When Dominic Balducci tells his favorite asset, Stone Ayers, that they are going to Kentucky, Stone is perplexed. Why there? Because it’s the horse capitol of the world and the boss is set on getting back into horse racing. Though skeptical at first, Stone becomes enthralled with the horses and the people who inhabit the world of thoroughbred racing.
His excitement is palpable and his German girlfriend, Gudrun, sees a side of him she’d not seen before. In love with him already, his new passion excites her as well. Early on, Stone becomes close friends with Finn Donohue, an Irish horseman married to Constance Cartwright, ten years his senior and obsessed with gaining control of Twin Oaks, a small farm that once was part of her own, historic Monticello. Finn manages Monticello, but is expected, somehow, to get Twin Oaks back for her.
Complications arise when Stone learns that the way he intends to do it includes drugging the horses Twin Oaks races and some of them belong to Dominic. As had happened once before, he found himself contemplating killing someone he knew and, in this case, someone he liked. He’d have killed Peter DelBino with ease, had Dominic wanted it done, but Finn? He couldn’t imagine it.Set in and around Lexington, Avenging Angels is a story that explores the thoroughbred industry from breeding to selling to training and racing these magnificent animals.
As they develop their racing stable. Stone and Dominic engage a fascinating gallery of characters whose lives revolve around the business, some of them good, some not so good. About the latter, unlike most people involved in racing, Dominic has a unique asset at his disposal, should the occasion arise, and when it does, Stone Ayers is back doing what he does so well, this time among the rolling hills and elegant farms of the bluegrass.
