 by Charmaine Pauls.jpg)
Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
A deal sealed with a handshake promised she’d be mine. A broken vow ripped her from my future. I made unspeakable sacrifices to claim what rightfully belongs to me. After all the blood I shed in her name, the bond that ties us is hatred. The war cost us both dearly, but the price we paid won’t be in vain. I’ll never let her go.
If she thinks she can escape her destiny, she hasn’t seen the worst of me yet.
If she thinks she knows the devil in me, she’s about to meet the monster.
Hate Like Honey is the second book in the Corsican Crime Lord series and ends on a cliffhanger. Sabella and Angelo's story continues in Tears Like Acid, Book Three.
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Corsican Crime Lord, Book One
On Sabella Edwards’s sixteenth birthday, she meets the enigmatic twenty-year-old Angelo Russo who shows up uninvited at her party. He’s dark and breathless like the ocean, the one thing she loves most in the world. Their attraction is instantaneous, but her father, Ben, orders her to stay away from Angelo. Ben claims that Angelo is from a bad family. Little does she know that her father promised to marry her to the powerful crime lord and that Angelo traveled across half of the world to meet his future bride.
Angelo manipulates Sabella’s mother into letting her keep a rescued cat. This gift means more to Sabella than the priceless gold and diamond bracelet the Russos offered her. During an intense farewell the following morning, Angelo tells Sabella that all her firsts are his. He orders her to wait for him, asking her to be patient, but refrains from telling her about the marriage contract.
When Ben refuses to acknowledge the oath he made, Angelo sets out to claim what’s owed to him, including not only a portion of the shares and voting rights in Ben’s company, but also the woman destined to be his. In order to bend Ben to his will, Angelo schemes to steal a book that contains evidence of bribes Ben made to high-ranking criminals and government officials.
Angelo gifts Sabella a phone that she keeps secret. During the next year, they have regular contact. A solid relationship develops over the distance. One year later, Angelo is back on the day of Sabella’s birthday. She lets him into the house when her family is asleep. In exchange for her first kiss, Angelo gives her his signet ring and instructs her to never remove it. When Sabella dozes off, Angelo uses the opportunity to steal the book.
Sabella is devastated when she learns the truth. She confronts Angelo at his hotel, only to discover that Angelo is having her watched. She throws his ring back at him, telling him she never wants to see him again, but he threatens to brand the insignia on her skin if she doesn’t wear the ring. No matter how hard she tries to escape the dangerous Corsican, her efforts are futile. Even though Angelo returns to his home thousands of kilometers across the sea, he effectively controls her life.
Deciding that Angelo was bluffing, Sabella flirts with an older boy at her friend’s birthday party, only for Roch, the man Angelo employed to keep an eye on Sabella, to throw the young man into the pool. The web spins tighter around her until she’s consumed with anxiety and fear.
On her eighteenth birthday, she suggests losing her virginity with her best friend and neighbor, Colin Taylor, but Colin and Sabella have grown apart since Colin hooked up with his girlfriend. Colin rejects the offer, informing Sabella he’s no longer a virgin. Her isolation from her friends and her slow withdrawal from the world is complete. A little intoxicated during her party, Sabella finally reaches a breaking point and flushes Angelo’s ring down the toilet.
The same night, Angelo shows up to claim another first. In a spiteful effort to even the score, Sabella lies about having given her virginity to someone else. The sex that follows is angry and vengeful but no less explosive. To punish her for removing his ring, Angelo renders her unconscious and brands her with his family emblem.
Sabella is woken to incredible sex and a permanent brand on her skin. Despite Angelo’s insistence to go public with their relationship, Sabella doesn’t want her family to know that she betrayed them not once but twice, first by allowing Angelo to steal her father’s book in order to blackmail him into signing over his shares, and then by sleeping with their enemy. She returns the Ferrari Angelo gives her for her birthday, inviting his irk.
While Angelo returns home and finalizes the planning of his marriage to Sabella in the European summer, Sabella enrolls into university to study marine biology, still unaware of Angelo’s intentions.
The Edwards family goes through an eventful period with the birth of Sabella’s nephew as well as her sister’s wedding. Sabella’s sister falls pregnant shortly after. Her family is far from perfect, but, despite the growing tension between her parents and her father’s preoccupied behavior, Sabella feels a sense of belonging when they gather for her brother’s birthday celebration. For once, everyone seems happy.
In the meantime, in the Russo household, the preparations for the summer wedding are in full swing. The garden has been transformed and the wedding dress delivered. On their way to sample the wedding cake, Angelo’s mother and his twin sister are killed in an accident when his mother loses control of the car and drives off a cliff. Angelo knows his enemies are behind the accident, their real target having been his father.