Bound by Honor (Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles, #1)

by Cora Reilly

You are mine.

Women in our world belonged to their husband. They were his property to deal with however he pleased.

“Fuck, Luca, did you tell your men you’d cut their dicks off if they looked at that girl? You aren’t even married to her.” “She’s mine,” Luca said quietly, sending a chill down my back with his voice, not to mention his eyes.

This energy

“If I find out you are looking at her like that again. If I find out you are in a room alone with her. If I find out you touch as much as her hand, I will kill you.” Raffaele flushed red. “You aren’t a member of the Outfit. Nobody would tell you anything even if I raped her. I could break her in for you.” God, Raffaele, shut your mouth. Couldn’t he see murder in Luca’s eyes? “Maybe I’ll even film it for you.”

Who says that about their cousin

“It is. It’s easy to manipulate men. Lily is fourteen and has already figured it out. Father always says we’re the weak sex because we don’t carry around guns. We have our own weapons, Aria, and you’ll have to start using them. If you want to survive a marriage with that man, you’ll have to use your body to manipulate him. Men, even cold-hearted bastards like them, have a weakness, and it hangs between their legs.”

I love this

“Then maybe I’ll have to take you from behind so I don’t have to see it.” My face fell and I stumbled away, my back colliding with the wall. Luca shook his head. “Relax. I was joking,” he said quietly. “I’m not a monster.”

“I can’t deny you something that you don’t have the right to take in the first place. My body doesn’t belong to you. It’s mine.”

“When I claim your body, I want you writhing beneath me in pleasure and not fear.”

“You are more beautiful than all of them,”

but he was my husband. I wanted him to be faithful to me. I wanted him to want only me. I wanted to be enough.

Love is something girls hope for when they don’t know better, something women long for when they lie awake at night, and something they’ll only ever get from their children. Men don’t have time for such notions.

“It’s not my job to make them control themselves. Just because I’m wearing revealing clothes doesn’t mean I’m inviting them to look. If they can’t behave themselves, that’s their problem.”

You tell him girl

“You are far too beautiful and innocent to be married to someone like me, but I’m too much of a selfish bastard to ever let you go. You are mine. Forever.”

It thrilled me to know that a man like him could be gentle with me. It thrilled me that he was mine and I was his.

“Why? You hurt people all the time. You don’t have to pretend to care for my feelings only because we’re married.”

His eyes flashed. “What makes you think I have to pretend?”

“Your marriage to me shackles you to the mafia. Blood and death will be your life as long as I live.” “Then so be it. I’ll go where you go no matter how dark the path.”

My heart belonged to him even if he didn’t have a heart that he could give me in turn.

“I lied because I hate that I love you, because I hate that you can hurt me without ever laying a finger on me, because I hate myself for loving you even though you won’t ever love me back.”

“Don’t do that ever again.” “What?” I breathed. “Taking a bullet for me.”

“Do you really not know why?” I whispered. He became very still, but didn’t say anything. “I love you, Luca.” I

“But I don’t care because loving you is the only pure thing in my life.”

“But you are my first choice, Aria. I’ll burn down the world if I have to. I’ll kill and maim and blackmail. I’ll do anything for you. Maybe love is a risk, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take and as you said, it’s not a choice. I never thought I would, never thought I could love someone like that, but I fell in love with you. I fought it. It’s the first battle I didn’t mind losing.”