From her circular study Madeleine Cartier Martini governs a network that reaches New France, the coasts of Africa and the ports of Europe. Every letter she opens can be worth a fortune or the life of a son, and a single degree of error on a route is paid for with a ship and the men aboard her. While the snow smothers the sounds of the French colonies, the Martini name still stands as a shield against the shadow of the British and the Dutch.Then Madeleine unrolls the family tree and sees the truth.They are no longer a family: they are a mechanism of power that reproduces itself. And in a world of predators, even the one who commands can become the hunted.On the far shore of the Atlantic the air burns.Antoine Martini and his son Gabriel hold Fort Martini against everything: the trade wars, the climate, the men waiting for a weakness. Beside them fights Toussaint, whom everyone calls Black Lightning, his fragility as exposed as his courage. Here the sons of snow and blood must blend European ambition with the unyielding spirit of the African coast, and defend a future that belongs to the bastards and the bold. But when the jungle breathes, it whispers a betrayal that no fortress can keep out.From Benin, Charles II sails east.The border between blood and capital dissolves. A new generation, mixed and illegitimate, must prove its worth in a world where memory is the only currency that truly counts. From the high seas to the heart of the Ashanti empire, they will all learn that the Martini system is not made of profit: it is made of the ferocity with which a name is defended.Legacies are not inherited. They are paid for in blood.