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To the strong women who have earned their armor by battling their entire lives for respect, admiration, and a love worthy of their greatness.
Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.” – Leonardo di Vinci
“You watch too many movies, Elena. In real life, the villain always wins because we are willing to do anything to succeed.” He paused as I did in the doorway. “I think you know a little something about that.”
He shouldn’t have been so distinguishable in the dark, but then again, that was where monsters like him thrived, so perhaps it made sense.
Dawn was just flirting with the ink-stained night, the anemic light half-hidden by the dense cluster of buildings blocking the horizon and the artificial lights cutting shapes into the interior
He looked criminal, filled with wicked intent and handsome enough to tempt the pope to sin.
Kodawari, the Japanese word for the relentless pursuit of perfection. I didn’t so much want to be perfect––which I was aware enough to know was an impossibility––as I wanted to seem perfect.
“I expect the public to fall for an anti-hero. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.”
I’d lost so much of myself before I’d ever truly known who I was.
It was strange to mourn for your own life,
She was, in essence, an ice queen.
Death was nothing. Sacrifice, that was the real killer.
Women bear the trials of their men, the delivery of their babies, the weight of their families. 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 was the child of a sinner, and sin was in my blood. I was too proud to go unnoticed in my profession, too greedy to accept pennies, too envious to be content with what I had at any given time, and too aroused by power to let it slide through my fingers.
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.
I’d often wished I felt comfortable being myself, when the truth was, I wasn’t even sure who that true self was.
“He likes you,” Beau decided. I let out a little scoff, but I couldn’t deny it confused me. “At the most, I would say I intrigue him. The way one predator intrigues another.” Beau considered me for a second. “It sounds as though you might have met your match.”
I lay in the dark shadows of my echoing empty home, wondering if I’d become so entrenched in society’s perception of right and wrong that I’d forgotten to form an opinion of my own.
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.
“You’re so goddamn afraid of being soft and tender because all that silk beneath your armor would rip so easily in the wrong hands. This insecurity blinds you to the truth. It corrodes the goodness in you. If you saw what I saw when I looked at you, you would never doubt yourself again. You wouldn’t be tricked by the easy flattery of some stronzo like di Carlo into thinking he was good enough for you.”
Dante was dangerous, violence dressed in a thousand-dollar suit, but beneath it all, he was also the kind of man who wept at a friend’s hospital bedside and made pasta with a girl who called him uncle. He was a contradiction, a bigger mess of contrarian values than anyone I’d ever known outside myself. He was tall, dark, and sinfully handsome, a masterfully created man.
And I thought, for the first time in my life, that I might have just met my match.
“Sono con te, lottatrice mia,” he said, “anche quando non lo sono.”
