Title: Buttons & Beauty
Author: Penelope Sky
Genre: Romance, Dark Romance, Fiction.
What It's About: Vanessa attempts to paint in her studio in Bones' apartment, but cannot because she realizes that she never truly stood a chance against Bones. In despair, and not wanting to face the reality of dealing with Bones for much longer, she leaves for her apartment to get some space, even though Bones hadn't really let her go. That nigh, Vanessa goes out with her friends, and gets plastered. On her way back from the club, a group of men try to hit on her, and she tells them off. When one of them puts his hands on her, she fights him off, and he tells his friends to grab this b***h, so they start walking towards Vanessa, who uses her heels to try to fend them off, but they stop and turn tail suddenly. Vanessa laughs, thinking that she really scared them off, when really it was Bones who had come to save her. He takes her home, where she rests up.
Bones has a mission to kill Joe, the man who had killed his mother, but the mission goes awry and he has to abort it. He believes that Joe won't come for him, because he doesn't know who Bones is, but he is surprised one night, when the elevator of his building starts to move. Luckily for him, Vanessa is upstairs in the bedroom getting changed into lingerie so that he can have sex with her. Joe's men get Bones on his knees as a brief fight, and Joe puts the gun against Bones' skull, though Bones vows to kill him for what his mother did. Out of the corner of his eye, Bones sees Vanessa coming down the stairs silently, and before he knows it, Joe's men have all been shot in the head with perfect aim. Vanessa brings Joe down but leaves it to Bones to have the honor of kill him since Joe killed his mother. Bones kills him, though it takes him a couple of days to admit to his friend, Max, that it was really Vanessa who had helped him and this is why he's still alive. He grants Vanessa her freedom.
Over time, Vanessa paints a myriad of paintings, including one that she's not ready to show to Bones. She takes all of those paintings with her to her apartment, when it's time for her to go visit her parents and then takes them with her to her parents. She hangs up the paintings in the winery, with her mom's help, and her mom sees the painting that she didn't want to show Bones--it's one of him alone on the dock of Lake Garda where they had really their first moment, and he's peering out at the world, showing that he's lonely. The depth of understanding of Bones is very apparent in the painting, and even her mom picks up on this man being important to her. Pearl mentions it to Vanessa, but Vanessa doesn't wish to talk about it, beyond saying that this is not the man that she will see a future with. She takes the painting back to her apartment when she returns to Milan, and leaves it there, facing away. Bones comes to visit, and asks to see it--she had promised to show him the image soon--and at first Vanessa tries to avoid it, but then she does show it to him. He takes a long look, memorizing the painting for a while, before he leaves without saying anything.
Bones visits the dock at Lake Garda, and looks around--wondering just how it's possible that Vanessa could paint the place in such detail. He knows that wasn't the reality that she painted--he wasn't alone the night that they had met, because she was there, but she had painted him in such a way that no one else had, understanding him to the depths of his soul. He hasn't ever really stared out into the lake like Vanessa has painted him, either, even though he has often stood on the dock after he dropped a body to the bottom. Bones returns to her, and tells her that he loves her in the living room of her apartment. Vanessa rejects him, telling him that she won't let herself love him, because her parents won't accept him.
Pearl visits Milan not too long after, and she talks with Vanessa, before introducing Matteo--the son of a businessman that has a business relationship with Crow. Matteo had went out to make his own fortune via restaurants, and Pearl offers to set them up as she thinks that Matteo would be a lovely boy for her. Vanessa takes her up on her offer, not having seen Bones in some time.
My Thoughts: I was so not expecting for Bones to be the one who tells her that he loves her; the one that realizes his feelings for her. This is because usually it's the women in the stories that realize they love the man, at least in this series, so this was an unexpected twist, but I really love how Bones is so sure of himself when he goes out on that lake and realizes that Vanessa has feelings for him based on the way she painted him, and he's able to reciprocate them without anger. I love that rawness, that certainty, and that vulnerability, because it shows so much of Bones behind the exterior that he's projecting as a hitman. Honestly, I cannot wait to read the next book in the series, because this is so good.
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