Book Review: Husband

Title: Husband
Author: Penelope Sky
Genre: Romance, Dark Romance, Fiction

What It’s About: Sofia thinks about the offer to marry Hades, but doesn’t say much, beyond continuing to do the same thing every day—going to work, and coming home. So her mom springs it on her that Hades is already at their home, and that they should talk, which they do. Hades tells her that she will not find anyone better than him to protect her, and she agrees to marry him under the condition that her mom moves into his place after their marriage, since he doesn’t want to live out in the country side and she doesn’t want her mom to be left alone. He invites her mom to move in with them after the wedding soon after that discussion, telling her that she can take the whole second floor.

At work, she has a meeting with Maddox Stine, who tells her that he had talked to Gustavo before his death, and they were considering to throw his name into the pile of potential suitors for Sofia. She feels like he is dangerous to her, and wants him to get out as soon as possible, so she tells him that she is engaged, though he counters that she doesn’t have a ring on her finger. She tells him to whom she is getting married, and he makes a face telling her that she could do better. She feels really creeped out by Maddox and realizes that Hades is essentially a puppy by comparison in the evil scale, so she would rather be married to him than to Maddox. Hades and her talk later, and she tells him that she wants a ring, claiming that someone has offered to be a suitor and made a comment that she did not have a ring. After a bit of discussion, Hades takes her to a jeweler and she picks up an engagement ring that she likes. As they get into the car, he tells her that she is not to take that ring off ever.

They have dinner with Maria and she gushes about the ring that Hades chose for Sofia, and Maria also tells them that the ballroom at the hotel is available in two weeks, which Hades jumps on, saying that he wants to get married as soon as possible—that is what he had told Sofia earlier, but she tried to drag it out. One day, he comes into one of her board meetings, and watches while the men in the boardroom disrespect her and ignore what Sofia is telling them. So he speaks up and tells them that they are getting married and that they will give her the due respect she deserves or they will be dealing with him, and all of the men straighten up in front of her and let her finish the presentation that she had been sharing.

Sofia had told Hades that she will not be having sex with him until the wedding though he does try to get her into bed. They have the wedding two weeks later, and she moves in right to his house the same day, as her stuff is already there. They end up having sex that night, and the next day or two, Maria moves in. As time goes by, there is some tension between the two of them as Hades wants to have sex every single day, and he bosses her around to do it, while she bucks against his commands, refusing to be ordered around. He gets mad at her when she goes out with Esme and ignores his phone calls, texting him that she’s out with a friend and she will be home later. When she does get home, he tells her that he will always pick up her phone no matter what, and they are husband and wife so her priority should be to pick up phone calls from him as well. She realizes that he isn’t asking for much but for loyalty, which is what they had made as part of their conditions—that she will be loyal to him and he will be loyal to her no matter what, so no mistresses and that kind of stuff. In another instance, Hades gets mad at her because she refuses to have sex with him one night, and he tells her that he works hard and stressful work in order to protect her, and the only thing he wants is for her to be in bed waiting for him to give him sex when he comes home. That is what they end up doing every night, afterwards, when Sofia realizes that she cannot fight him.

Hades and Damien talk about Maddox, but Hades tells Damien to not go after Maddox because he doesn’t want to start a war. And Maddox is hard to pinpoint or find. Sofia on the other hand asks her mom about Maddox Stine, and her mom tells her that she doesn’t know the man, nor was he on her list of suitors. They’re both confused by Gustavo’s decision to include him in any sort of conversation about Sofia’s suitors. Then, Maddox shows up one day at Sofia’s hotel, and asks her to set up a conference room for him, which he has no problem doing. Then he talks to her about her marriage to Hades, and tells her that she can do better than Hades. She’s a bit freaked out about him, but she sees Hades behind Maddox, and when Hades recognizes him from the back, he comes up to them and puts himself between the two of them, telling Maddox to ultimately leave. But Maddox tells him that he has Damien, as Damien hadn’t stopped looking into Maddox.

Hades later calls Maddox and hears that Damien is being beaten up. He agrees to a meet up, where Maddox hands over Damien to him, in exchange for Hades giving up the business for good. Hades doesn’t like it but he prefers to give up the business instead of giving up Damien. He had told that to Damien when they killed Maddox’s brother, a while back, so it’s the decision that he sticks by, but he is so angry about Damien’s stupidity that he drops Damien off in Damien’s own house. It’s only Sofia’s caring nature that gets Damien to be brought over to their house and she looks after him for some time. She also pushes Hades to work it out with him, and at first Hades is hesitant, but he ultimately does talk to Damien. During this conversation, Damien reveals that he had talked to Sofia at some point and that she does not love Hades at all in any way, and that there is no chance for her. She had even said that even if she fell in love with another man she would not leave Hades, which is very depressing to Hades.

As a result of this conversation, Hades wonders if he could go back to the gypsy in Morocco and ask her what he can do to undo the curse. So that’s exactly what he does, and when he finds her, she recognizes him. She tells him there are two ways to break the curse—the first is the easiest one, but it means that he will need to let go of his feelings for his wife, forget about her, and get a divorce. This is not an option to Hades, so he asks for the second option, which the lady tells him is the harder one and he should just give up and take the easier one. After a bit more pushing, she reveals to him that he needs to gain forgiveness for the crime that he had committed, which was when he killed his father for not willing to give up human trafficking. At first he thinks that there’s nothing he can do but she mentions that he has a brother, which he confirms, so she tells him that he needs to repair the relationship with his brother and that will be enough for his father to lift the curse on him, because any father will want his sons to be looking out for each other.

Hades returns and Damien leaves their house because he’s gotten better since Sofia had been taken care of him. Hades decides that he wants to go to Rome to meet up with his brother, and he gets into an argument with Sofia because she doesn’t exactly ask if she can come with him, so he takes it the wrong way. But she asks if he could take her with him. So they go off to Rome for a week, where they check into one of Sofia’s other hotels, and they end up shopping around the area, though Sofia is very selective in her purchases. At night, Hades goes into the bar and then walks into the secret entrance that goes into underbelly where his brother Ash is. He meets with Ash, and they do talk, but Ash doesn’t want anything to do with him. He tries a second day, but also invites Ash to go to dinner with Sofia and him and meet his sister in law. They do have that dinner, and Sofia does make an impression on Ash, with her responses to his comments, but she does not win him over into forgiving Hades. Hades and Damien talk on the phone after this, and Damien tells Hades to use Sofia and have her have a one-on-one meet up with Ash, which she does do at a bar to go for scotch. They talk some more, and instead of pushing Ash to consider Hades’s offer to walk away from human trafficking and join the drug trade, she asks him to talk about Hades as a boy hoping to get him reminiscing and plant the seed for later reconciliation. They walk out of the meeting without any resolution, and so Hades and Sofia return back to Tuscany.

It’s at that point that Hades decides to shut down the drug operation, and the money laundering operation and tells Damien. Damien is angry because he doesn’t want to stop it, but Hades tells him that he has other people, namely Sofia, to think about now, not just himself. And he adds, that Damien owes him this for the stunt he pulled that caused them to lose the business in the first place. Damien then reveals that they have a problem—he had opened up the operation again because he thought that they were going to stick it to Maddox and find a way to kill him so that they could continue. This results in Hades working over time to remove the drugs off the street, and as a result he asks Sofia to stay home for longer from her hotel because he does not want her to get taken from him. He tells her what has been going on, and then spends the next week sorting it out.

Sofia gets a text message from Hades that he’s taking her out for lunch after a particularly slow week while she waits for him to sort out the issue. She doesn’t think much of it besides the fact that he cared enough about her to take her out, so she dresses up and heads out to the car, only to find herself locked in sitting with Maddox. He then puts a syringe in her after telling her that she could do better and that the reason this is happening to her is because Hades did not stop the operation like he promised.

Hades returns to the house and finds out from Maria that Sofia hadn’t eaten dinner with her because she thought that they went out, and that Helena said that Sofia wasn’t in the room. He runs up into his apartment, and finds out that Sofia is gone, and knows that Maddox has her. Sure enough, Maddox calls him and tells her that he has her and that he will not give her back to him ever. This shatters Hades beyond belief as Maddox tells him that he doesn’t want anything in exchange for Sofia, and tells him that he doesn’t deserve Sofia at all. Maddox then hangs up and Hades is crying for the first time.

My Thoughts: I am falling in love with Sofia’s and Hades’s story, their remarks and their tension, as well as the trials that they’re going through. Everything about this book has been enjoyable and I could not put it down at all! Looking forward to read the next one and see what happens with Sofia’s captivity.