Dead Man's Ink Boxset by Callie Hart
Set includes Rebel, Rogue and Ransom
Release - Originally January 9, 2017
Genre - Contemporary Romance
Dual POV - 1st person
Heat Level - 4 out of 5/nothing really until book 2
Format/Source - copy provided by the author
Length - 630 pages
Publisher - Indie
Sophia
Sometimes, you don't mean to become another person. Sometimes the choice is made for you, and pretending is the only thing that keeps you going. When Alexis Romera is taken and her kidnappers find her fake ID in her purse, she must become Sophia in order to keep her family safe. Revealing her real identity to the man she's sold to would be easy enough, but can she trust him? Hell bent on revenging the murder of his uncle, Rebel doesn't seem all that interested in playing things safe.
In fact, nothing about the secretive, dark and brooding MC president seems safe at all.
Rebel
What do you do when the man who raised you is murdered, and the only witness is kidnapped girl who's being sold as a sex slave? You buy her, of course. As president to the most powerful motorcycle club in America, Rebel isn't lacking in power. There are strings the man can pull, and entire criminal organisations and corporate businesses alike would fall to their knees. However, along with such power comes intense interest. The DEA have their eye fixed solely on the MC...and they're just waiting for Rebel to trip up.
Getting Sophia to testify is the only way to bring the Los Oscuros cartel down. The beautiful, dark haired, dark eyed woman is belligerent and uncooperative and unlikely to bend to his will, but Rebel has a few tricks up his sleeve to make her compliant--he'll charm her until she's bending over backwards to please him.
Of course, falling for her might cause a few hiccups along the way...
* The Dead Man's Ink series contains strong ties with the Blood & Roses series, but you do not have to have read those works in order to read this one. The Dead Man's Ink series is contemporary romance story with occasional dark themes that some people might find confronting. *
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01N32JEW2
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N32JEW2
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Mans-Boxset-Callie-Hart-ebook/dp/B01N32JEW2
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Dead-Mans-Boxset-Callie-Hart-ebook/dp/B01N32JEW2
3.5 ★s
Callie Hart sure knows how to make an anti-hero utterly delicious! At first, I wasn't sure what I would get from Rebel. He was a military vet, son of a politician, and he was president of the Widow Maker's MC. This character was full of such intriguing contradictions. Honorable and protective. Lethal, cold and cunning. I honestly couldn't get enough of this man and now that I'm at the end of Ransom, I'm only hoping to see more of him.
We're not just a motorcycle club. We're criminals. And we're really fucking good at not getting caught.
In Rebel, Alexis was a witness to something she shouldn't have seen. She was then kidnapped, violated, and sold. Lucky for her, the man who bought her didn't want a sex slave. Rebel was only interested in justice and Alexis played a vital role.
I can't afford to be thinking of a girl when there are important plans to be made. Vengeance to be plotted. Information to be gathered.
I didn't even like the girl, but I loved what she pulled out of Rebel. I enjoyed their banter, their acrimonious interactions, their eventual understanding of each other. I didn't like that she continued to lie and I hoped that would all change in the next book.
Sadly it didn't. In Rogue, Alexis finally capitulated and despite the constant danger of a cartel boss wanting to own her and kill Rebel and his club, she was determined to help him. I still didn't like her, but I admired her grit. I had to keep reminding myself that she was incredibly young. I wish I felt for her what I ended up feeling for her big sister, Sloane, but that didn't happen. It doesn't even matter because I learned so much more about Rebel and fell even harder for him!
And then in Ransom my feelings started to change. Don't be crazy, I didn't fall in love with Alexis, but I did start to like her. I still didn't get why she was still lying or hiding and it didn't make sense why she wouldn't call her family to share her status, but who even cares? The point is... I didn't hate the girl anymore.
I can see into him, and I feel like I recognize him. Like he's the piece of me that's been missing all this time and I never even knew it.
However, it was Rebel who continued to steal the show. The author created such a wonder with this man! Please, someone tell me that I'll be seeing him again 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
My favorite quote:
"There was an English guy in Afghanistan. He was a member of the Royal Marines but the British government loaned him to us as an informant. He'd been taken prisoner by a group of rebels after his unit's transport hit an IED and killed everyone but him. For nearly two years the rebels kept him hostage in a cave system, giving him just enough food and water so that he could survive. They would torture him every day. They wanted to know everything he knew. They would pull his fingers and his toenails out one by one. They would pull his teeth out too, whenever he wouldn't give them information they wanted. This guy. Andrew, he held out for months. He took the pain and the torment, and he let them take his fingernails and his teeth, until the people who were holding him captive realized they weren't going to get anything out of him.
"Now, that was a really bad position to be in for Andrew. The only reason they were keeping him alive was because he was worth something. If he wasn't valuable to them alive in any way, he sure as hell would be valuable to them dead. See they don't just kill people in the shadows. They want the world to see. They gather their friends. They gather the world's media. They make us watch on television as they force their prisoners to tell lies about their countries, and then they make us watch as they cut off their heads and burn their bodies in cages.
"Andrew nearly died that way. They sat him down in front of a camera and they told him what they wanted him to say, otherwise they were going to have their friends in England track down his wife and two small kids, and they were gonna have them murdered in their beds. You always think you won't cave, that nothing they can do or say to you will make you give in and repeat the hatred they want to spread, but when they threaten your loved ones..." Jamie looks pained. He flinches a little, small creases forming between his eyebrows. "So Andrew sat down and said what they wanted him to say, and they filmed it. The bastards restrained him while they tried to slit his throat from behind, so the camera could see. They almost finished the job. Andrew had a scar that ran from his left ear to his Adam's apple, but that's where it stopped. Miraculously one of our unit's launched an assault on the caves. We had no idea they were holding anyone captive there. We'd had intel that they were using the location as a munitions cache and we wanted to take it out.
"So they stormed the place and Andrew only got his throat half cut. He came and worked with Cade and me for a long time. He told us in graphic detail about the shit those guys did to him. The kinds of torture they were capable of. And he told us that it paled in comparison to the atrocities he saw committed by the cartels in Mexico. He cried like a baby when he told us about that. He'd gone in as part of a task force to rescue a British government official who had been taken right off the street in Juarez. They'd found this guy and his wife in an open grave under a bridge in the middle of the city. The bodies had been mutilated beyond recognition. When the marines attempted to recover the bodies, they'd realized that both the official and his wife were still alive. they were fucked up and bleeding, missing skin, missing fingers, both of them missing their tongues and their eyes. Their ears. Her breasts had been cut off. His dick. They were just raw pieces of meat, and they'd tossed their bodies into a hole while they were still bleeding.
"The cartels did that to them. Not even a hardened marine who'd been held captive in the desert and almost died at the hands of some of the most immoral men on this planet could talk about the shit he saw in Mexico without his hands shaking. And these are the people we're dealing with right now, Sophia. This is the type of madness we're involving ourselves in. Cade and I were deployed. A lot of the other Widow Makers are ex military, too. We've all had training. We've all been in combat situations. We've been to the dark places of this world and we've already puked our guts up. We've already seen enough to make it difficult to sleep at night."
He stops talking for a second. Gives me a second to digest. I already know what he's going to say next, and the gravity of his words really hit home. I grip hold of the counter, leaning into it, tired and terrified as Jamie continues.
"And you want to go racing after these guys half cocked, Sophia. What about your upbringing in Seattle as a preacher's daughter, living with everything you could possibly need, never having to make hard decisions or real sacrifices, qualifies you to face off with these guys when grown ass marienes cry like babies at the mere thought of it?"
"There was an English guy in Afghanistan. He was a member of the Royal Marines but the British government loaned him to us as an informant. He'd been taken prisoner by a group of rebels after his unit's transport hit an IED and killed everyone but him. For nearly two years the rebels kept him hostage in a cave system, giving him just enough food and water so that he could survive. They would torture him every day. They wanted to know everything he knew. They would pull his fingers and his toenails out one by one. They would pull his teeth out too, whenever he wouldn't give them information they wanted. This guy. Andrew, he held out for months. He took the pain and the torment, and he let them take his fingernails and his teeth, until the people who were holding him captive realized they weren't going to get anything out of him.
"Now, that was a really bad position to be in for Andrew. The only reason they were keeping him alive was because he was worth something. If he wasn't valuable to them alive in any way, he sure as hell would be valuable to them dead. See they don't just kill people in the shadows. They want the world to see. They gather their friends. They gather the world's media. They make us watch on television as they force their prisoners to tell lies about their countries, and then they make us watch as they cut off their heads and burn their bodies in cages.
"Andrew nearly died that way. They sat him down in front of a camera and they told him what they wanted him to say, otherwise they were going to have their friends in England track down his wife and two small kids, and they were gonna have them murdered in their beds. You always think you won't cave, that nothing they can do or say to you will make you give in and repeat the hatred they want to spread, but when they threaten your loved ones..." Jamie looks pained. He flinches a little, small creases forming between his eyebrows. "So Andrew sat down and said what they wanted him to say, and they filmed it. The bastards restrained him while they tried to slit his throat from behind, so the camera could see. They almost finished the job. Andrew had a scar that ran from his left ear to his Adam's apple, but that's where it stopped. Miraculously one of our unit's launched an assault on the caves. We had no idea they were holding anyone captive there. We'd had intel that they were using the location as a munitions cache and we wanted to take it out.
"So they stormed the place and Andrew only got his throat half cut. He came and worked with Cade and me for a long time. He told us in graphic detail about the shit those guys did to him. The kinds of torture they were capable of. And he told us that it paled in comparison to the atrocities he saw committed by the cartels in Mexico. He cried like a baby when he told us about that. He'd gone in as part of a task force to rescue a British government official who had been taken right off the street in Juarez. They'd found this guy and his wife in an open grave under a bridge in the middle of the city. The bodies had been mutilated beyond recognition. When the marines attempted to recover the bodies, they'd realized that both the official and his wife were still alive. they were fucked up and bleeding, missing skin, missing fingers, both of them missing their tongues and their eyes. Their ears. Her breasts had been cut off. His dick. They were just raw pieces of meat, and they'd tossed their bodies into a hole while they were still bleeding.
"The cartels did that to them. Not even a hardened marine who'd been held captive in the desert and almost died at the hands of some of the most immoral men on this planet could talk about the shit he saw in Mexico without his hands shaking. And these are the people we're dealing with right now, Sophia. This is the type of madness we're involving ourselves in. Cade and I were deployed. A lot of the other Widow Makers are ex military, too. We've all had training. We've all been in combat situations. We've been to the dark places of this world and we've already puked our guts up. We've already seen enough to make it difficult to sleep at night."
He stops talking for a second. Gives me a second to digest. I already know what he's going to say next, and the gravity of his words really hit home. I grip hold of the counter, leaning into it, tired and terrified as Jamie continues.
"And you want to go racing after these guys half cocked, Sophia. What about your upbringing in Seattle as a preacher's daughter, living with everything you could possibly need, never having to make hard decisions or real sacrifices, qualifies you to face off with these guys when grown ass marienes cry like babies at the mere thought of it?"
I love when the heroines who think they can do everything the badass, ex military, alpha, killer, etc. can do when they have NONE of the experience or training and someone shows them how wrong they are. I was very grateful to find this passage.
If she’s not writing, you’ll undoubtedly find her with her nose buried deep in a book, or binge-watching shows on the CW.
For more about Callie Hart and her books, check out her website: http://calliehart.com/
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