This here is Cesare Shahidi. She’s an assassin, a model, a linguist and an incurable lover of all things deadly. She’s also my next great character. Her first book, Assassin, will be out in the summer of next year, but I wanted to give you a preview of her now. Everyone, Cesare Shahidi:

• Name: Cesare (Che-za-ray) Shahidi, alias, Essence Carter
• Code Name: Paragon
• Profession: Model turned assassin
• Expertise: Killing them softly
• Weapon of choice: Poison
• Backup weapon of choice: Stiletto
• Backup to the backup: Her body
• Base of operations: Barcelona
• Languages spoken: Arabic, English, Farsi, French, Spanish
• Quote that best describes her: “Veni, vidi, vici”
• First seen in: You are Mine (final story for At Last’s Caroline and Brian)
• Other appearances: Assassin by Lisa G. Riley and The Lion in Russia by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb

Description: She was what you got when a disillusioned former female member of the American Black Power Movement married and reproduced with an Iranian-American dissident who could trace his family’s roots all the way back to the Lasiqs of the Order of the Assassins: dangerous, fervently committed to the cause and sometimes crazy as hell.