More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“All monsters were men once,”
“Maybe after all this, you’ll understand that you don’t have to choose between one or the other. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we have the capacity to claim both sides.”
In real life, the villain always wins because we are willing to do anything to succeed.”
He looked criminal, filled with wicked intent and handsome enough to tempt the pope to sin.
When you grew up poor, money wasn’t only a primary motivator; it was almost an obsession.
I’d once had everything I’d ever wanted, the job, the home, the man, but no sexual climax, no chance at fulfilling my dream of being a mother. It seemed a steep price to pay to swap one for the other, and I couldn’t help but be filled with bitterness at the thought that I couldn’t have it all.
“You know, it is the contrast between two opposites that heightens them both to keener glory. You shouldn’t be afraid to be coarse, just as I shouldn’t be afraid to be gentle. Too much of one thing is boring, Elena.”
I didn’t respond because I wasn’t thinking about golden eyes. I was thinking about a pair of steel ones as hard as armor and wondering just what kind of instrument I’d need to break that metal barrier in two.
In the mafia, sometimes the only honor to be found was in revenge. And I was going to make sure whoever the damn mole was would pay with every drop of his blood.
Women are extraordinarily strong. So, you must trick the men into giving you power. Do not tell them you are strong, and do not fight them with words because words can be undone. Fight the injustice with action, lottatrice mia, because action can be understood in any language, by any man.”
“I’m wearing heels bigger than your dick, so if this is a pissing contest, I think it’s safe to say I win,”
I wanted to be the kind of a woman who was called a hero, but I’d spent most of my life being called a villain. If enough people treat you like a villain, you become one.
“You. My beautiful daughter. I love to see you smile. So rare like a jewel.”
I wasn’t a hero, and I wasn’t a villain. I was just a woman trying to navigate life.
It was irrational and ridiculously stupid to become attracted to one of my lawyers, my best friend’s sister, a woman I was certain wouldn’t know sexual passion if it slapped her in the arse.
If I wanted to defeat my demons, I had to become the ultimate monster.
We were sinners of the highest order, driven to make money, end our rivals, and succeed at almost any cost. But we were also men. Men driven by lust and love and loyalty. By our dogs and cannoli and comradery.
Betrayal from someone who is supposed to understand your pain and should stand by you no matter what feels impossible to move on from.”
I hadn’t made him happy, not like her. And God, that burned like frostbite emanating from my arctic heart.
I wasn’t sure why, but it might have had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t deal with the knowledge of another man showing me some level of attention only to find one of my sisters far superior.
I didn’t want to hear stories about the mafia being the good guys. I’d already had to rethink so many fundamental beliefs since Daniel left me. I wasn’t ready to empathize with the villains who’d haunted me and mine my entire life.
Law and morality can’t always coexist, Elena, and sometimes, the difference between the two is loyalty.”
I was at the point in my life where I didn’t even dream of happiness. I just yearned for a life without further pain.
One of the things I loved most about the city was the anonymity you could experience in the teeming streets, the fact that I was a crying mess and no one stopped to stare or inquire about me.
I was an island, and I was okay that way.
There was such a thin line between love and hate, just as there was between heroism and villainy. It all depended on the circumstance and perspective.
I wanted to make her shake for me, quake for me, fucking break for me. Because I knew no one had ever broken Elena Lombardi. That fucker Daniel Sinclair hadn’t even come close.
I hadn’t even kissed her, and I felt like roaring, like beating my chest and crowing with glory.
Elena Lombardi was an acquired taste, something to be appreciated by only the most refined palette, the most exquisite mind. As deep and brilliantly complex as expensive Italian wine, and the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to drink her down like a glutton and force her to be mine.
He was astoundingly magnetic, a perfectly formed monster of a man.
I wanted success, money, fame. I wanted to be seen and known and heard. I wanted it all. And Dante Salvatore was the only man who could satisfy those base desires.
“You remind me of my wife. It was nothing to do.” “What’s she like?” I asked as we took the elevator down to the street level. He shot me a sidelong glance. “She’s a real bitch.” I laughed the entire ride down.
The truth was, I wanted to play, with our minds if not our bodies, knowing how dangerous it would be to tumble over that last hurdle and into bed with my client. With a mafia Don.
“Sogni d’oro,” he murmured just before closing the door in my face with a slight, secret smile. “Have sweet dreams of me, Elena.”
If anyone could take my broken and newly healed body in his hands and make it sing, it would be the mafioso I shouldn’t, couldn’t have. The only man I’d ever wanted with this level of physical zeal and the only man I truly could not let myself want.
From the beginning, Dante had caught sight of my red hair and turned to me like a bull, set on destroying whatever barricades lay between us in his quest to get to me.
If Dante could light my icy flesh on fire with just the touch of his lips to my pulse point, how would he make me feel with those lips on other parts of my body?
After the tragedy of Christopher and Daniel, I didn’t have anything more in me to give. I’d felt so much all my life I’d resolved to feel nothing at all. For years, I’d kept my heart black, my lips red, and my personality ice cold.
Whoever said women were terrible gossips clearly had never met an Italian man.
Only Elena Lombardi would look like she was preparing for war just to take a simple nap.
I wanted her, and I would have her, but Elena required a contrarian mix of forcefulness and care, my seduction a tightrope walk that could fail with even the slightest provocation. And I was more and more unwilling to fail.
I needed to have her to understand her. To have the privilege of unwrapping layer after layer until I got to the heart of her. Once, I’d thought her soul would be frozen through, an icy vessel used only to pump blood through her body, but I was beginning to understand the truth.
Elena Lombardi had so much heart. She was overfull with emotion, and she had no idea how to hide that vulnerability from people unless it was behind a mask of icy indifference and cool disdain. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust others with that tender, swollen organ so much as she didn’t trust herself to use it.
I considered only the magnitude of the challenge I was setting for myself and the eagerness I felt setting out to conquer it. To conquer her. Because I resolved in much the same way I resolved to solve my mother’s murder and resolved to save Cosima from the Order of Dionysus that I would show Elena Lombardi what it was like to live and love freely. And I’d do it by loving her. First, I just had to trick her into letting down her shields long enough to let me try.
Why did it mean so much more than the money or success I’d coveted for years to know that Sebastian had trusted me with such a secret?
And for the first time in my life, snuggled between the two big warm bodies of my brother and the mafioso I was coming to like more than I should, I didn’t care.
It was death by a thousand caresses, slowly shredding my ten-foot walls to ribbons.
I had always found, if you could understand something, it was almost impossible to hate it because then you could empathize with it.
Slowly and irrevocably spending time around Dante’s heat had thawed my icy demeanor toward him. I found myself bantering with him instead of trying to cut him to pieces with the sharp edge of my tongue.
“No, the rarity of it makes it more beautiful. I’m becoming rather possessive of the sound.”
