5 Smooches!

Synopsis

Adam

Payback’s a bitch — or it would be for Elle.

Fifteen years ago, my sister was kidnapped. For months, she’d endured hell. Somehow, she’d survived it. Someway, she’d escaped her captors. But it hadn’t mattered. In fact, it had been like losing her twice, because six weeks after she came home, she was dead, and the man responsible was alive and well, oblivious to her fate, ignorant to what he had coming.

Fifteen years I’d been waiting for this moment, all that time, planning, preparing, readying to put things into motion. To finally make the SOB pay for what he’d done.

Killing him was too easy. Too quick. No. There was a much better way to exact revenge.

Take what he loved best.

Break it.

Break her.

I just didn’t realize that in the process of destroying the girl, I’d destroy myself.

Elle

“I only want your pain.”

I hadn’t understood what those words meant, not really. Not until he made me understand.

I noticed Adam the very first day he moved into my building. He was a badass on a bike in a thousand-dollar suit. When he looked at me, it was with a hunger just this side of obscene.

Our meetings were strange, accidental. Too coincidental. There was something about Adam. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

Something I couldn’t resist.

He told me I didn’t know him. He warned me to run as far from him as I could. He was moody. Dark. I’d found it romantic. I didn’t know, and I wouldn’t realize until it was too late that he’d meant for me to heed his warnings. That some part of him had hoped I would run, that I would escape him.

For too many years, vengeance had fueled him. It had taught him hate. The object of that hate? My father. And me? I was the means to my father’s end. Adam would destroy my father by destroying me.

I accused him of being a monster, of being no different than those who took his sister, but even in the harshest moments, all I could see in his eyes was pain. And like a fool, all I wanted was to touch that darkness.

To make it light.

Retribution is a full-length, complete Dark Romantic Suspense novel. No Cliffhanger. Intended for mature readers. Contains BDSM content.

Review

“…I’d steal her life, just like they’d stolen mine.”

Adam Smith was a man with a plan – an evil, horrific plan of vengeance, of retribution.  He’s spent the last fifteen years plotting, planning and preparing for this moment. He will make them suffer as he and his family have suffered. He’s ready, he’s thought this through. He knows what he’s doing, what he has to do. He’s ready for anything and everything…or so he thinks.

“Turning a blind eye does not absolve you. It makes you an accomplice.”

Elle Vega was raised in opulent wealth by her father and nannies following the death of her mother when she was a baby. She never wanted for anything, never needed anything and never really allowed herself to fully consider where the money was coming from. But was it because she was the greedy, spoiled girl Adam had assumed she would be? Or did the love she had for her father stop her from digging deeper? After all, if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the awful truth about the kind and loving father she so adored.

“…sometimes, when evil kept winning, good had to resort to any means necessary to get the upper hand.”

Adam seizes a chance opportunity to set his plan in motion. He meets Elle when he comes to her rescue. He seduces her, he befriends her, he takes her on a date. He kidnaps her. With Elle as his captive, he begins to carry out his plans, all the while losing parts of himself he didn’t expect to lose, feeling things he didn’t expect to feel and questioning his purpose and the consequences of his actions every step of the way. When it came down to it, to that moment of truth, the point of no return, would Adam be able to go through with the final piece of his plan? Or would Elle’s humanity reach out to him?

“…he couldn’t have known it would break him while he broke me.”

He believes he’s a monster; she sees the good in him. He questions who he’s become; she knows exactly who he is. He wanted her pain; she can’t turn away from his. In his darkest moments, Elle sees his light. Who, exactly, will wind up broken in the end? And who will emerge from all this pain reborn?

“I set out to destroy you, but in the end, it destroyed me.”

You know how people say that a book had them ‘on the edge of their seat?’ Yeah, this book didn’t do that for me; no, it had me up and out of my seat, pacing at 1:00 AM and cursing loudly throughout the first third of it. I was shocked, I was unsettled, nervous, and, most surprisingly, I was angry, so freaking angry. But much to my surprise, my ire was aimed not at Adam, but at Elle! I know, I know, she was the victim here! But despite that fact, I couldn’t help it. She made me absolutely furious in parts, like groaning out loud and expletive-filled ranting mad. And yet, in other parts, the very things that made Elle so special – her compassion, her insightfulness and her amazing ability to see through the evil to the good in people and love them despite it – had me both adoring her and loathing her, sometimes within the same scene. Such a baffling contradiction of feelings, they literally churned through me in a confusing, schizophrenic battle where neither was ever really the overwhelming victor. I just had to accept that I both loved and despised this character equally.

Of course, while reading the book I, at least, had the benefit of Adam’s inner dialogue, which gave insight to the reader of his turmoil and conflict and was one of the key essential elements in this character’s development. But, Elle didn’t have that; she only had the amazing capacity to see the good within him in spite of the evil of his actions. I found it very unsettling just how much I empathized with and even liked the villain of the story, Adam. I was sympathetic to his reasons, even if I didn’t care for his methods. And that fact – that I preferred the villain to the victim – was what left me feeling so unsettled after reading this book. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing! This book caused me to feel so deeply, so vividly, so explicitly and that is a testament to just how well written it was!

I’m not the type of reader who can just pick up dark erotica any old time, plop myself down on the first cozy surface and read it. It’s the type of thing I need to prepare myself to read. It’s not that I don’t like dark erotica – I do – but it’s that I need to be in the right headspace to accept what’s going on, to be able to wrap my head around it and then to shake it off when I’m done. I’m still shaking this book off as I write this review, well over twenty-four hours after I’ve finished it, and I suspect that it’ll be staying with me for a while. But this was what was assigned to me, so prepared or not, I went in, apprehensive as hell, but ever the good little Red Cheeks Reads reviewer, I did it. And now having finished it, I can honestly say that I’m glad I did. I can’t say that I “enjoyed” this book–it’s not the kind of book you enjoy. I did appreciate the experience, and that’s what well-written dark erotica is: an experience. This book the pulled me in, doused me with terror, immersed in anger and feeling the desperation and the heartbreak of the characters and their plights. I had to be ripped to shreds before I could be set free to heal. This book definitely got a reaction out of me. It had my heart pounding, it gave me goose bumps, it got me out of my seat and pacing, Kindle in hand, as I read it.

If a dark romantic/psychological thriller is not your thing, this book probably won’t be for you. But if those feelings, that kind of literary experience is your thing, I’d absolutely recommend this one. It was incredibly well written and richly developed, with obviously relatable characters, and it was full of that delicious shock and awe and those hair-raising twists and turns that this genre is renowned for. If you can handle being angry, if you can take being a bit disturbed, and if you don’t mind a little pain with your pleasure, then you’ll be thrilled with Natasha Knight’s Retribution. Who knows, maybe it’ll even get you up and out of your seat, too. 5 smooches from me!

~ Danielle Palumbo

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