Book Review: Lie

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

What It’s About: Heath is in a bar with his brother, Balto, talking about Damien and discussing why Damien is still alive considering all the problem that he caused for Heath. Heath is still a little salty with Balto for taking Damien’s call and coming to help him, and Balto explains to him that he owed Damien for saving his life some time ago, but now that debt has been paid, so Damien has no one. Heath is still mad about it when he notices Catalina at the bar with her friends. He tells Balto that the woman he kidnapped and let go is in the bar, and both men turn to look at her. They watch as Catalina gets mad at a guy making a pass at her in a way that she did not like, and she grabs him by the balls, before telling him that he’s got to go away. Balto tells Heath that he’s impressed with her, and Heath admires her from afar, while another woman comes to them to see if they’re available for an evening together. Balto says that he’s not because he is married, but then Heath says that he’s free, so the woman joins him. He sits with Tracy, the woman, but he keeps looking over at Catalina. Catalina hangs out at the bar with her friends after the incident, when she sees the Skull King approach her with a chick on his side. He talks to her for a bit about what she did and she waves him off, at which point he tells her that they will continue having this conversation. She tells him that they will not, and thinks the conversation is done when the Skull King leaves.

Then one night after her performance, she finds the Skull King had come to the backstage. He asks her out, but Catalina tells him no, though he does give her his real name—Heath. Heath tries several times to talk to her and ask her out, but each time Catalina tells him that she is not interested, and tells him that she is loyal to her brother, so she will not see him. Heath admires this level of loyalty in her, but ultimately stops visiting her to ask her out, after being shot down several times. He still is fascinated about her and hopes that there will come a time when she will come around. When he talks to Balto about Catalina, Balto tells him that he could engineer a situation in which he becomes her savior from a bad situation. Heath responds that he’s just not that type of person to create that kind of situation to get a woman. He hopes that Catalina would chase after him, but she doesn’t.

Catalina goes out to a bar one night with her friends, and when she needs to use the restroom, she finds that the line to the women’s restroom is very long. So instead, she goes to the men’s restroom because there is no line, and only one man is inside the bathroom at the urinal. She tells him that she’s not looking and goes to the toilet, which she uses, while hearing the man finish up and flush. She gives it a minute, because the man gives her bad vibes, but when she comes out of the stall, she finds the man blocking the door. The man is Russian based on his accent, and he’s looking at her in a bad way. He then assaults her in the bathroom, but she manages to kick his butt, leaving him crippled in the bathroom. Catalina goes out to the bar and tells the bartender that she just got assaulted by a man in the bathroom, so they call the police, who pick up the man and put him in jail. She takes note of the fact that there are other troublesome men who also are Russian in the bar, and they’re looking at her, which is not a good thing. But she doesn’t think much else of it, hoping that seeing that she’s not helpless will make them stay away. She heads home, and goes to sleep, but is woken in the middle of the night by intruders. She recognizes the men from the bar, realizing that they had followed her home, and tries to fight back, but they inject her with a needle.

Catalina wakes up in a cage, naked, and realizes that she is in a basement with other women also in cages. She realizes that she is being trafficked, and she turns to another girl near her to ask her some questions about where they are and where they will be going. But the other woman looks dead inside, and only holds up a finger to her mouth, telling her to be silent. One of the kidnappers shows up and terrifies the woman who told Catalina to be silent. He starts to blame her for talking, though she should know better. Catalina recognizes him as the man from the bar who broke into her house, and she doesn’t like the way that he is treating the woman, so she stands up for the woman by telling him that she was the one who was talking. He tells her that he was wondering when she would wake up, and ends up beating her severely.

Heath does his usual rounds of picking up money from the various nefarious businesses that the Skull Kings control. He drops the money in the truck with Steel from the one business that he had visited, and his next stop is the Russian Trafficking ring. He goes down in the basement, and doesn’t pay attention to the women there, having been there several times before. He knows that the women get picked up all over the city, disappeared into the trafficking ring, and then they get sold into slavery all over the world, but mostly in Russia. He doesn’t have an opinion on it, but wants to make sure that he gets paid the money that he is owed. He gets the bags of money, and sends it off with his men, when he hears Catalina call his name. He looks closer, sees her in the cage, and gets disgusted to see that she is beaten up. He demands the leader remove her from the cage, and at first the leader of the trafficking ring doesn’t do anything, so he raises his voice, and the leader removes her from the cage. She runs to Heath and without even looking at her body, he gives her his shirt to cover herself up. He’s enraged by the bruises she has, so he turns back to the men of the trafficking ring and asks them who beat her up. When none of them answers, Catalina does and points out the Leader of the ring, so Heath shoots the man in the face, before turning to another one and telling him that he is in charge. He then gets her out of the basement, but as they leave, she asks him to please free all of the other girls. Heath tells her that he is not able to do this today, and explains why, but agrees to free them.

Heath takes her home, and Catalina showers while Heath gets her food. She is so brusied and beaten up that she struggles leaving the bathroom, so they eat and talk in the bathroom. Heath cannot look at her face because it’s very hard for him, which is something he admits to her much later on. Catalina asks Heath to stay with her, and he agrees, understanding that she feels safer with him there while she sleeps for thirteen hours. During that time, he calls up Steel and talks to him, asking him to bring a door. Heath installs the door into her apartment, along with a security system. When she wakes up, she thanks him for setting everything up, and Heath leaves. Catalina doesn’t go back to work for three weeks weeks because the makeup will not be enough to hide all of her bruises, and during that time, she barely sees Heath. He does stop by once to drop her some cash, because he knows she hasn’t been working and so she will struggle to pay rent. He gets upset when Catalina asks him about saving the other girls from being trafficked. Heath tells her that his word should be enough to trust that he will get it done.

Heath had spoken with Ash about making sure that he pays Heath and the Skull Kings for his business. Ash agrees, and Heath knows that he’s as smart as his brother, Hades. Ash’s business gives Heath the idea on what they could do with the human trafficking businesses. He talks to his men in the Underground, as part of the Skull Kings meeting, and tells them all that they will be getting rid of the trafficking, and bringing prostitution back. The men get happy about it but aren’t sure about him outlawing human trafficking as a whole and making every single human trafficking ring into a prostitution ring. Heath goes and talks to the Russian Trafficking ring, telling them what the plan is and that very same evening, he frees the women in that basement. One of the women recognizes him, and that he had come and saved the other girl, and asks him if he had come back for them because of that girl.

Heath runs into Catalina at a bar after she had healed enough to go back to work and go out with her friends and coworkers. She wants to be with him at the bar, and isn’t interested in working with or talking to other men. They do talk, and he confirms that he completed the task of freeing the women. When Catalina tells him that she doesn’t want him to walk her to her car, Heath leaves her inside the bar. Catalina stays in the bar for a moment but then makes a decision to chase after him. She finds him standing outside of the bar, and he tells her that it’s about time that she came after him. The two of them kiss on the pavement, and make an agreement that they will do this as a one time thing to get it out of their system. They go to her apartment, where the plan is to have sex for one night, but he stays the night and into the morning, despite Catalina’s attempt to kick him out. He makes her breakfast, and after that is done, he leaves but tells her on his way out that they will not be having a conversation about this being a one time situationship, because it will be longer. Catalina doesn’t say anything beyond agreeing with him. Later that evening, Catalina has a conversation with him about her requirements in order to continue a longer term relationship—first, Heath cannot fall in love with her, second, they never tell Damien they are together, and thirdly, she will always be loyal to Damien, so nothing changes between them. She tells Heath that she will not tell him if he’s walking into a trap with Damien.

They continue to have sex at her place, and eventually decide to go without using condoms once they agree to be exclusive. Catalina doesn’t like it when Heath leaves her alone at night, but she manages without him around. She continues to go dancing, and performing. During one of his pickups, Heath talks to Damien and tells Damien to drop the grudge. He doesn’t reveal to Damien that he no longer wants to go through with it because of Catalina because of his agreement with her to not reveal themselves to Damien. Damien, however, tells him that he will never let the grudge go because of four reasons—his father, his business, and Heath’s conspiring with Liam to steal Anna from the hospital, and then keeping Anna hidden. Heath leaves without a resolution to the situation.

Catalina visits Damien and Annabella at their house, after telling Heath that she will be unavailable all day. She talks with both of them for a while, but then Hades shows up and Damien leaves Catalina alone with Annabella. She notices that they are having a heated conversation, so she goes to the bathroom, where she slams the door shut before reopening it to eavesdrop on them. She realizes that they are talking about Heath and how Damien will carry it out when Heath leaves his lab during his next pickup. Catalina is sick to her stomach about it, and then struggles with the information, as she had promised to Heath that she wasn’t going to do anything against her brother. Heath visits her once she returns home, fucks her angrily, before leaving her alone and then telling her that he is busy. Heath comes back the next day, and makes it clear to Catalina that she is his priority whenever and wherever he is—he texts her back immediately and pick up her phone calls on the first ring, so he expects the same commitment from her. She apologizes to Heath and they have sex all night.

Heath leaves that night to go to the pickup, and Catalina struggles because she doesn’t want Heath to go while at the same time she doesn’t want to break Damien’s trust. She tries to convince Heath to stay with her in bed all night, and she does a good job of it, but Heath thinks that it’s only because of her nightmares that she wants him to stay. He assures her that she is safe, and then leaves her anyway. Heath visits Damien with his men, and picks up the money from him. As he is leaving with his two men and the bags of money, when Heath’s phone rings—it’s Catalina. He stops and picks up the phone call, where Catalina tells him that Damien has four snipers on the rooftops that will be aimed at his men and him. When the call ends, he goes back around, grabs Damien and uses him as a shield when he leaves the lab. He has Damien order his snipers down, before freeing him and telling Damien that all of Damien’s profits will belong to Heath for the next three months as punishment. When Heath gets into the truck with the money, one of his men who is already in the truck starts questioning as to why Heath didn’t kill Damien, and starts heading out to try to kill Damien, so Heath shoots him.

My Thoughts: Wow, the tension between Catalina and Heath, the rejections, the loyalty for her brother that brings a level of chemistry that I love so much in this romance story. I love Catalina’s sass, and Heath’s cool and calculated approach to things, and I cannot wait to see how they fall in love with each other and end up together. I think this story might just be better than Damien’s and Annabella’s but I’ll have to read more to see it through and see if I still feel the same.