Rebel and Sophia’s story.The first of a three part series. This novel contains a small snippet which has already been released in the Owned: An Alpha Anthology, however it is followed by a full story installment.
Sophia
Sometimes, you don’t mean to become another person. Sometimes the choice is made for you, and pretending is the only thing that keeps you going. When Alexis Romera is taken and her kidnappers find her fake ID in her purse, she must become Sophia in order to keep her family safe. Revealing her real identity to the man she’s sold to would be easy enough, but can she trust him? Hell bent on revenging the murder of his uncle, Rebel doesn’t seem all that interested in playing things safe.
In fact, nothing about the secretive, dark and brooding MC president seems safe at all.
Rebel
What do you do when the man who raised you is murdered, and the only witness is kidnapped girl who’s being sold as a sex slave? You buy her, of course. As president to the most powerful motorcycle club in America, Rebel isn’t lacking in power. There are strings the man can pull, and entire criminal organisations and corporate businesses alike would fall to their knees. However, along with such power comes intense interest. The DEA have their eye fixed solely on the MC…and they’re just waiting for Rebel to trip up.
Getting Sophia to testify is the only way to bring the Los Oscuros cartel down. The beautiful, dark haired, dark eyed woman is belligerent and uncooperative and unlikely to bend to his will, but Rebel has a few tricks up his sleeve to make her compliant–he’ll charm her until she’s bending over backwards to please him.
Of course, falling for her might cause a few hiccups along the way…
“You gonna sit down or what?”I sit down. Arguing with him would be futile. We sit there, side by side, staring off down the arrow-straight road, and for a moment I don’t hate him. He pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and taps something into it, and then he turns to face me, frowning slightly.
“You believe in vengeance?”
“You mean like revenge?”
He shakes his head. “Revenge is a selfish act. Retaliation for something. Vengeance is a different thing altogether. It’s about obtaining justice, usually for someone who can’t claim it for themselves.”
This is an odd line of questioning but I decide I’ll bite. Maybe I wouldn’t if he were being a jerk like he was a couple of hours ago, but that’s not what’s happening. He’s pensive, the live wire that apparently runs through him dulled for the moment. “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably, in that case.”
“What if I simplified the question?
What if I say, do you believe in justice?
“Then, yes, I do believe.”
You believe in vengeance?”
“You mean like revenge?”
He shakes his head. “Revenge is a selfish act. Retaliation for something. Vengeance is a different thing altogether. It’s about obtaining justice, usually for someone who can’t claim it for themselves.”
Ever since I finished Burn, I have been practically salivating to get my hands on Rebel and Sophia’s story. After the tiny peak that we get in the Blood & Roses series, you already knew that this was going to be something amazingly good. And if you haven’t yet read the Blood & Roses series, don’t worry, because you can easily start with this book first.
One night where she’s in the wrong place and an even worse time, Alexis Romera’s life as she knows it comes to a screeching stop. She witnesses something that she’s not supposed to see and becomes a liability to men that you don’t even want knowing you exist. Taken. Sold. She is no longer Alexis but Sophia. Fearful for her family’s lives she keeps her true identity a secret while she fights to escape the clutches of men that wouldn’t think twice before slitting her throat.
I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Sophia after learning some of the things that I learned about her in the B&R series. But being inside her head definitely fixed that. Even though she’s young, this is one tough bitch. And luckily for me, her age never leads to any TSTL decisions which is so often the case. Callie Hart did a phenomenal job in giving the readers a heroine that while has her vulnerability and fear very much present, she still manages to maintain a backbone without being too obvious about it.
Now what can I tell you about Rebel? This was definitely a character that was not at all what I had expected him to be. He was more. So much more. This is no everyday anti-hero. While he is definitely still that, he also has so much depth to him.
I appreciated the fact that the author didn’t simply pain him in black and white. If ever there was a character that was very firmly in the gray area, Rebel is that. While he has his bad he also has a lot of hidden good which you get to see unravel piece by piece throughout the book.
I also appreciated the fact that there was no insta-lust to be found here. The relationship development between Sophia and Rebel is very realistic in the fact that it’s a slow build. I simply couldn’t imagine it any other way. While Sophia is certainly attracted to him right away, she’s also as equally untrusting of him. There was this delicious undercurrent of sexual tension throughout all their interactions that makes for some extremely interesting reading.
“Oh, Sophia. I use my brain. Every time I sleep with a woman, I’m using my head to figure out what she likes. How she likes it. What I can do to have her screaming my name until her throat’s raw.”
I loved that the author didn’t throw these characters together right away. You truly get to experience Sophia’s struggle with her circumstances and her attraction to her unlikely “captor”.
This is a continuing story arc that will have 2 additional parts, so it does end on a cliffhanger. However as interesting as the cliffy was, it wasn’t that bad because it’s more of a plot cliffy than a relationship one. If you were a fan of the Blood and Roses series, then this book is a must read. And if you haven’t yet discovered this fantastic author, there’s no better book to start with than this one. I can’t wait to see where Sophia and Rebel’s story will lead to next. All I can say is that the set up sounds absolutely delicious.
Callie has experienced many changes throughout her life, and gone through many ups and downs that have all worked towards shaping and molding her into the person she is today: fun loving, active, social, and hard working. The only thing that has remained a constant throughout her life is writing. Creating characters who will tear your conscience in two is a favorite pastime of Callie’s. There are few real saints and sinners in her books; more often, the denizens of her stories are all very human. Broken, flawed, and always with the potential for redemption.
Despite the subject matter being markedly hot and heavy in comparison to the stories she wrote in elementary school, there will always be an element of fairytale to her work.
You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
