There Are No Saints (Sinners, #1)

by Sophie Lark

I feel no sympathy. No guilt. Those are emotions I’ve never experienced. I’m aware, academically, of the full range of human emotions. I’ve studied them intently so I can mimic their effects. But they have no power over me. What I do feel, I feel intensely: rage, revulsion, and pleasure.

Okay Patrick Batman, pack it up

I’ve killed fourteen people and I’ve yet to receive a single knock on my door.

“If we’re ever alone in a room again, only one of us will walk out breathing.”

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

All I learned is that no amount of submission is good enough for a man. You can roll over, show your belly, beg for mercy, and they’ll just keep hitting you. Because the very act of breathing is rebellious in the eyes of an angry male.

“Evil men always want to justify what they do,” she says. “And it’s not by telling you all their reasons. No . . . they want to push you, and bend you, and break you until you snap. Until you do something you thought you’d never do. Until you can’t even recognize yourself. Until you’re as bad as they are. That’s how they justify themselves . . . by trying to make you the same as them.”

“I missed you too, sweetheart,” she says. Then she kisses me on the mouth.

And I realize . . . she’s everything I dreamed of and more. More vengeful. More strategic. More effective. More fucked up.

She fucked on that painting, and then she hung it on my wall.

women in male fields

I loved that piece. Sometimes you have to kill what you love.

“You want me to tattoo you?” I say. He nods. “Do you have other tattoos?”

I like that I marked her, and she marked me. We’re bound together now, her art on my skin and mine on hers.

“Absolutely I do. He disrespected you. Put his hands on you. I’d kill him for much less.”