Book Review: Forever

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

What It’s About: Annabella wakes up in the middle of the night because of a text message from Damien claiming that he knows, so she calls him to learn more. Damien tells her that Liam knows about the two of them, and warns her that Liam is most likely on his way over to her apartment to confront her. He offers to come by as well to help her and protect her because he is not afraid of Liam, but Annabella tells Damien to stay away because she can handle Liam. Sure enough, Liam shows up as she’s finishing the call, pounding on the door to the point that he almost breaks it. When she unlocks the door, telling him that she was dead asleep, he accuses her of not even giving them a chance. Liam then tells her that she’ll see what he has planned for them to get a real chance, before storming out. Damien shows up afterwards, and sees the broken door, but doesn’t do anything about it right away. Instead, they talk about what had happened, and Annabella tells him that she wants to talk some sense into Liam by meeting up with him, though Damien tells her that it sounds like Liam threatened to kidnap her, and that she should meet him in a public space. Anna agrees.

A couple of days later, Damien leaves his office at the bank and Liam is waiting by Damien’s very expensive car in the parking lot. Liam tries to fight with Damien there in the parking lot, thinking that his bulk is going to take down Damien fast, but Damien is able to avoid him pretty quickly, and knowing that Liam will not stop coming after him, he shoots Liam in the bicep to get him off. After all, he had promised Anna that he would not kill Liam because that is not what she would want, so this was his best option. Anna meets Liam later that same day at a restaurant and attempts to talk to Liam about thing, even noticing the wound, though Liam tells her that Damien shot him when she asks. Liam tells her that he will kill Damien unless she agrees to move with him to London, away from everyone and everything, and give him a real chance. Anna considers it because she cares deeply for Damien, but then tells Liam that she will not do this, so Liam threatens her further. Damien shows up later that day with a new door, and fixes it himself for her so that she doesn’t have to live with a broken one or call the super. The two of them talk about what happened—both the fight, and the conversation that Anna had with Liam. When he hears that Liam continued to make threats that sound like he would very much go through with kidnapping her, Damien convinces Annabella to move in with him for her safety.

She moves into his place, in a different room on the same floor, and struggles to do what she thinks is appropriate, which is not to move on quickly with another man after her divorce. She loves Damien and wants to spend time with him but is worried that not enough time has passed between her divorce and her moving forward with Damien. She doesn’t want it to seem like she cheated on Liam, but that does come to pass a few days later when Liam texts her that he knows that she’s moved in with Damien. She doesn’t go anywhere, because Damien asked her to stay working from home for her own safety as he worries that Liam might snatch her from the hotel, so one day she gets invited to have lunch with Catalina, Damien’s sister, and Richard, Damien’s dad. She has a splendid time with the two of them, though both Richard and Catalina are gushing about the fact that Damien has a woman stay with him, which is not something he has done in the past. They are both excited that he might have found the one woman for him and believe that it is serious if she’s there. Anna finds them both endearing.

A few days later, Catalina invites her for lunch out, and Anna accepts it because the restaurant is not far and she’s been cooped up for a while. They eat their lunch together and talk at the restaurant for some time. Then, as they are leaving, Liam shows up and tells Anna to stand up. He yells at her when she doesn’t get up at all, and this enrages Catalina, who promptly kicks his ass, making him fly across another couple’s table. The two of them get out of the restaurant while Liam is down, and Anna realizes that the threat is real, to the point that she feels bad about having left the house. When Damien is home, he is furious with Annabella because she left the house, and she apologizes to him for that along with admitting that she did not realize that Liam was that serious or that he would have found her there. She doesn’t tell him that the lunch was Catalina’s idea, but she does tell him that Catalina took Liam out by kicking his ass. Damien is surprised, but goes to check on Catalina at her apartment. She admits to him that it was her idea to take Annabella to lunch, not realizing that Anna’s ex-husband is that crazy to try to steal her in broad daylight. Catalina also admits to Damien that she learnt to fight from a former boyfriend, and that it was enough to get the guy down. He warns her that she should be careful who she fights anywhere because it could have serious repercussions. Catalina tells him she’ll try. Damien returns home loving Annabella even more than before because she has shown loyalty to his sister by not throwing Catalina under the bus.

One night, Damien invites Sofia and Hades along with their son, Andrew, for dinner. Annabella catches up with her boss and they talk about Andrew for a bit, before turning to the topic of Anna’s relationship with Damien. Anna tells her about her thoughts around moving fast and it being appropriate, but she doesn’t go over why. Sofia tells her that considering her history with Damien, she should do what she wants to do and be with him, rather than what Anna thinks is appropriate. After they’ve left, Damien tells Annabella that he invited them because he knew that she was getting lonely and wanted to have a social life. She is grateful to him for it.

A few days later, Catalina and Anna have a girl’s movie night in Anna’s room, and they both get drunk. Catalina follows Damien into his room asking him for more alcohol. Damien finds her obnoxious, and gives her a vodka bottle containing water as her next alcohol of choice. The next morning Catalina comes back to Damien to talk to him about Anna, calling her Damien’s girlfriend. At first Damien resists the term, but then during the conversation he himself uses the term, and Catalina leaves feeling proud. Later that evening, Anna comes crawling to him still feeling hung over. She lays in his lap and after making out with him, she goes to sleep in his bed. Slowly, she moves into his bed, sleeping with him, and over time, she shows him that she’s ready to have sex with him by leaving her test results on his nightstand. Damien deals with Heath coming by to his drug lab, and antagonizing him. At one point, Heath makes a comment that lets Damien know that Heath has something planned with Liam because Liam is also Heath’s client. He asks Heath about it, but Heath doesn’t tell him more detail at all, so he lets it go.

Once Anna and Damien start having sex, they spend a whole day having sex. Then, during a break that they take from the sex, they go into the living room to eat and rest. Before long, Damien makes a move on her in the living room, and they start to have sex rather than making love. He’s a lot rougher on Anna during their fucking, but they are barely into it when the living room glass that is supposed to be bulletproof shatters. Damien instantaneously makes his way towards his gun, but Liam gets behind him and places a gun to the back of Damien’s head. Anna screams, and covers up, but then tells Liam that she will go away with Liam if he leaves Damien alone. This has Liam lower his gun, but Damien talks to Liam to get Liam to focus on Damien, rather than Anna and to protect her, including telling Liam to go ahead and shoot him. Liam tells Anna that his offer of keeping Damien alive is off the table anyway because she didn’t go with him the first time. He proceeds to shoot Damien, but Anna jumps in the way and gets shot, which shocks Damien as he was expecting to have blood on him and feel pain. He realizes quickly what happens as Liam starts crying and freaking out. Damien is calm and collected as he figures out what to do with Anna, rushing her out to the hospital while leaving Liam behind and telling him that this is Liam’s fault because he couldn’t let go of Anna wanting him.

Damien brings her to the hospital and she undergoes several hours of surgery because the bullet had hit her spleen, kidney, and another organ that has to be stitched together. Hades and Sofia arrive at the hospital to sit with him while they wait on news, and tell him that it will be all fine. It takes another 36 hours for Anna to wake up, during which Hades encourages Damien to shower at home because Damien hadn’t left the hospital or Anna’s side once she was placed in a room. Damien does just that, and then comes back to replace Hades. At some point while waiting, he gets on a call with Hades to check in with him, and stands outside to take the phone call. That is when he sees Liam come into the hospital, and Damien hangs up. He blocks Liam from entering Anna’s hospital room, telling him to leave and never come back to see her, because she won’t want to see him. Damien reminds Liam that it’s his fault that she is in the hospital in the first place.

When Anna wakes up, they talk and she spends a few days and weeks healing from her wound. One afternoon as Anna is about to go to sleep, a nurse comes in to check in on them, and she says that it’s too bright in the room, so she closes the curtains, and then before Damien realizes in full what is happening, she injects him to put him to sleep. When he wakes up, Anna is gone.

Annabella wakes up in a different room, inside a house that she quickly recognizes is not Damien’s home. She wanders around and recognizes it as Liam’s country estate in Tuscany and hopes that Damien will check the information on Liam and her to find out about this place. She makes her way to the kitchen, where she finds Liam, and she is pissed that he has kidnapped her from her bed. He gives her food but she throws it onto the floor, smashing the plate. Liam doesn’t react, and so Anna returns to her room, where she proceeds to lock herself for days. Liam brings her food to her room, leaving it outside of the door when she won’t open, and only once she is sure that he is gone, she grabs the tray and eats the food to keep her strength and continue healing. One day, however, he surprises her while she picks up her food from the door and barges into her room. Anna tells him that she will never love him, not matter what he does and he won’t be able to brainwash her into feeling differently about him. Liam doesn’t do anything to her beyond sitting there at the chair and telling her that they have always worked it out by talking, and that she’ll feel differently once she spends some time with him. He tells her that she promised him to try to work it out before she got shot. Anna tells him that it was before and it doesn’t matter anymore because she won’t do it. Liam continues to show up in her room to sit with her, but she ignores him for the most part when she eats. At a different conversation sometime later, Anna tells him that she doesn’t care what he does to her—even if he rapes her—she will never look at him the same way ever again. Another day, she has thrown food down on the carpet in her anger at Liam during their lunch, so she hadn’t eaten. As a result, she heads downstairs to the kitchen to make herself some food and overhears Liam talking to someone on the phone. During the conversation, Liam mentions kidnapping Catalina, which horrifies Anna and when Liam finishes the conversation, annoyed that she had heard, she begs him to not do it to Catalina. Liam doesn’t care at all because he believes that Damien will turn himself over for Catalina so that Liam can finally kill him.

During this same time frame, Damien has been trying to find Liam, but he’s failing. Hades even calls around his contacts and asks, only for him to come up empty handed. Damien is wrecked because he doesn’t know what Liam is doing to Anna, and Hades understands that very well, though Damien tries not to think about it. He knows that he has to get her out because he doesn’t know how to handle her being harmed. The two men realize that Damien could do one thing—reach out to Heath, the Skull King. So when Heath comes by for his next pickup of cash, Damien asks Heath to help him get Anna back. Heath tells Damien that he’s not going to roll on a client, even though Damien too is his client. This angers Damien, but he knows that he doesn’t have any other option beyond trying to find Anna another way now that Heath won’t work with him.

Heath watches Catalina dance across the floor, and then waits for her outside the separate door for cast members outside of the theater. He follows behind her as she walks to her car, and wonders if Liam was lying about her because Catalina doesn’t appear to be paying attention to her surroundings at all, while digging through her bag. When she pauses, and he gets close enough to her, she smacks him with her bag, and stabs him several times with the knife she pulled from her bag. He manages to choke her and make her pass out, before putting her into the passenger seat of his truck, but she pops out of the passenger side doorway once he’s far away and runs. Catalina runs to her apartment, where she calls the police to tell them that she’s almost been kidnapped. The police do not do anything, telling her that the plate number does not exist, and the officer seems bored. Heath shows up at her apartment, going through the door, and so Catalina crawls out of the window onto the balcony, before making her way down the fire escape stairs. She has a bit to go to the ground, so she jumps down, thinking that she will land on the ground, only to find herself being caught by the man, who drugs her.

Catalina wakes up in a cage, and the man only introduces himself as the Skull King. She keeps chattering a lot with a lot of sarcastic comments, including putting together the fact that Liam has Anna, and wondering what he wants to do with her. Heath gets annoyed with her constant talking and nagging, even more so when she nags him about using the restroom. He lets her go to the bathroom, even going as far as untying her hands, when he lets her into the bathroom. He is surprised—though he knew that she was going to try something—that Catalina came out of the bathroom with a plunger and chases him around the space with it because he doesn’t want to be anywhere near the bacteria of that thing. He eventually manages to grab her, wrench the plunger away from her, and puts her back in the cell. Heath taunts her with the plunger momentarily before leaving, but she also now knows that they want to use her to get to Damien. That night, Heath comes back with a sandwich for her, and before he makes it to her cage, he hears Catalina praying. She prays for Damien to find Anna, and to not come to save Catalina. She asks God to let her die in Damien’s stead, and to help her father find peace when he finds out the truth. Heath decides that he cannot go through with this, and later calls Liam to lie to him that Damien never responded to Heath’s calls. Heath convinces Liam that he challenge Damien to a death fight, which Liam agrees to when he realizes that he can use this to kill Damien in front of a crowd that includes Annabella, breaking them up for good and breaking her for good. Soon after, Heath grabs Catalina, drives her home and tells her that she is free.

Damien gets a phone call from Heath while he is with Hades, in which Heath tells him that Liam wants a Death Fight that night. He agrees to it, though neither of them like this option because Damien doesn’t want to die. But it’s the only way that they will find Annabella as they do not have any other leads. Both Hades and Damien also realize that the reason that they’ve only been given 12 hours notice is so that Damien cannot prepare ahead of time against Liam and to have a bit of a disadvantage. Catalina shows up at Damiens house, and gives him a hug, telling him that she loves him. She asks him about Annabella and the Skull King, and when she learns that Damien will be fighting Liam, she tells him that he is going to have to do things in a way that Liam doesn’t expect. Damien is bewildered by her show of emotions but he doesn’t worry too much about how Catalina knows things because Anna is his priority.

Liam speaks to Annabella and tells her that she has not choice but to go with him to the Death Fight, telling her exactly how it’s going to go. He takes her to the ring, and has Anna surrounded by five of his cronies so that she won’t run away from him by slipping into the crowd. It’s the first time that she sees Damien in weeks, and watches him from the other side. She realizes that Damien doesn’t have much of a chance against Liam, though Damien mouths to her that he will try and win. Anna decides to even out the fight for Damien, so she goes up to Liam and apologizes to him for her actions, telling him that she loves him and will go away with him, before wishing him luck. This calms Liam’s fury enough that he’s not fighting Damien with anger behind every punch. Damien realized what she did for him, and thanks her with a nod, as this will make it a bit easier on him. During their fight, Damien is a lot quicker than Liam, using his speed over Liam’s bulk to get Liam to tire himself out, and without Liam’s anger, he’s able to get a leg up on him. Damien gets on top of Liam, then starts twisting Liam’s head and spine to kill him. Damien realizes that even though he has Anna’s blessing to end Liam, this will destroy her, so he offers Liam a way out—as long as Liam doesn’t come anywhere near them ever again, he gets to live. Liam agrees, through he is ashamed for having lost the fight.

Liam walks over to Annabella after the fight and talks to her—asking her about what she said to him. Annabella admits that she didn’t mean it at all, and they have a heartfelt talk saying their final goodbyes before going their separate ways. Damien comes by and the two men shake hands, making everything good in the end. Liam leaves the arena, and Annabella turns to Damien, more in love with him for being merciful to someone she cares about even though he did have her blessing.

Annabella returns to Damien’s place with him and after two weeks of them being together, she decides that it is time to move out to her own place so that they can do the appropriate steps in the relationship. Damien offers her to move in with him for good, telling her that moving back into her place and acting like their relationship doesn’t already have the history in order to start anew, isn’t fair to either one of them. He adds that he doesn’t care about what the proper way of doing things is, and he would have already asked her to marry him if he was sure she would say yes because he already knows that she is the one for him. Annabella ultimately agrees to move in with him, and they pick up her stuff from her apartment, which she moves into his closet. They start to go out to restaurants again, and she returns to her job at the Tuscan Rose, but they also have a conversation about Damien’s drug operation. During this conversation, he tells her that he is not ready to leave it just yet, but he will want to do so in the future when they start a family—something that he is sure will happen despite her miscarriage and history, though he is content to be with her. Anna agrees to stay with him despite the risk it poses.

My Thoughts: The ending was not what I expected—I thought that Liam would have won and made Damien’s life harder than it needed to be, by paralyzing him or beating him so badly that he’s a broken man. But I am glad that it did not turn out that way, and that Damien has a bigger heart than he lets on. I really enjoyed Annabella’s and Damien’s love story as it was a softer story of two people finding that they love each other through the stuff that they go through and still being gentle with each other. That said, the Heath and Catalina perspective is interesting, and I’m curious to find out of that is the next couple in this series that we will be seeing, and if so, what that will look like. Looking forward to the next book in the series, and I wonder if Damien and Anna will have an epilogue then because they didn’t have one in this book.