Kenneth Vance has spent his entire life inside a design he never chose. His father, Elias Vance-a towering figure in regional commerce-mapped out every step of his future: the right schools, the right career, the right reputation. Kenneth now works in private equity, not because he loves it, but because it keeps him safe, respectable, and visible in the right circles. He is engaged to Ruth, a woman whose kindness and simplicity offer him something rare in his world: peace. With her, Kenneth believes he has finally found a version of happiness that belongs to him.
Then Rahab enters his life.
She is brilliant, beautiful, and mercilessly ambitious-a venture capitalist with eyes like cut glass and a mind trained to dominate every room she enters. Rahab doesn't see Kenneth as a man. She sees him as a gateway. To her, he is access to hidden capital, inherited influence, and a future empire waiting to be seized. What begins as fascination becomes manipulation. What feels like empowerment becomes control. And what Kenneth thinks is love slowly reveals itself as a carefully engineered trap.
Step by step, Rahab dismantles the life Kenneth once believed in. She pushes him to open secret accounts, exploit family connections, and bend moral lines he never imagined crossing. As he follows her blueprint, he is drawn into a shadow world of corporate warfare, financial deception, and psychological domination. Each decision takes him farther from Ruth, farther from his conscience, and closer to becoming someone he no longer recognizes.
Friendships fracture. Loyalties are tested. Truth becomes a liability. In Rahab's world, everything-and everyone-has a price.
As Kenneth rises in power, he falls deeper into ruin. The question is no longer whether he will lose the life he once knew, but whether there will be anything left of him when it's gone. Can he reclaim himself from the machinery of greed he helped build? Or has he already become the very thing he once feared?
A Blueprint for Ruin is a gripping psychological thriller about ambition, betrayal, and the seduction of power. It explores how easily morality erodes when success is within reach-and how hard it is to escape once you've traded your soul for influence. Dark, intimate, and relentlessly suspenseful, this novel asks one haunting question: How far will you go to become someone you were never meant to be?
Autorentext
John Ruto is a rising voice in psychological thrillers, exploring the fine line between ambition and morality. His work delves into the consequences of power, the cost of betrayal, and the quiet compromises that define a person's life. With sharp insight into human behavior and corporate intrigue, Ruto crafts stories that are as emotionally compelling as they are suspenseful.
A Blueprint for Ruin marks his debut into the thriller genre, a novel that examines how far someone will go for wealth, influence, and control?and what it takes to reclaim oneself when everything is on the line.
When he's not writing, John Ruto is drawn to stories of resilience, transformation, and the human struggle for meaning. He believes fiction should challenge readers as much as it entertains, showing that even the most carefully designed lives can be rewritten.