There Are No Saints (Sinners, #1)

by Sophie Lark

Nobody that beautiful can be good, it’s impossible. Power corrupts and beauty warps the mind.

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.

I spend the afternoon working on my new painting. I’ve never felt such confidence in a piece of my own work. It seems to come alive under my hands, like it has a mind of its own. Michelangelo used to say that—that the sculpture was always there inside the marble. He just had to release it. That’s how I feel today. The painting is already there, inside the canvas and inside my brain. My brush is exposing what already exists. Perfect and whole—all it needs is to be unveiled.

“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.”