TRIGGER WARNINGS, MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE, ABUSE, AND TORTURE & OF COURSE, SPOILERS. (BECAUSE I CAN’T SHUT UP).

As cora said, this book is darker than the others she has written. So, proceed with caution.
Trigger warnings — torture, humiliation, branding, murder, death of a parent, death, graphic violence.

This book is dark, yes, but it’s my new normal, so it does not affect me.

Plot : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Story : ⭐⭐⭐
Spice : 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Rating : ⭐⭐⭐ (because i didn’t love this book as much as I did the web of silence duet by Leigh Rivers, but this book was not bad, so it deserves to three stars, because i finished it in two days).
Tropes : friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, dark romance, mafia romance.
Pacing : medium.
Characters : nestore and amelia and others — my man has suffered more in his entire life, and carries the scars proudly. So, the book begins with nestore’s father and uncle being killed by amelia’s father. He witnesses it, and although he cannot save his father, he tries to fight them, at the age of fifteen. I’m getting deja vu? Eh.
So, nestore fights, but he loses against amelia’s father and enter bendetto falcone (the falcone brother’s father, yeah) haven’t read their stories, i just read them briefly, i don’t remember much from the cammora stories. And after that, achille lamorgese (amelia’s father) captures nestore and throws him in the basement of nestore’s own home, the romano manor. He’s tortured there for three years 😭😭😭 his nails are picked out by pliers, his chest is burnt by a branding iron, he is humiliated in the worst ways by achille, but our amelia sneaks out everyday, at night, saves food for our boy, and feeds him, but one day, they get caught, and achille puts her too in the bars opposite nestore. Nestore is still tortured because achille realizes that her pain is his. So, he sends a guard to amelia’s jail, and nestore kills him with his teeth, and hands. Witnessing nestore’s darkness scares amelia, but she stays by his side, always. They try to escape one day, when Flavia (amelia’s stepmother) gives the keys of their cell to amelia, but they fail, and are again tortured badly. Amelia is in pain, after the cold water thrown at her from the jet, she manages to keep herself warm, but it still hurts, and watching nestore in pain, his screams distant, because the room is soundproof, but it hurts her just as much. They promise each other that they’ll get out, give each other their firsts. (Did I mention nestore is a virgin? Because he was locked up in the basement, or he’d have lost them too) Nestore sees amelia as his light, she was the reason he was alive, because achille used to give feces and puke for food to nestore and amelia sneaked food for him, so he didn’t die. (The torture really made me cry, this man — he endured too much)

Nestore endures a lot for amelia, he wants power, he’s hungry for it, after he realizes that he’s too weak to protect amelia, and he can’t do that, while he’s locked up, so he works out, makes sure he’s strong, their rescue comes from remo and nino flacone, they give their place back to them, but nestore has to be an underboss under remo. Nestore agrees. And then remove gifts him achille, to which nestore is pleased, and locks achille and tortures him the same way he was once. Everytime the darkness gets too much, he tortures him. Seeing all of this, and knowing nestore keeps sinking more and more into the darkness, amelia escapes, only to be found again, because nestore refuses to let her go. They get married shorty after, and nestore calm is amelia, her skin, her touch, her taste. Amelia tries to stay by his side, even if it gets too much for me, because she already ran from his once, and she tries to find some trace of the boy she loved in the jail but she can’t find any, and everytime she does, it is gone as soon as it came on his face. Nestore buys her dresses, because he believes she’s his queen.
My man is so hot, he literally wears a crown, and you’d be like huh, that’s not a big deal.
No, it’s not. You’re right, he wears a crown made of bones of his enemies. 😌
My man also killed a man by biting a chunk of his throat by just his teeth, he’s cruel but half loyal, i’d say, because he does seek a woman, but he couldn’t go further, he needed amelia too much.
So, they share their firsts with each other.
Even after being free, nestore still is very much trapped by his darkness, and nightmares, so amelia kills her father, and puts it all at rest.
Learning the truth makes nestore angry, he takes some space for himself, and later realises that he couldn’t kill achille, and that f••••• had also buried his mother’s corpse with his father on top, knowing that his father killed her mother. That f••••• did not want nestore to rest, even in death. Nestore buries his mother respectfully, roses were her favorites, and they both together do it, because nestore couldn’t bring himself to. Nestore then decides to dismantle the old mansion, where the pain, the memories, and the darkness lingers, and decides to build a new castle. A lot of s••• happens in between. Flavia’s son gets kidnapped by amelia’s uncle, and then is killed by achille’s chimps, lol.
Nestore’s mind or rather the author’s mind is just perfect.
Achille thinks Amelia will save him, but does not know amelia does not feel love for him, and kills him with a gun she stole from her bodyguard.
Amelia also gets killed by sasha’s nephew, and she manages to kill him instead, while nestore was away. She’s not weak, and i liked that. Also, achille’s body is given to fishes, to eat and rot, in the ocean, like he deserved.
The story ends with them happily, amelia as his love, life, and light. ( A lot of what nestore endures is because of amelia, and that’s why he was alive, or he’d be dead sooner)

What I loved : i loved the story, although it made me cry, especially when nestore’s nails were cruelly plucked out. I loved how nestore wanted to dress amelia in white only, not red, because she had seen too much blood, and he wanted to protect her from it. I loved how nestore did not liked to be touched, and only let amelia do it. I also loved the events of the story, i didn’t think i’d read 43 chapters in two days. The book is good.

What I struggled with : nothing.
Loveable characters or not : nestore is loveable, and amelia grew on me, but I still love nestore more.
Strong character development : not strong, but there’s character development.
Plot driven / character driven : a mix.
Favorite quotes/ highlights :

• “Happy birthday,” he said quietly, his eyes forlorn. “I don’t have a present.”

“You being alive is a present.”

• “Do you like it?” I asked, unable to bear the silence any longer. Seeing Nestore eat cake in the dirty, cold cell made me desperately sad.

“It’s delicious.” He let out a sigh. “Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t still give me glimpses of good things in life like delicious food. Sometimes I just want to drown in the darkness down here.”

• I gripped the bars. “Don’t give up. Promise me. We’ll find a way to get you out.”

-“I don’t know if I would want to survive without you. Thank you for helping me.”

I froze. “You don’t have to thank me.” I slanted him a look over my shoulder. He was looking down at his legs. “I need you to survive.”

• “Don’t die. I want you to experience beauty again,” I whispered thickly, despair clogging my throat.

Nestore opened his eyes. Those green-amber irises made my heart jump as they always did. “If I die today, it’ll be in the presence of true beauty.”

• I kept my eyes closed. Now he had another way to torture Nestore, but maybe it was better this way. If I took the torture, Nestore’s body could heal.

• “I’m decent. You can turn around.” Tears filled my eyes at Nestore’s consideration. He was so sweet to me. I wished I could have saved him today.

• Nestore’s face flashed with despair. “I want to protect you, but I don’t know how.”

“At least, we’re always together now.”

Nestore pressed his forehead against the bars separating us. “You don’t belong in here.”

“Neither do you.”

“Sometimes I forget who I was before this.”

“I’m here to remind you.”

• Jealousy reared its head. The idea that Amelia would marry someone else felt like a dagger in my chest, but Flavia was right. If that meant Amelia would get out of here alive, then I’d choose that option.

• I wasn’t sure how, but I wanted to save her. I didn’t care if I died doing it. Amelia wouldn’t survive years in this cell, and I wouldn’t survive without Amelia.

• I took his free hand, the one that wasn’t clutching a knife. “Nestore. We must leave.”

The moment he looked back down at me, I knew he couldn’t leave. An apologetic gleam filled his eyes.

• “This is my fight, dove. It’s always been. I can’t leave.”

After everything he had to endure, why couldn’t he seek safety? Why did he want to risk everything again? And for what? “Why? Is this about power?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes lighting up with resolve. “Power means I’ll be able to protect you.”

• “Sometimes you are kind to me.”

He tilted his head, the tendons in his hand holding the doorknob tensed. “You are the exception to everything.”

• I scanned the menu in front of me. It didn’t have any prices, which confused me. “Why are there no prices?”

“Women don’t get the menu with prices,” Nino said. (🤭🫠💃🏼😌🥹)

• “I guess you’ll have to toss him into the tiger enclosure,” I said.

Nestore turned to me with a curious look.

I shrugged. “He tried to butcher me with a meat tenderizer.”

• I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips. “I’ll be waiting for you. Come back to me soon.”

“Trust me, I need your closeness more than you can fathom.”

• Lev crawled toward the fence. “Please! Please! I’ll do anything to make you forgive me. Just tell me what to do.”

“Die,” I said.

• I loathed the idea of leaving Amelia even for a second, but I needed to make sure she was safe, and that meant I had to erase any thought of Amelia from my enemies’ minds. They needed to dread her name. Once I was done with the mediocre Pakhan in Los Angeles, even the Bratva would know that Amelia was on a pedestal.

• She sighed, and I tightened my hold further. “I need to leave in the morning to deal with the Bratva, dove. I can’t allow them to think they can attack you without raising hell.”

• He removed his fur coat and covered me in it, then he put his bone crown on my head. He fell to his knees and pressed his mouth to my belly, then tilted his head up to meet my gaze. “You are my queen, Amelia. You are the only reason my heart is still beating. You are the reason I remember I’m human, not a mere beast. I want you to reign over our city by my side.”

• “Everything I endured was worth it because it brought me here.”

I nodded. “I love you.”

Nestore shuddered. “My love for you has been the anchor in my life, dove.”

• “I am, at this moment, in this place, and I feel peaceful.” She took my hand and smiled.

I brought her knuckles to my lips and kissed them. “I’ll tear down the manor. Next week, it’ll be gone, and we’ll have room to build a home without history.”

• Amelia beamed up at me. “I feel free. Really free, for the first time in…” She shook her head, her brows pulling together. “In forever.”

I wrapped my arms around her and put my chin down on the top of her head with a small smile. “When I’m here with you, I sense peace. In the outside world, the darkness always spills forth, and I’m the raging monster everyone fears, but in our home, I’m more than a beast.”

• The notes I played ruined the beautiful melody. I never had trouble handling a knife, but my fingers, scarred by years of torture, weren’t nimble enough to match Amelia’s skill. I jerked my hands back with a scowl. “I’m not good. I ruined the song.”

Amelia froze. “You didn’t ruin anything.” She reached for one of my hands and traced my scars with her fingertips. “I love your hands. I love how they give me pleasure, how they wipe away my tears, how they touch me as if I were the most precious thing in the world.”

• I took my bone crown off my head and removed the heavy fur coat, then stashed both of them in the wooden chest in the cloakroom. Those belonged to the man, the monster, outside of these walls, not to the man I allowed myself to be with only Amelia.

• My life doesn’t have a void I need to fill.” (regarding children, yes, woman, tell them, voids can’t be filled by using children as a solution)

• Amelia drew in a deep breath and leaned her head back against my shoulder. “Sometimes I forget the past. It’s strange and catches me by surprise every time it happens, but I love those moments.”

“I learned to focus on the moments from the past that I cherish, like when you first read The Tale of Peter Rabbit to me, or when we held hands through the bars, or when you smiled at me. That makes the past seem not quite as dark.”

She nodded. “That’s true. There are moments of beauty even in our past. I wished there was a way for me to travel back in time and tell young Nestore that this would be his future, then he’d never want to give up.”

I chuckled. “But, dove, young Nestore had a vision of that future, and that’s why he survived. You embodied that vision, which was why I couldn’t let you go.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and a soft smile curled her lips. “I’m so glad you kidnapped me and made me your wife.”

Similar book recommendations : if you like mafia romance, then read cora’s other series.
Any other details : + other details i forgot — nestore also keeps tigers in an enclosure, where he feeds the bodyguard’s body to the tiger who dares to attack his amelia. He also frees the chimps that achille used to use and drug them. The chimps wreck a havoc on the port, where the uncle meets nestore and they exchange achille for amelia’s brother luciano. The throne and the crown being the refrences for nestore wearing his enemies’s bones so that he can terrify people, and they never dare to think that nestore will be vulnerable boy who couldn’t save himself nor his amelia. He wears black boots, and a fur coat, because fabric does not feel good on his scarred skin. He also makes sure Flavia has a place to stay, after her son gets kidnapped and he brings both of them back.
Nestore also wins a lot of fights that are scheduled by remo and nino, making the man who is feared by many.
The name “madman” — he gets it because of his cruel and almost detached way of killing someone.
Eating a chunk of their flesh, killing them with his bare hands, not bating an eye, when someone so much so dares to touch amelia.
And the roses on the cover — I think they are reference for nestore’s mother, they were her favorites.
I’m happy with this book, tortured men are my favorite. The restraint, the violence is all so good.
I’m colourblind, do not question my sanity, i do that a lot) after finishing a book.
Like rina kent said, psychos are only good in books, but not in real life. I agree with miss. The title of the story comes from the way people address them both.