*****4.5 Stars*****
Adam's sister was kidnapped by human traffickers when he was a teenager. She somehow managed to escape, but couldn't deal with the memories of her torture and abuse and killed herself. Since that day, his life has been consumed with getting revenge. He doesn't want the man responsible to simply pay with his life, he wants him to feel the same pain and devastation he himself has felt all these years. To accomplish that goal, he decides to take away the one thing he holds dear, his daughter. Adam slowly insinuates himself into Elle's life. As she starts to fall for him, he prepares to break her and in the process, destroy her father. What he doesn't plan for is the conflicting emotions he will feel and the realization that achieving the retribution the has desired all this time may turn him into the very type of monster he has spent so long hating.
Retribution is the first book I have read by Natasha Knight and I was impressed by her storytelling ability. A revenge plot is not exactly new, but she managed to keep me gripped from the prologue and had enough plot twists to keep the story feeling fresh and different. This was a dark read, though not as dark as I expected going in. Certain scenes read like a train crash, you knew you should look away, but you just couldn't tear your eyes away from the devastation unfolding. Adam was a wonderful anti-hero. His hatred and need for revenge warped him, but you could tell he was still decent somewhere. That decency lead to him questioning his actions as the story progressed which made for interesting reading. My favourite moments were when we were inside his head.
Elle grew on me a little more slowly. At first she comes off as naive and overly pampered. I didn't believe that she didn't know who and what her father was, it was just so much easier to pretend nothing nefarious was at play than to question the money she was surrounded by. Her inner strength came out as the story progressed. She was inherently good and even as Adam's cruelty came to the forefront, she held onto a desire to see the best in him and sympathize with his inner pain. Their relationship was wrong, but felt oh so right and was oh so sexy in the best kind of twisted way. Even if I knew she should run as far from Adam as she could, I desperately wanted them to see their way through the pain, cruelty and devastation. If you like well written dark capture/revenge storylines Retribution should be immediately added to your to be read pile.
Reviewed by Rosemary Feil
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.