When Villains Rise Quotes

“I don’t know what love means to you, but to me, it means loving someone no matter what baggage they come with for as long as they’ll let you love them and as hard as you possibly can. The only risk I fear is one where I lose you.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Crying is the bodies way of expressing emotion that’s too big for words. It doesn’t make you weak, Lena, and I’m happy to hear you’re just feeling again.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“The man who had taught me how to love and life again. The man who had brought me back to myself. I loved him before I even knew how to identify the feeling and maybe that was why it happened, because it was done before I could think to stop it.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Flowers don’t thank the sun for shining on them or the rain for its wet. Whatever happened to you because of knowing me was always in you to give. I think you just needed a little love to realize how magnificent you are.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“It is a privilege, Elena, to know you intimately. To know what makes you hurt and what makes you blush. To know what your demons are so I can slay them for you when you don’t have the strength or watch you overcome your own nightmares because I love to watch my fighter conquer everything in her path. It is an honor to know you and I won’t ever take that for granted.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I always feel like a burden when I get emotional. It shouldn’t be anyone’s problem but my own.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“He was a man ruled by his impulses and his gut cried out to take Elena’s strength and overpower it with his own. He didn’t understand a woman like her. He wanted to break her to prove his machismo, not understanding that a true man stood beside a woman like that and was made more powerful by her own strength at his back.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Dante’s love had razed me to the very ground of my soul, demolishing all my preconceived notions of right and wrong, even of my own identity and desires. I was going to step off this plane a new woman and for the first time in my life, I was excited by my lack of foresight and structure.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I didn’t want to be a bad person. I never had, which wasn’t to say I’d succeed in that. I’d been bad. But I’d always had this fairy tale ideal of good and bad, pure and evil. I’d assumed I would always be on the ‘right’ side of the law and morality. But when one contradicted the other, I found myself at a cross roads.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“He said in a way that half order and half question. I appreciate the tone of both. He wasn’t the kind of man to ask explicitly for my consent because he knew the trappings of my mind. If he asked, I’d feel forced to disagree because that was how I’d been trained.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Tu si l’azzurro dò mare sì duci e si amar,” I told her. You are like the sea, sweet and salty. “A sailor does not leave the sea because it storms, and it does not begrudge the ocean her moods. I have no intention of giving up on you, Elena, because there is no part of you I do not find worthy and fascinating. If this ends, it will be because you choose to end it, and you refuse to let me fight to win you back.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“His smile was just a suggestion around his full lips, an implication and a secret all at once. It was intimate and small, not his usual full-bodied grin that he shared with everyone else. It was just for me. “Some people have hobbies, art, music, playing sport. Mine is learning you.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“You aren’t my lawyer anymore, Elena. Tu sei la mia regina.” You are my queen.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“It is a privilege, Elena, to know you intimately. To know what makes you hurt and what makes you blush. To know what your demons are so I can slay them for you when you don’t have the strength or watch you overcome your own nightmares because I love to watch my fighter conquer everything in her path. It is an honor to know you, and I won’t ever take that for granted.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Dante was home, so no matter what, I would never be homeless. I’d have his shelter, his protection, and his love to guide me through the worst of life and the worst of myself.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“There was an old Neapolitan saying that perfectly suited the situation. Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore. Whoever is against this love suffers and then dies.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I was a man who only feared one thing, which I was learning was infinitely more dangerous than a man who feared nothing. I would not lose Elena. Not for anything. Not for my bloody kingdom and stacks of crisp bills. Not for my honor or my family, my Italian ideals. She was it. Mine. Forever.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“My outfit is part of my armor,” I told him even though it exposed a vulnerability. “I’ll be out in two minutes. Just give me time to change.” “You don’t understand this yet, but you do not need your armor all the time now. Not when you have me.” He lipped the edge of my jaw all the way up to my ear, where he spoke his next words on a purr. “I will be your sword.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I’m trying to decide what to wear to meet your father figure.” “You’ve met Tore before.” “As your lawyer, not as your…” I hesitated, scrambling to define what this gorgeous man was to me and me to him. “As your partner.” He turned his head so that his hot breath wafted over my neck, his lips tickling the thin skin over my hammering pulse. “Partner? Mmm, I don’t think so. I like the sound of… my lover, my woman, innamorata mia, amora mia.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“He growled as he looked at me spread wide and bared for him. I thought he’d never looked like such a beast, ready to devour me whole. “There has never been another man for you,” he said fiercely, eyes flashing up to mine and filled with primal possession. “I am the only one to touch you this way, to bring you this pleasure. Forget the past, Elena, because I am the only man in your future.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus on the beauty of this man and not the trauma of my past. “Lottatrice mia,” Dante rasped between kisses. “Watch me worship this pretty pussy, hmm? I want you to see how the taste of you undoes me.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Loving him wasn’t the end of everything. It’s funny they always make it seem that way in the books and movies. Loving him was just the beginning.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“Dante had taught me that every single decision in your life was leading to something, was leading to exactly where you needed to be at the moment.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I understood that anytime someone attempted to offer her comfort or praise, she shied away. She tried to poison it with the alchemy of her self-hate.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise

“I’d never yearned for possession the way I did with Dante. I was a woman who valued my independence fiercely so I’d always thought that the idea of belonging to someone else was a direct contradiction to my independence. I’d been wrong. Owning the heart of a man like Dante Salvatore didn’t make me weak, it made me strong. I was proud to be seen as his because I was proud of the man he was and the woman he helped me to become.”
― Giana Darling, When Villains Rise