Boozy Bookgasms - Stockholm Syndrome or True Love?

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

The ladies discuss another Sadie Kincaid masterpiece and dive into the world of mafia romance. Pour yourself a Negroni and join the fun!   Dante by Sadie Kincaid Signature Cocktail: Negroni Ingredients: Gin, Campari, Sweet Red Vermouth, with an Orange Peel garnish Stir 1 oz (1 part) Campari, 1 oz (1 part) Gin, 1 oz (1 part) Sweet red Vermouth into a glass over ice and garnish with an orange peel. 

I'm ready. Are you sure? I thought I'd ask two or three more times. Are you ready? Is what you should be asking. Are you having to? A lot. A lot happening.

And for some boozy bookgasms today. Join three cousins creating a titillating headspace where steamy romance novels collide with strong cocktails. So sit back, sip slow, and enjoy the ride. Hello, everyone. And welcome back. I'm Jen. I'm Kim. And I'm Lynn. And today we will be revisiting another Sadie Kincaid novel. We are going to talk about Dante today. This is a mafia romance. So I'm excited to dive in and I'm excited to do another Sadie Kincaid. I really loved Perfect Fit. So we'll see what she's got in store with Dante. I liked it. So we'll start there. Yeah, I think it's hard not to like say, I mean, if you can get past some of the cheese. Then some cheese. Yeah, some cheese. He does have a lot of stalker stuff.

I hadn't really put that together, but yeah. Oh, this is a full on Stockholm syndrome type of. That's so typical, though, with the dark romance and especially with the mafia. I feel like I've read so many where they like definitely kidnap someone. Well, and her affiliation with the mafia. You know, she's got like, well, she has that contract. Yeah. Exactly. So what are we drinking tonight?

Well, I picked the cocktail tonight. So we're going with a Nogroni. It's a classic Italian cocktail to go with our Italian mafia main character. It's bold. It's sophisticated. And it's definitely something you could see our main character drinking in a dark bar with leather chair. So it's a third of Jen, a third of bitters and a third of red vermouth, maybe a little orange slice at the top. Very delicious. And I'm enjoying it quite nicely tonight. I could see myself having one of these with Dante. With him in the bar. On his lap.

Or his brother. Whoever. Or his brother. Whoever. Or the best friend. I mean, they're all hot. We have choices. And there are other books that give us to them.

And they're coming. Those choices. We do start with the prologue of the Moretti men are meeting together and discussing the father, Savator Moretti, wants the brother. Lorenzo to get married. This would be an arranged marriage that would marry two mafia families. It's a business arrangement, basically. Well, Lorenzo's not interested because, you know, we'll find out later. He's in love and he's engaged. So then poor Dante, who's number two, and the family is told he has to marry Nicole. The older brother gets kicked out. Dante's in as the head of the family. And off we go. We jump ahead to six years later and we meet Kat.

Kat is just getting home from work and walks in to find two huge men in their home. We figure out later that that's Dante and Maximo, and they are there to collect on a debt that her brother has with them. So she's pretty feisty, like she throws a baseball bat at their heads. She runs to her room to get a gun and tries to shoot them. I mean, you wouldn't two mafia guys in your house when you get home from work. some seedy apartment complex. Like, I mean, I do worse than that. And she lives alone. And she lives alone. And like we come to find out, right? Like she didn't used to live this way. This is like a kind of a newish circumstance for her. Yes. Yeah. We start finding out she's had some trauma.

They overpower her ultimately. I mean, kind of tie her to a chair in the kitchen and try to try to get her to tell her. Where's your brother? Where's your brother? She has no idea. He left town. He took all her money. He's a wrong. He's kind of a slime bag. Not kind of. Big time. Yeah. And then you find out how much bigger of a slime bag he is throughout the book. Like he's the worst. Yeah. So basically, they figure out they're not going to get anything from her. And they kidnap her. Behave little kitten. He warns. His eyes dark and unreadable. You won't like me when I'm upset. Contante takes her back to his place. I get like the ransom, right? So, like, like to get the brother to work off the dead. He's not a little sure what his plan is. He's got the

thoughts for her and he wants to bring her bags at his place. So why don't kidnap her? His body's like, what are you doing, Dante? But I think he's intrigued though, right? He's like, this chick. Because she was a spitfire. And she's like, I'm going to duke it out. I'm going to shoot at you. I'm going to throw stuff at you. I'm going to fight back. And I think this is very intriguing. for him. And, you know, and I thought, I felt like they were very light on her as far as mafia goes. At the beginning, yeah. I think he liked, and we'll find Dante, you know, he's not the type of guy that's going to beat up a woman. You know, no, he's a soft spot. But I do like when she punched him and it was like pushing a brick wall.

Yeah. He didn't even feel it. Very descriptive. Yeah, you can just envision what he looks like, you know. I could see the abs, you know. Totally. I can see what's going on there. So they bring her back to his place. It turns out the brother owes him $250,000, and he tells her she can work it off. And she gets a little scared, like, that she's going to become some sort of sex slave or something like that.

And he reassures her, that's not my plan. He messes with her a little bit, but then he's like, all right, all right, you're a nurse. I know you're a nurse. You can work it off with your nurse. You're an ex-nource. Ex-nors, right? Right now, her life. because of trauma and circumstance, which you find out later in the book.

And the brother. Her life has just completely changed. And now she's like a maid or like an office building type person alone, doing her own thing, working at night only, very, very seedy. And off the grid, like so no one can find her, right? But you don't really know why at this point. Yeah. Something definitely happened.

And he's picking up on that. And he's actually treading lightly around it. I felt like he was pretty respectful. So she was a kidnaping. Around the manx, like getting a little bored. And then one day, Dante comes in and says, I need your help. So she goes into the medical room. I guess he's got a medical room.

I didn't even think about it. He does. He has like a makeshift doctor's office, like in the basement or something. Yeah. They used to have a doctor. He died. Oh, he died. Yeah.

They just said he was dead. The mafia guy got stabbed. She gets called in to stitch him up. And his name's Lenny, and he's like a cousin or second cousin of Dante's. He's kind of a wimp. He's a big crybaby. And so eventually she stitches him up, but Dante's noticing like, wow, she's really enjoying this nursing stuff and keeps wondering like what happened.

That goes well. She goes back to her room. And later that evening, she's a little hungry. And she decides she's going to go down to the kitchen, but she doesn't have her regular PJs, so she just throws on an oversized t-shirt. and sneaks down to the kitchen thinking they're not going to run into anybody. Who could, who could she run into in this mansion with all these bodyguards? All these high guys?

No way I'll run into any of them. She does first run into Lenny, the guy with a stab wound. And he's a little aggressive. Lertie. Hortatious. Like he touches her back and she flinches. And that's when Dante walks in and sees it. And he's not lucky.

He all right. He has a very bad. possessive, like there's, there's fire. Like, he's real angry about it. So he tells Lenny to get the hell out of here. And then this is like one of my favorite parts of the book. He asked her, whose t-shirt is that? Because he knows it's too big to be a women's t-shirt. And he gets her to admit it's her ex-boyfriend's t-shirt. That t-shirt. It's too big to belong to her. Who's shirt is that? Mine. Whose was it, then? An ex-boyfriend.

So you're walking around my house wearing another man's clothes. And she's like, we broke up. Like, it's not a big deal, but I just like it because it's really soft. And he's like, you are in my house and another man's t-shirt. How very dare you. Yes. After you kidnapped me, how dare I wear another man's shirt? Yeah.

But also, like, he let her pack a bag before he kidnapped her to the mansion. and she chose to take this thing and all the things she took. So, yeah, he's feeling possessive. He doesn't really quite know what to do with her. And then he's like, maybe she's hung up on this ex-boyfriend. He doesn't like that. And then Lenny's, like, basically, like, groping her in the kitchen.

Yeah. He doesn't like it. But he fixes it. Yeah. He says. He's a problem solver. He's like taking a shirt up right now in the middle of the kitchen. Clearly, you're wearing no undergarments except for a thong or something.

And she's like, would you please turn around? he goes, nope. My picture and my rules. And you have no option but to not be here. I mean, they're in just underwear. And he throws a t-shirt in the garbage and gives her his shirt, which I guess must be some kind of fantastic Egyptian cotton or something. Because she can't stop raving about how amazing the shirt feels.

She's a 200-dollar t-shirt or something. I think it was an Oxford. It was like an Oxford. Yeah. I thought it was just a T-shirt because, Doesn't he buy her like a pack of him later? He does. Yeah.

But I think he unbuttoned and I remember her rebuttoning. She goes upstairs, rolls around the badness shirt and can't believe why is she so attractive to this guy like, you know, and she realizes she's starting to get a little stock home eat. Meanwhile, Dante goes out to the parking lot and chops off to Lenny's fingers for touching what's his as he should. I mean, he hasn't even claimed her yet, but he's like, how dare you? grow up this girl in my kitchen, so I am going to cut off your fingers. I mean, a little.

Yeah, but I think Lenny was kind of skeezy, though. I don't remember it'd be. I'm 100%, but it's not looking you. Like, you didn't know. Yeah. It did seem like an overreaction, but obviously she's setting the scene, right? Like, he has basically claimed her without telling her, and he can be a hot head. We get a peek into Dante in that moment. Like, he will kill anyone that, even goes near her. Like, he is, he's not messing up. Yeah. So poor Lenny, after getting the wound stitch up, now he's like leaving with two less fingers

and basically a rag. He doesn't even send her back in to get stitched up. It's like in the car and leave. I don't think you stitch up fingers, yeah. I feel like that's probably worse than a stab wound, you know. So, anyhow, yeah, he ends up buying her some T-shirts. And that turns out to be like kind of what she's. She wears every night and every night at the same time she goes down to the kitchen and runs into him.

And there's some sexual tension building. So one night, he fingers her by the fridge. As one does. He blocks it. I mean, she's kind of asking for it. Yeah, she is and she kind of knows it. And then the next thing we know, they end up in his office and they make a bet because he's like, I know you want me.

And he's like, give me two minutes to make you come. And then I get to take you out to my room and bang you. Or you can just, we'll go our separate ways if I can't accomplish it. Of course, he's Dante. Of course he accomplishes it. He accomplishes the mission. She tries not to. And yeah.

Dante. Well, Anne, I mean, there is something hot with like a possessive guy who just like takes the control, right? And like really just was like so confident. in his ability that in relation away. Yeah. So the sex capades begin. I mean, it's just a one chapter after the next.

A plot to string together to sex scenes. Very hot. Including another sex scene of a woman on her period. Sadie, Elizabeth Kincaid, what are you doing to us? Like, why? Why must be the present... Well, listen. There's only so, there's only so much

So many chapters, so many weeks in a row that this book represents, girls can't have her period, okay? They can't skip a week of sex. Like that, what are they going to do then? I just didn't need the visual. I'm putting her bloody tampon on his nightstand. Oh, when you say it like that, like, like that's why I'm horrified.

I'm just not as freaked out about this as you guys are, but when you talk about it, it freaks me. It totally skips me out. Yeah. How are you reading this and going, there's nothing wrong with this? I totally just did not. It just not even. Yeah, I'm just focused on the sex, okay?

Like how they get there, it's like not really my problem. But I'm in the same boat as Lynn. I'm reading it. I'm zooming past it. But now you're bringing it up again. I'm like, oh. Yeah, it's on the nightstand. It's creepy how you explain it.

Yeah. You're right. It's gross now that you say it out loud. But when I'm not reading it, shit. I'm in. He's past. Yeah. I just can't get past it. So anyway, Dante does discover in their first few sexual escapans that she is terrified to be taken from behind. And he realizes, okay, she's been assaulted. She has a really gnarly scar on her back. I feel like he handles it perfectly. Like he's very sensitive, but he's asking questions. You can tell he cares. He wants to

help her work through these issues because he really wants to bang her from behind. Behind. We said that. I mean, yeah. The fix the earth to solve problems. Yes. So eventually they stopped using condoms. They stopped using condoms when she's on her period because he thinks you can't get pregnant on your period.

And I don't know if that's true or not. It is a common sort of assumption, I think, that you cannot. But I think it is false. It is false. I think so, too. See, this is often a romance novel thing, too. They've never had sex without a condom until they met you. How many of those are not like people. And in the book, you're like, it's totally believable. And in your life, you're like, yeah, whatever fucker. Like, I'd like to find that. Please. Yeah, you say that. You're immediately gone. And she knows. She knows the guys.

name, right? She knows the mafia name and she thinks he killed his former wife. Oh, that's a good call. She's a little terrified of him throughout. He's hesitant. Right. Yeah. She's sort of has this attraction to him, but there's this rumor, right, that he basically, so the woman Lorenzo said he wouldn't marry and therefore got kicked out of the family. Dante gets committed to. And then there's this rumor that he's basically killed her and her entire family. Right. And then, And he moves on, right? So when he first shows up to her house and kidnaps her, he's not married. Like, the woman has died. She's disappeared. We don't know where she is. That ends up tying up really neatly in the end. But it is throughout the book, she's always like,

ooh, he's still kind of scary because he murdered his fiance. And, you know, like, then Sister Joey shows up. Okay. They're in the middle of their romantic escapades and everything's all, you know, sex all the time. Sister Joey shows up, actually, while they're having sex. She goes to meet Sister Joey, who's kind of a bitch to her. She's kind of a spoiled mafia princess. The two brothers will not let her out of their sight. Mainly, they're just super overprotective. Very overprotective.

But she gets cat alone and says, hey, if you ever want to get out of here, I'd love to, you know, stick it to my brother and help you escape. Yeah, because she's still technically, like, on house arrest. Like, she's been gapped. Even though there's this whole attraction and they're having sex all the time, like, she still can't leave the home. because she is a prisoner. I think she can talk to what her cousin. Like every now and then he will give her permission to call out. Right.

He's running out of clothes. She's stressed out. Joey shows up. Joey's the little princess. She is a beach. Oh, and she's just trying to make it. She's trying to make it hard. She makes comments under her breath about, you know, yeah, once he's done with you,

he'll throw you. There's all this intimidation going on. on and here's this poor girl who's hot to trot for this guy, but terrified of him, but yet can't go anywhere or do anything about it. She's totally torn, right? I mean, obviously, if you get kidnapped it, then start having sex with your kidnapper, like you would be torn. But she's like, she almost like doesn't want to leave, but then realizes like she has to, right, to maintain her independence. Like, she can't just stay here forever. So she takes, she takes the sister up on, on the escape attempt. Oh, wait. No. Hold on. We're getting ahead of ourselves here.

First, she takes a pregnancy test. Okay, before that, she gets a little insufferable. She gets a little whiny. Oh, you're always being a mafia boss. He's never paying attention to me, and I feel used. It's like, what did you think this was? And so then she takes a pregnancy test, and she's got, she's pregnant, and then she gets scared that he's going to murder her.

So she tells the sister, I'll take you up on your deal. sister's just doing it to annoy her brother. It's really to be bored. She wants to have some fun. She thinks this will be like a real big laugh. They get caught. Ida and the bestie. Maximo knew it was coming.

He had, because they like sneak through the dark passages of the house or. Oh yeah, like secret passages. And Maximo's on the other end going, yeah, no. This isn't happening. Let me take my back upstairs, sister. So Sister Joey apparently has used these back back an escape hatch right when she was a kid to escape during high school to have parties and no one

ever knew well turns out they knew they did know maximum always knew and always had an eye on her and the next book's about joey spoiler alert so and maxima dante's real mad and he takes her and puts her in a really shitty she was in pretty nice accommodations before now she's not she's in like a basically a prison room with no tv no books no nothing And she's pregnant. Well, he finds out that she's pregnant, though. She told him because he's choking her to death. And she goes, I'm pregnant.

And then he's like, he's so, he's so mad. Right. Like, he's like basically, like, she's the one for me. And she tries to escape. And then it like reverts all the way back to like, this is worse than he treated her when he first kidnapped her. Oh, yeah. She tries to kill her. She admits she's pregnant.

He stops trying to kill her. But then essentially, like, just locks her in a room, walks away, right? Like she has zero interaction with anyone. He tends to make in there with food and a pregnancy test. So she's like, fine, I'll prove it. She pease on the stick. So then he doesn't let anyone visit her. The maid isn't allowed to talk.

It's a different maid. His original maid really liked her. But this maid is different. All she's doing is dropping off food. She's not answering question. She's not making eye contact. She starts feeling really isolated. And then she starts getting really sick.

She's vomiting. She can't even keep water. down. It's getting really bad. And the maid starts crying to Dante and says, she's so sick. I can't stand watching it. And he's like, oh, she just wants attention. She's faking. Yeah. She's a faker. She's just trying to get my attention. Joey basically takes pity on her and he says, fine, bring her a couple books tomorrow. Joey goes in and realizes this is bad. Like she's lost weight. She can barely sit up. She's really, really sick. She runs down, tells Dante, serious. this is really serious and he's like oh my gosh get out of my way i'll go in there he takes one look at

her freaks out picks her up runs her to the emergency room basically gets judged by the doctors and that he should yes that he should he didn't that was not okay yeah she's got a hyper pregnancy which is awful yeah she's puking she can't keep anything down so they give her fluids they kind of get her back to normal but i like how the doctor like gets rid of him or says, will you please go to the nurse's desk and get hurt something? And so then it's just the doctor and cat. And she tries to say, like, are you okay? And Kat's like, I'm not going to endanger this woman by telling her I'm being held hostage. Like, plus I'm kind of in love with a doctorate and I want to have it. You know, but I mean, but the way, yeah, but the way it's

posed, it's like, if she said anything, right, this woman's toast, you know, so she's like trying to protect her. But I do. I agree. There's that underlying, like, she doesn't really. feel unsafe with him, so she's fine to go back. Yeah. So they go back to the house after she gets healthier. He says, you're staying in my room. And slowly, they kind of get back on track. He does the right amount of groveling. He ends up proposing to her. And they, so now all as well. But basically, there are, there's three main storylines rippling through the book. The first one is the assault. her assault that she's recovering from. Yes, that she was assaulted.

We don't know who did it. We don't know why. The second one is the rumor that Dante killed his fiancé Nicole and her entire family. It's always in the back of cat's mind. She doesn't have the full story. The third is that a bunch of the mafia guys, including Dante's dad, were at Little Caesars, which I'm sorry, that feels a little cliche because they are a civilian mafia, but whatever. So they are in Little Caesars.

there's a shootout. And Dante's like, this is weird. I don't have beef with anyone right now. And the whole book, he's trying to figure out like why his guys got shot at. Why? There's these thriller aspects. Yeah, that's like kind of mystery. So they all sort of tie together when Maximo finds Kat's brother in Los Angeles. Oh, wait. No. Hold on. First, I forgot about this part. First, these two mafia guys come to visit Dante. and Cat recognized one of them has like a hyena laugh or something. Well, it's his dad's like, it's his dad's lacking. His dad's cronies, yeah, who show up at the house and he hears them. She hears them and she knows it's the guys that assaulted her.

And she like peer pants or something like she has like Dante. He's like a visceral reaction to hearing this laugh and he picked up on it. But also by this point, Lorenzo, the big brother is back, right? He's in the meeting with, in his wife, the one he married, the one he turned down Nicole, who's presumably dead. But is back with his wife who is recovering cancer. And he's in the meeting with these two cronies. And Dante sees this official reaction from Kat and acts immediately. And he walks up behind them when they're all talking and he can see her like in the eyeline.

And she just freezes and just wets herself. Can you imagine though? I mean, you know, it's a bit of a hokey kind of cheesy book. But I mean, there's some like really serious underlying sort of storylines here. Can you imagine being being assaulted thinking you're never going to see these person and then like their voice just like in your ear? Like. Yeah. For years. But again, Dante's a fixer. Yeah. He is a problem solver and he was going to solve that problem for her. They don't. They don't have a pleasant death. He really, he didn't like them anyway. give him a fucked up. Oh, yeah. The most horrific death

thought of. The death was bad, yeah, but he was, he went hard and almost romantic, like, oh, and he didn't like these guys

anyway. He was trying, he was like trying to be nice to them because they were filled with his dad, right? Yeah, but as soon as he found out that, oh yeah.

The, the death scene, torture scene here is, well, I'm not even going to spoil it. It's worse than the Tampa. Yeah. But there's still a lot.

But who knows to Sadie? Because I'm thinking like, where the hell did you get this? This is so intense. Very visual. I could not stop through. I'm like, what's going to happen next? I don't know how far you want to go done with the spoilers. But let's just say there's like four Viagra involved.

And two men. And two men. Getting killed. Yeah. A dungeon like scene. Yeah. It's really, really awful. I feel bad for them for one moment.

Oh, no. And you never have that anymore. It's like I said, 10 out of 10. Horrible way to die. Like, he didn't right. But this is like the two sides of the same coin with Dante, right? Like he is quit to react when he's pissed, right? Cuts the fingers, this horrible dust scene and whatever because of Cap.

But then he's with her and you have this like sort of soft side where you like, you totally want to be with Dante, right? Like he's like this like lovely human when he's with her. That's him. He's loving. He's strong. Might have the kidnapping and then the, you know, the isolation thing. I'm going to say the kidnapping. Because the kidnapping was done very well.

I mean, he did kidnap her. He let her back. He took her in my clothes. He put her into this beautiful room. He starts flirting with her. I mean, the isolation, the isolation was the worst part of how he treated her was, yeah, really bad. And he felt as he should have. But like, like, I think he was so hurt because he felt like you're, you're not only leaving me, you're taking my unborn child.

He was obviously forgetting the fact that he had kidnapped her, right? But yes, totally. I think it was her. That's why he treated her that way. Like, it was definitely a visceral reaction. He's a hothead. Like, he just makes these, like, snap judgments. I don't think he'll do it again.

I mean, I think he's out and love. They're over it at that point. And then she really is in love with him and he knows she's in love with him. Yeah. Once they got to that place, then we were in a good spot. So they do end up getting married. She becomes really good friends with, Lorenzo's wife, Anya, and with Joey, and they help her playing the wedding, and Dante takes her

baby shopping. Like, things are really good. Things seem like they're good. But the dad's learned to take her from behind because they now worked. Yeah, they got. Oh, yeah, they worked through that place. Yeah, he can find. That was important for him.

That was huge for him. Yeah, he really needed that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But the dad's lurking. Like, there's still drama. There's still. Okay.

So here's the beginning of how we tie everything up. So Maximo calls and says, I found the brother. They fly out to L.A. to kill the brother, right? But before they kill him, they get him to tell him what was going on with those two guys. Spill it. So the brother says, I basically gave her as pain. He was in death. Yes. And also, the dad knew about it. It was approved. It was approved by the dad. So Dante's dad. Dante's dad knew about all of this. He knew. He knew. He knew. He knew. He knew. He knew. knew exactly what happened to her. And he, he was fully, he was fully compliant. Yeah. Yeah. So like the brother, so her brother owes the dad money. He basically sends the lackeys to to the brother to get paid back. And he's like, I can't pay you. But here, take my sister as collateral, basically. And so they did and like assaulted her. And that's how she knew their boy. I think he tried to give the money back to the dad because they don't want to die. And the dad said, no, we'll take the sister.

Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. And then like, even as Dante is the hot head, he still got that soft spot for for Kat, right? And he gives the brother another opportunity. Well, he does. Yeah. He says, you know, he goes through the conversation again. And then he's like, the brother again says, oh, well, you're already having my sister. We're good then, right? Oh, he's no problem with it. Because he doesn't know that they're in love. Like, he has no problem. He is the worst human. Well, he's not an event. No. Now he's a bloody pulp. He's dead. Dante, again, solved a problem for her. He's a brother. His brother is no longer a problem. You got to respect. You got to respect. So the next stop on Dante's world tour is to go by his dad's house. He's pissed off because he knows his dad knew and kind of played stupid. And played stupid. I mean, he mentioned that dad tried to dance. Yes, I was going to say the dad tried to dance with her at the wedding, and he said, you never get to fucking touch her ever. Right.

They were getting until that that shooting at the Little Caesars might have been because their dad kidnapped a woman that was a sister of these other gangsters. And so they're like, he's hiding something. He's touching garbage human, but we've only known that. The relationship between Dante, his brother, Lorenzo, and the death. was always sort of fraught, right? Because he made Lorenzo out and Joey, right? And they're really trying to protect Joey from the dad. They're really trying to keep her away from him.

And so it's always been fraught. Then they start to realize the dad might be sort of part of why they are in this difficult situation. So it's like it's not like they just decide the dad's a bad guy. But this was like the nail in his coffin, right? That he knew what was going on, why cat got assaulted and didn't say anything. Backing up, he also finds out at this point, I believe, that the dad had actually slept with or raped or had a piece of the girl the post to marry too. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. So this is like, this is not the first go-round with this. He's basically like a serial rapist, kidnabber and human trafficker. Yeah. That's what we find out when he goes to kill his dad. He first shoots him in the kneecap. The dad spills it all. He's like, all right, fine. The whole reason because he was like, why did you send those two guys to my house? Why did you send me to her house? What were you, you know, what was your end game here? And he admits, I thought when you went to collect Leo's debt that you would kill her and you didn't. Basically, he thought she saw, when she was kidnapped by the two guys, they were also cages of women and children in the same home. And he thought Kat saw those. So he wanted Katte dead because he thought she saw that stuff.

She was, like, yeah, spilled a being. He was trafficking. And you find out that children. That's why she was living this sort of, you know, hidden life after her assault. Like, she basically went away so that she could just get a hate. And just a, just an interesting, you know, if you're, if you're a fan of the Sadie Kincaids, there is a book called Kyrus. That is about one of the kids he kidnapped and her revenge on the family. Like she, and it's very, very good.

Yeah. It's a wide choose. Yeah. It's my favorite. Yeah. Both in the series. After you get past the brothers and the best best. And the sister, yeah.

And I didn't, and this, I will say this is a standalone. Like, I haven't read Joey or Lorenzo, but I read this one and I read Kuras and there wasn't any, I didn't feel like I missed anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they were both good. But I want to go read the others because, because I don't know, Sadie Kincaid. She's good.

She was my kind of romance. Basically, he kills the. the dad, he comes back and tells Kat, you know, sorry about your brother. But she's kind of still kind of sad. Like, I mean, and you kind of want to be like that about it. He was really protective of him, even though he basically sold her into slavery more than a months. She didn't know that.

Yeah. But then he tells her and, you know, I think he has to. He does. I mean, let's be real. It's five pages. Like, it's not an ongoing thing. Like, she kind of gets past it. And so then he says, I want to go take you somewhere.

They get in the car and they go for a drive and they end up at Nicole's house. Turns out Nicole's a lesbian and she lives. And not dead. Not dead. Living her best lesbian life in the country with her child. With babies. Yes. Who is?

Who is the son of Dante's dad? So it's Dante's brother. 10. Yeah. So Cat realizes I've been scared of him this whole time and he really never dead anything to his wife or his fiance. So he saves her, right? So the idea is like he was supposed to marry her. She was having, like the dad was raping her. The one of his men was raped. It was a really horrible. Her brother and dad. Yeah. We forgot about her whole situation. So they were in. So Nicole's family and Dante's dad were in this human trafficking ring together. So he basically fakes her death and sends her off to live her best life, kills her dad and her brother, and then now has killed his own father.

And so he's proving basically he's not a horrible person to his new wife. The Russian mafia guy is partnering with Dante's dad on the human trafficking. So he kills his dad and frames the Russian. So he can like kind of two birds, you know, now I got rid of two problems. Yeah. I mean, this may have solved some problems. He's he and his brother and they've been supporting their little brother and this family for years. Uh-huh.

They make it through. So just crazy. The dynamic and the storyboard and the storyline on this one was nuts for me. It does. And it all connects. And like the, I mean, we said like Sadie, Sadie's a great author because she does have these little Easter eggs all throughout. And then at the end, you're like, oh, that makes it like how it all like sort of fits together. And I think that's sort of a dichotomy of dauntity.

is really good. He's this mafia guy. He'd have to be brutal to be a mafia guy, right? But then he has this, you know, soft spot for cat. And, you know, you love that relationship. Obviously, the sex is hot. So really well done, I thought. I thought so too. So I, to me, this was three and a half four-star. There's a lot of cheesy lines. There's a lot of clips I was listening. And I did listen. I will say this is a good audio book because the man and woman partner really well when reading it. So anytime there's a line Dante says, the man says it. Sometimes with audiobooks, you have a woman reads a chapter, then a man reads a chapter. So she's doing both voices. So this one, this one is done very, very well. And I like, I like the man voice in it.

It's really, it's hot. I don't think he's hot in real life. I'm pretty sure I googled him, but the guy, the voice, I'm picturing Dante and it's, it's all good. Nice. I read it. I read the, the. Oh, you did? This one I did not listen to. I read it. I read through it very quickly. I enjoyed it. I would give it. I would probably give it a four, maybe even a four and a half for me. What's different with this one and her last one that we did, the perfect fit, I felt like it all tied together. I didn't feel like there was like an all of the sudden, hey, we're in the mafia. You knew it from the get go. You enjoyed it the whole way. We're not adopting puppies here. We are saving lives and stopping and trafficking. is what I've made it four stars. What's happened to do? No, we're just having babies with our kidnapper.

Yeah, exactly. It's same. I also would give it four stars for this genre. Like, I thought it was well done. It was written well. I thought the scenes all made sense. I agree.

There was something kind of random that, like, came up out of nowhere. And, you know, their relationship was really sweet. And it was super fast to read, totally like an easy, you know, weekend beach read that I really enjoyed to. And I thought the,

I thought the sex was hot. Like spice factor. The spice was, you know, yeah, three to a half, four star flight, you know, spice factor,

definitely. But it wasn't, it didn't feel so much like it was a scene connecting sex scenes. Like it did feel like there was a plot and there was something to read,

but the sex definitely like, you know, bolstered the enjoyment. And like the WTF moment. I mean, with the, with the two guys, that alone,

yeah. Take out what was coming to know. You did not see that coming. I didn't see that coming. It was very explicit. It was barbaric. You know, you felt like, okay, good. They died off. Yeah, you kind of didn't. But while I didn't expect it, like, as you're reading it, you're like, yeah, okay, like that's, that tracks. Like, totally make sense for this character. But that whole creative, you know. You know, creative. It's imaginary.

Where? Like, is there like a dark web you can go to and be like, Hey, what is the absolute worst possible way to fucking kill a rapist? Oh, this is it for sure. This is the key. You need to put it out there for the government. Because this was horrific. I mean, even some like, didn't they like slice the word a horror or a slut in the key?

That was a scar on her back. Yeah. So he basically just gave it back to them. Yeah. Yeah, they had to get their own scars. Yeah. And then, you know, they live happily ever after. And they have their baby.

And, you know, he's now in charge of the mob family because he killed his dad. So, yeah, now he's the big cheese. He's the big cheese. I think he and Lorenzo are like equal partners. I think eventually Joey too. The next book is Joey. And then Lorenzo. The sister.

Yeah. The sister. Yeah. And then Lorenzo, I think, ends up marrying Kat's cousin. Oh, interesting. Well, because he's married in this book to a cancer. The wife has a right. Like she gets sick again.

Yeah, she's going back through it. He knows that she's on, she's out of her mission. Yeah. Yeah. So then his book is like him finding love again, right? Like getting through the grief. Yeah. Yeah, they're all on my shelf.

They're stacked and ready to go. Oh, you have the whole series? She has her book award. The trophy wall. The trophy wall, her book trophies. Yeah. No, I do think it's funny because I do have them all lined up ready to go and I cannot wait to dive into them.

Oh, that's going to be good. Well, and you've got a flight coming up, so stuck those up. After you. That'll be awesome. All right. All right. Well, good one. Ladies, this one was really fun to recap.

So we'll have to see if we can top Sadie Kincaid. We'll do a different author next time. Until then, happy reading. Today's episode was the climax of your day, leaving you breathless and wanting more. Until next time, remember to indulge in the pleasures of life and to keep the passion alive. You can find more tantalizing episodes at boosybookgasms.com. Enjoy the ride. And we'll see you soon.