These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights, #1)

by Chloe Gong

“These days, Juliette,” he said, low and warily, “the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.”

She had grown up with an eye pinned to the outside of every establishment before she walked in, searching for the segregation signs that demanded she keep out.

Chinese and Western standards alike were arbitrary, pitiful things. But Juliette still needed to keep herself in line, force herself to follow them if people were to look up to her. Without her looks, this city would turn on her. It would claim that she didn’t deserve to be as competent as she was. The men, meanwhile, could be as tan, as fat, and as old as they wished. It would have no bearing on what people thought of them.

“No, thanks. My affection is not won with such humdrum energy.”

If her body refused to forget who Roma once was to her, how was she to make those same limbs rebel from their nature, make them destroy him?

Was it loyalty that created power? Or was loyalty only a symptom, offered when the circumstances were favorable and taken away when the tides turned?

“Leave before you get shot.”

“Who will shoot me?” “I’m going to shoot you,” Juliette snapped.

She hated him so much. She hated that he was right. She hated that he was inciting this reaction in her. And most of all, she hated that she had to hate him, because if she didn’t, the hatred would turn right back on herself and there would be nothing to hate except her own weak will.

The feud has taken enough. I won’t let it take Alisa.”

Sometimes it was hard for Kathleen to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation.

They had both grown tall and grown thorns. Yet Juliette had slotted back so easily—far too easily for her own liking.

We do not have the luxury of mercy, Juliette. Look at this city. Look at the starvation that squirms under the layer of glamour.

Circling above the city and awaiting the carnage so they could gorge themselves until they were full.

He chose me.

Instead, the truth was that he had gone against everything he stood for. He had stained his own hands with the lives of dozens of innocents, placed razor blades in his own heart just to keep Juliette alive and safe, far from the threats of his father. He hadn’t used the information he gleaned from his time with her as a tool of power. He had used it as a tool of weakness.

The feud keeps taking and hurting and killing and still I couldn’t stop loving you even when I thought I hated you.”

“I love you. I have always loved you.”

He stays for you. He will not walk away from you. Not a second time. He would rather die.

“I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.”