Book Review: The Ruler

Title: The Ruler
Author: Penelope Sky
Genre: Romance, Mafia Romance, Fiction

What It’s About:

Aurelia goes on vacation with her boyfriend of two years, Enzo, to Taormina from Rome as a way to reconnect with him as he’s been growing distant for the last six months with her despite living together. She has suspected that cheating was involved but she couldn’t find any information on Enzo’s phone that would show otherwise, and he’s given her excuse after excuse, but won’t tell her what is really going on. She snaps at him while they’re on holiday, so he puts his phone away, but a few days later, the two of them are at a restaurant that is hard to get reservations for because it is popular, when Enzo’s phone goes off. Aurelia is okay with him picking up his phone, but he goes off to the side of the street which pisses her off. But while he is gone, she notices a tall, dark-haired, brown-eyed man come into the restaurant and get a happy cheer from the workers there. She keeps staring at him until he stares back at her and she feels things that she hadn’t been feeling with Enzo for a while. She puts the man out of her mind. Enzo and Aurelia then go for dinner and she has had enough with it, and his distance, so he breaks up with her, then packs up his clothes when they return to the hotel room and leaves her behind on her own.Aurelia takes a couple of days to herself to recover, and then decides that she wants to go out on the town, so she goes to the bar of a well known hotel, where she runs into the man again. But when a gaggle of girls chatter about going after him, and one of the girls gets going towards him, Aurelia decides to not pursue him. Instead, she decides to pay for her bar tab and then head back because she doesn’t want to see the interaction between the woman and the man. But to her surprise, the man comes to her and introduces himself as Constantine. She introduces herself, they flirt and joke a bit, and then later Constantine takes her to his room where she has amazing sex. The next morning, Aurelia is embarrassed and tries to sneak out but Constantine tells her that to stay and have breakfast with him, which she does. He then offers to show her around the island as he grew up here, which is what they do the next few days around: he takes her to locations in the town, and by the ocean where she meets his friends.Constantine has Aurelia move into his hotel room after their day at the beach, and one morning he goes out to help his family with the cooking for the restaurant. His mom and his aunt ask him questions about the girl he’s been with, so he gives them Aurelia’s name, but not much more. His sister wants to know as well but he doesn’t really answer her. Eventually, he invites Aurelia to go with him to Sunday dinner, and she agrees. By this point, he knows that Aurelia had been broken up with as she had initially lied and said to him that she was with a friend, and Aurelia also learnt that Enzo had been cheating on her with Luna, his boss who is seven years older and has two children. She had found out because Enzo had forgotten to take his watch with him when he left, and it was buzzing so she was able to read all of the messages between Luna and him, where it turned out that Luna’s husband found out about them and wants divorce, so she demanded Enzo return.At the Sunday dinner, Constantine’s mother loves Aurelia and on one occasion Aurelia overhears her talking to someone in the kitchen about her hair and body, but in a good way, which warms her heart. On the other hand, Constantine’s sister doesn’t really like Aurelia and Aurelia had noticed that she was sitting with a girl who seemed out of place. Aurelia later overhears Constantine arguing with that girl, who turns out to be Isabella, his ex-girlfriend, who had kissed his twin brother not knowing it wasn’t Constantine and then never told Constantine about it, but kept having moments with the brother. He doesn’t want Aurelia to overhear this or come upon them but argues with Isabella that they’re done and over with and it’s his mother’s house so he can do as he damn well pleases. Aurelia sneaks off and helps Constantine’s mother bring out the cannoli, which Constantine arrives to help her with as well.They spend another few days together, and Constantine has to work one night, where he goes to see the Cosa Nostra, a mafia organization on the island, and comes back at 5 am in the morning. He had told Aurelia initially that he works in Private Security, but she suspects it is more than that. Constantine confirms it somewhat later during dinner, without really telling her the full scope of it, though at another dinner closer to the end of the trip, he makes it clear that he wants to keep seeing Aurelia when they return to Rome. He offers her to move in with him since she needs to move out of Enzo’s apartment, but she chooses to stay with her friend in her friend’s apartment instead, telling Constantine that she needs time to heal from the relationship and needs to take it slow.A week goes by and they don’t talk—Constantine works in the Roman Republic, while Aurelia does her photoshoots. Eventually, she gets a message from Enzo about picking up her stuff so she texts Constantine because she doesn’t want to go to him alone. Constantine shows up, picks her up and takes her to Enzo’s apartment, where he only lets her pick up the easy boxes and takes the heavier boxes to his car. Enzo is a bit intimidated by Constantine when they arrive, and seems to not have been expecting him, but at the end of the night, when Aurelia is about to leave, Enzo apologizes to her for everything, but it doesn’t matter to her at all. Constantine takes her for lunch and Aurelia tells him about her friend’s boyfriend, who creeps her out because of how he is staring at her when he visits Cindy, her friend. Constantine also reveals what exactly he does and what it entails, which freaks out Aurelia, and when they do try to go on a date on another day, the fact that there are men with guns in the car is what freaks her out, so he gets out with her and walks her to the restaurant. Aurelia is hesitant about being with him but admits to him that she is falling in love with him so she wants to know what she is getting into before it goes to far, and while she can still get out. This makes Constantine happy and even his second in command, Rocco, notices it.Constantine and Aurelia do have sex at her place, when he brings over the rest of her boxes from Enzo’s apartment, once she has moved into her new place. But then, things go awry—Enzo shows up at her new apartment, bringing her photos of her mom and dad, as he knows that they are important to her. Enzo begins to talk to her, apologizing to her, and seemingly wanting to say more to her, when Constantine barges in and chases him out. Aurelia is terrified of how Constantine is acting and she is even more incensed when he reveals to her that he knew Enzo was there because he is having her watched. She tells him that she wishes he was normal, which infuriates Constantine, but he shuts down and tells her that they are over. He refuses to listen to her, and she breaks down once he leaves. Aurelia tries to message and call him over the next coming days, but Constantine doesn’t pick up. Rocco sees that Constantine has been receiving the messages, and sees the change in mood in Constantine, but Constantine blocks Aurelia. Later, once they’ve conducted some of their business, and are back in their base, Constantine realizes that Aurelia has been unblocked because he is now getting her text messages. Rocco demands to know what happened, and Constantine tells him everything. Rocco then tells him that he’s also partially at fault for barging in on Enzo and acting like a lunatic, because at best it would have been a conversation between Enzo and Aurelia with nothing more since she is with Constantine. He begins to mull it over.Aurelia goes to meet up with Cindy, when Cindy’s boyfriend, Timothee shows up along with Pierre, a friend of his, in what seems to be a double date. She feels like she is cheating on Constantine, even though she has gotten the message that he wants nothing to do with her. And she is uncomfortable with Timothee and Pierre. Eventually, Cindy and Timothee leave her alone with Pierre and she tells Pierre that she’s not interested as she just got out of a serious relationship—namely thinking of Constantine. She drinks the wine upon returning from the bathroom, and the two of them leave, with Pierre pointing out that she’s tipsy and promising to get her to a taxi. As they walk towards the taxi, but really it’s an alleyway, Aurelia progressively gets worse and realizes she has been drugged. She texts Constantine 112 even though she knows she has no chance to hear from him, and when a van pulls up, into which Pierre tries to force her, she fights back—twice. Suddenly there are two headlights from each side of the alleyway, and the men trying to get her into the van scramble. She hears Constantine’s voice order Rocco to get her, and Rocco puts her into the back of the Range Rover, where a doctor is sitting and figures out what kind of drug the men used on her. While she is coming back to her senses, she watches as Constantine goes around breaking the men’s bones, which is extremely brutal, and when she is finally able to speak, Rocco asks her for the description of the man who did this to her. They find Pierre, but Constantine also sets all of the other men on fire. He then speaks to Pierre, who tells him where the man he was supposed to hand Aurelia over to is located, and ends up shooting him anyway. Constantine has Aurelia taken to his mansion in the city, while he goes off to search for this location and this man. She is placed in bed, and the doctor gives her a sedative to help her body fight off the poison in the system, after he explains that the poison was intended to make her brain dead.When Aurelia comes to, she is licked by Medusa—Constantine’s German Shepherd—and she finds Constantine in a chair near the bed. She wants to leave because she knows that they are over and is grateful that Constantine saved her. He surprises her though, telling her that he wants to give them both a second chance since both of them were partially at fault, but she has to be all in because he’s not giving up the job of the Roman Emperor of the criminals. Aurelia agrees to it because even though Constantine’s line of work scares her, her life without him scares her more, and so they work it out.

My Thoughts: