Once upon a time in China, the most beautiful and gifted women were known as "skeleton women" - the ultimate femme fatales who could bring a man to his knees, or to his doom...When Camilla, a young orphan girl in Shanghai, is adopted and brought to live in luxury, it seems like a stroke of luck. But as Camilla grows to womanhood, she realizes that her "rescue" was part of gang leader Big Brother Wang's scheme. Camilla is trained in singing, dancing, knife-throwing and contortion - all to attract the attention of Wang's enemy, the ruthless Master Lung. Forced to become Master Lung's mistress, Camilla meets two other intriguing women. Shadow is a magician and rival for Master Lung's affections, while Rainbow Chang dresses like a man and wields power through her incendiary gossip column. Both pose risks to Camilla's safety and status. But an even greater danger comes in the form of Master Lung's eldest son, Jinying, who despises his father's violent lifestyle - but loves Camilla. Only by plotting to eliminate Lung can she make her escape, but at what cost?

Chapter One

It all happened because I was considered perfect material to be a spy – beautiful, smart, and most important, an orphan.

I am well aware of what people call me behind my back:

Skeleton Woman!

Actually, this does not bother me a bit. Let others feel spite, jealousy, hatred for me. At times I feel a secretive, ticklish glee.

I am a woman who can turn men into skeletons under my touch, though it was light as a petal and as tender as silk.

My name is Camilla. At nineteen, I’d already become the lead singer at Shanghai’s most popular and elegant Bright Moon Nightclub. It was through powerful connections that I got this position at my young age, with the bonus of being the object of desire of many men, and the jealousy and hatred of countless women. And then there were Shadow and Rainbow Chang.

They were the other skeleton women.

But unlike me, Rainbow and Shadow were not nightclub singers. Rainbow, Shanghai’s most popular gossip columnist, made her fortune by digging up secrets and dirt for the Leisure News. Though she had a woman’s name, she exuded the charm of both sexes as she rode the waves of in-between. Short haircut, silk tie and outrageously expensive and impeccably tailored suits contrasted with white-powdered face, rouged cheeks, pink lips, silvery-pink eye shadow, and long, lush, artificial lashes. Rainbow neither dressed like a woman, nor looked like a man. Exposing everyone else’s secrets in her column, for herself she chose camouflage, in sex as well as in life. But why? It was yet to be found out.

If Rainbow Chang presented herself as mysterious, then Shadow was absolutely unfathomable. Everything about her was staged like a magician’s stunning feats – jumping into thin air; escaping from locked chains under water; cutting a volunteer into multiple pieces, then restoring her in seconds. Carried out in a skimpy dress, enhanced by snake-slick movements, with an expressionless, stunningly beautiful face. Who was she? I was dying to find out.

We used artist’s names; no one knew our real ones. With our own agendas, we were the three most pungent ingredients in this boiling cauldron called Shanghai. Men went crazy for a taste of us, while women sought our elusive recipe.

People admired or hated me as the ultimate femme fatale. But I myself had no idea who I was. I was a nobody, literally. An orphan, I was adopted by a man and his gang for their own purposes. Later I learned that the man was Big Brother Wang and his gang the Red Demons. Under their constant watching and fussing over me, and strict discipline, by fourteen I’d grown up to be a water-melon-seed-faced, full-bosomed, slim-waisted, long-legged beauty, possessing everything desired by men and envied by women.

Of course I had not been raised and disciplined just to be a refined, well-mannered lady to be married off to the son of a rich family. Instead I was groomed to lure Master Lung, head of Flying Dragon Gang. I had quickly figured out that I’d been given a roof over my head, fancy clothes to wear, and gourmet food to consume for a reason.

I was raised and trained to be a spy.

I was to be the Red Demon Gang’s secret weapon in a meticulous plan to topple its bitterest rival the Flying Dragons. For nineteen thirties Shanghai was the battleground for relentless wars among the triads, a war in which I was to be a pawn.

And what a life that was.

Having been scheming for most of my nineteen years in this dusty world, I’d already turned a few men and women into skeletons dangling in hell – literally or otherwise. I didn’t feel any guilt. This was the only job, only life I knew.

This is how they trained me – to have no attachment, no feelings, no conscience. I was the woman who would, when needed, reduce any men and women to a skeleton at the blink of my mascaraed eye.

Until the day I met Master Lung’s son Jinying, and his bodyguard Gao. But that was not part of the Red Demons’ plan for me….

Against the sapphire blue night sky, a young woman was pacing along a ledge atop the Shanghai Custom House tower like a circus girl treading a tight rope.

Except she was stark naked.

The Shanghainese say nothing will surprise them, that they’ve seen it all. But now they were surprised. No one watching had ever seen anything like this.

Not even my new lover, Master Lung, head of the most powerful black society in Shanghai, the Flying Dragons, nor his slew of bodyguards scattered among the crowd, alert for danger, and shoving anyone who seemed about to get too close to their boss.

Lung’s and my eyes had stopped staring licentiously into each other’s, and were directed skyward -- to the clock tower of the Customs House with its fake European styling, far above the Bund and the Huangpu River.

The crowd held its collective breath. Their probing, lascivious eyes glued to the muscular, round-bosomed naked body above, expecting at any moment she would jump to her death. I imagined the onlookers agitated thoughts:

Is she really going to jump?

Why doesn’t she want to live?

Jump! I want splashing blood, crashing flesh, crackling bones!

What a pity, a beautiful girl soon to turn into a puddle of vomit.

Tonight the air was balmy, but the naked girl playing the tug-of-war with death hundreds of feet above chilled us all, both those appalled by an innocent girl about to plunge to her death and those perverts who secretly thirst for the morbid sights of splattered blood and scattered human pieces. I bit my lip, my hand tightly clutching Master Lung’s arm while my heart pounded like a tribal drum trying to scare away demons.

Not that a smashed face and broken limbs would have bothered me much. For I had been trained since my teens to wipe away all human emotions. I had been molded for one purpose and one purpose only: to be a spy. Though, ironically, I earned my living singing sentimental songs in a nightclub.

As I continued to watch, the two hands of the clock merged into a single one pointing north, setting off the imitation Westminster Chimes to suddenly flood us with an eerily cheerful melody. But then, in the midst of the clear sky, thunder cracked and lightning flashed….

And the naked figure jumped!

The onlookers gasped collectively, their expressions ranging from horror, to sorrow, to unabashed thrill….

All heads dropped down to gape – some of the women through cracks between their many-ringed, red-nailed fingers. A pause, then another shock. There was no body. Only a pair of red high heels in the middle of a pool of blood! view abbreviated excerpt only...

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