Summary
I’m trapped by the devil.
What started as an innocent mistake turned into actual hell.
In my defense, I didn’t mean to get involved with a mafia prince.
But he barged through my defenses anyway.
He stalked me from the shadows and stole me from the life I know.
Jeremy Volkov might appear charming, but a true predator lurks inside.
He’s out to possess, own, and keep me.
But I have no plans to stick around in his blood-soaked world.
Or so I think.
Excerpt
This is a mistake.
The worst of all.
The most disastrous of all.
Maybe even the deadliest.
I shift in place, sweating behind my mask. My T-shirt and jeans stick to my heated skin until it’s almost too unbearable.
I inhale sharp breaths into my starved lungs, but I might as well be consuming smoke. My fingers itch to touch the mask or readjust the wig that digs into my skull.
After careful consideration, I don’t.
This place must be filled with surveillance cameras, and the last thing I want is to catch these people’s attention.
Not when I’m not supposed to be here. Behind enemy lines.
My gaze flits sideways discreetly as I methodically alternate between breathing through my nose and mouth.
The sledgehammer of dusk starts to tilt on the horizon, splashing a hint of orange behind the gray clouds.
An eerie sensation coats the thick air and trickles into my bones. No one aside from me seems focused on the sun’s ceremonial descent or the bold silhouette of danger this place is coated with.
On either side of me stand people wearing similar white masks with black numbers written on their foreheads.
I was one of the first to be allowed inside the Chamber of Decadence and my number is twenty-three. I stand in the second row that, like the first, has twenty people.
No, students.
There are four rows, and the fifth is steadily being filled by the other participants who’ve been directed inside the gothic-like mansion by burly men in black suits and grotesque bunny masks.
Slashes of red crack their masks at the mouth and surround the holes where their blank eyes show. But the part that made me stiffen, aside from their sharp, dirty teeth, was how the one at the entrance double-checked the invitation QR code on my phone.
I was so sure he’d figure out that I stole someone else’s invitation and was trespassing where I shouldn’t be.
Despite the brown wig I wore to cover my attention-grabbing silver hair, the gray contacts, and thick-framed glasses, I wasn’t confident I’d go unnoticed.
Still, I didn’t speak to avoid giving away my British accent.
After all, The King’s U is an all-American school, and we from Royal Elite University are easily picked out from a crowd.
Especially one we’re not supposed to be part of.
Like this initiation.
The bunny gave me a hard stare, definitely longer than the one he directed at the other participants, but he eventually strapped a numbered mask on my face and a tag on my wrist with the same number.
I had to leave my phone, keys, and glasses with his bunny friend before I was allowed inside.
And now, I wait, with about eighty-five others. Make that eighty-seven.
I know because I counted.
Review
(audiobook) In this series, each book features a man with clearly some behavioral problem, sometimes a personality disorder. Their woman isn’t exactly their victim, but discover new aspects of themselves once the men show them their dark side. It was a bit different this time.
Jeremy is prone to violence, has some control issues, and is very protective of the people he cares about, even though he rarely shows that he cares. As a mafia prince, all those traits are almost a requirement. As a boyfriend, not so much. After a couple of encounters, he decides that Cecily hides a darker side and he becomes interested in her.
Too bad for her, as she’s attracted to Landon, her friend’s brother and Jeremy’s rival, who sends her as a spy in Jeremy’s territory. She quickly becomes some kind of challenge between the two. Unbeknownst to Landon, she shares with them a secret fantasy that Jeremy will fulfill. Until feelings ensue.
If you’re looking for romantic moments and cute love confessions, this is not it. At all. You’ll get instead dubious consent, violence, coercion, manipulation, trust issues, and an overall very twisted relationship. There’s still some light in the dark: Jeremy’s bouts of jealousy tell a story he can’t even admit to himself, and the way he fights Cecily’s demons is very telling too. As for Cecily, Jeremy’s support of her darker needs and his comfort and help when she’s deep in trauma, make her fall for him pretty fast. Is that romantic in the end? I’ll let you judge.
The whole plot happens more or less at the same time as the previous book’s story, so we get to see the events from another perspective, and we understand Cecily’s and Jeremy’s involvement in Creighton and Annika’s love story–Creighton is Cecily’s cousin, and Annika is Jeremy’s sister. I loved how the resolution of Creighton and Annika’s conflict created another one between Cecily and Jeremy.
I didn’t really see the love here though. The lust, plenty. Cecily and Jeremy can’t keep their hands off each other, and they try things–yes to the kinks. And sure, they have some meaningful conversations that make them understand each other way better, and see a side of the other no one ever see. I dig that. But there’s so much manipulation and brute force and threats in their exchanges that I felt love should have never happened. They get each other, and they often seem alone in their own world, but two broken souls don’t make a full one.
The narration was great. Both the male and the female narrators switch between accents with ease, and they play their character to perfection. The female narrator expresses Cecily’s innocent side as well as the strength she often shows with talent, and the male narrator was surprisingly good at playing cold and dark and broody. The added performances were just a little bonus, but I won’t complain.
Quickie
- Series: Legacy of gods #3 (can be read as a standalone but linked to several other books by the same author)
- Hashtags: #mafia romance #college romance #enemies to lovers #virgin #dubcon #kinks
- Triggers: violence, mention of sexual assault, murder, dubious consent, rape fantasy, mental health
- Main couple: Cecily Knight & Jeremy Volkov
- Hotness: 5/5
- Romance: 3/5
- + Jeremy is ready to do anything for his girl, swoon
- – I don’t do kink shaming, but a sexual assault survivor with a rape fantasy felt disturbing
Stalker mode
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