Title: Buttons & Despise
Author: Penelope Sky
Genre: Romance, Dark Romance, Fiction
What It's About: Vanessa Barsetti walks home one night and comes across a man murdering another man in an alleyway. The man comes after her, catches her but she tries to escape several times. After the taser doesn't work, he puts a needle in her neck and takes her into his van along with the body. They begin driving to a lake in Italy, and when they arrive there, he goes off to drop the body in the lake, and she moves into the seat, where she tries to hot wire the car and then finds a gun underneath his seat. Vanessa takes the gun out and aims for his heart/head, but shoots him in the arm. This pisses him off but he ends up kissing her against the car, and then tells her to get in.
Bones takes Vanessa to his mansion near Lake Garda, and tells her that he's the son of the man who raped her mother. He tries to tell her some truths and facts about her own family, but Vanessa doesn't want to listen to him. In exchange for sparing her life, she offers sex and tells him that it will be the best of his life, and he will want to have more. She willingly has sex with him, and then when he thinks he's ready to kill her, he takes her to a room and tries to make her plead for her life to her parents. Instead, Vanessa tells the camera and essentially her parents, to forgive him and let the blood war die with her, and that she loves them. This disempowers him, but he finds her sexy as a result, and later on they have sex again.
She spends a whole week with Bones waking up to have sex with him and going to sleep having sex with him. Usually her mom would call her once a week, but she hasn't. Ultimately, Bones makes the decision to let Vanessa go--with a caveat: She won't tell her family about their arrangement, he'll keep coming round to see her for sex whenever he's in town, and in exchange her family stays safe from a new blood war and his revenge. He continues to tell her that he wants to kill her, but he never goes through with it. Bones disappears for a job--he's a hitman--and a few days later comes by to her apartment, while Vanessa has been working on creating a painting for her family since she cannot buy them gifts. It's the first time that Bones sees her artistic work and tells her that she has a talent, so she shouldn't be wasting her time in school. He tells her that she should go work as a painter full time instead, because her work is good.
Vanessa then heads home with her brother and future sister-in-law to Tuscany to see her parents for Christmas, where she gives them the gift and they love it so much. She speaks to her dad about dropping from school and doing art full time, and he tells her that he wants her to be happy. She declines his offer to help her get a studio full time because she wants to make it on her own and tells him that, but asks if she could display her paintings in the Winery for tourists to see and potentially purchase. In the meantime, Bones is back in his mansion in Lake Garda, and he's struggling because his mother was murdered on Christmas Eve--she had gone out to take a client as a prostitute in order to make money to pay for their rent and buy Bones a present, but ended up being killed, with her throat slit and in the garbage. So the holidays have been difficult for Bones.
When Vanessa returns home, Conway also comes into the apartment to drop her bags off, and she tries to get him to leave as quickly as possible because she knows that Bones is inside her apartment. He had made the split second decision to hide in the room in order to keep his end of the deal up--not hurting her family. Bones tells her that there's a gift for her on bed--lingerie, and while she puts on the pieces, he checks her bag only to find a gun. He removes the bullets and leaves the Glock as it was in her bag, proud that she would have the guts to get it. They end up having sex, with Bones tying her up, and Vanessa getting upset at him because she wasn't a willing party to being died up and feels like it is rape when she doesn't have a choice. Bones feels bad and apologizes to her for it, before taking her back to bed and fucking her again. The next day, Vanessa tells Bones that she has decided to leave school and pursue art full time. He tells her that she needs to charge high prices for her work.
He takes her with him to an apartment building--one that he owns--and Vanessa has a panic attack, thinking that he's going to kill her in this apartment, in a place where no one will be able to hear her. Bones is upset that she thinks that way but also realizes that he hasn't told her to the contrary so it would make sense to do it there where he would be left alone. Instead, he takes her to a different room and shows her that he's made her a studio. In exchange, he asks her to paint herself--an image of her, which he takes with his phone in his bed while she wears lingerie. He then has to leave her to take on an assignment in Russia--the client's daughter was raped by a man that Bones has to kill--and as he's leaving, he sees Vanessa wearing his shirt, which does funny things to him. Before he walks out, however, Vanessa reprimands him for leaving without saying a proper goodbye to his "baby" (which is what he calls her), and they have sex.
While Bones is gone, Vanessa realizes why he wants the painting, and once she finishes she takes it home with her to her apartment, where she tries come to terms with the idea that he will kill her and keep the painting as a reminder of her. She waits for him to come, and when he comes to see her in her apartment, he stares at the painting for a while. Then they start to have sex in her bedroom, and she pulls out the gun that she had brought with her from her father's house raising it to his temples. Bones keeps fucking her, and tells her to do it. Twice he tells her, but she hesitates, and the puts the gun on the nightstand before they finish. Bones now knows that she can't kill him, and he tells her that he can't bring himself to pull the trigger either. The next day he shows her that the gun was actually empty, and tells her that he had found it the day that she had come home from her parents. She knows that she never stood a chance.
My thoughts: This is a very different romance story than the ones that I have seen thus far. It starts out with a kidnapping, of course, but also one where they're both willing participants in what is going on, and seemingly admitting feelings and emotions from the get go. I'm curious to see how the relationship between Vanessa and Bones will progress in the series, and what turns the relationship will take. When will the brother and the father find out? What will they do? I'm invested for sure in finding out! Can't wait to read the next book.
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