Valerie Chang calls herself a rich bitch only because people see her that way. However, after the school year at The University of Maine at Orono ends, she finds out why that is so. Her mother, her aunt and their company bookkeeper ask her to come straight home after her final class is over. With no idea what they want from her, she does what they ask and heads straight home to Portland, Maine, where she has always lived. Once there, they tell her that she is going to spend her summer working from their South Portland private investigator office for no other reason than to give her some experience working in an office. So starts The Lioness. When she doesn't like her assignment, she gets angry and storms away to her boyfriend's home that is not far from hers. His name is Ron Waters. When she gets to his home, she finds him kissing another girl. Angered, she rushes down to the boat launch ramp that is below her parents' home on the Eastern Promenade. Just as she is about to end her misery, a car pulls between her and the boat ramp and, seemingly, that's where things end. He doesn't allow her to commit suicide by driving her new BMW into the bay. The man in the car is a black man named D'Jayden Sixson. Between and Ron and DJ - as she comes to know the black man - she would be safe for the next several days until some answers she received along the way began to make sense. She's clubbed over the head, faces a gun to her face, finds evidence of something in the BIOS of her brother's computer, but nothing begins to make sense until she meets three people who are on a pilgrimage to help her mother attain the Presidency. What does she find? Read The Lioness to discover what her mother, her aunt and their friend wanted from her in the first place.