Sins of Innocence (Syndicate Sins #2)

Lucy Monroe

Blurb:

In their world, protection comes with a price. And his price is forever.

ÁINE

Marrying a stranger to stay alive was not in my plans. Neither was falling for him.

I'm a widow with three daughters, a mother to protect, and a dead husband whose betrayal put a target on all of us. When Kieran, the Shaughnessy Mob's most feared enforcer, offers his protection, there's only one condition.

I have to marry him. Now.

When the choice is between the safety of my family and my freedom...there isn't one.

Kieran's a criminal whose friends call him Wraith. He offs people without hesitation and doesn't feel an ounce of guilt for forcing me into marriage. He also makes me and my girls feel safer than we ever have. And the way he makes my body react ought to be illegal, but it's not my ovaries he wants in handcuffs.

He says he doesn't do soft. He says he wants a family, not a love story. But nobody warned me that watching a dangerous man go to war for me and my girls would be the most seductive thing I'd ever seen.

What happens when I fall in love with the grumpy mobster despite my best intentions and his?

WRAITH

I've spent my life in the shadows. Covert ops. CIA black sites. Freelance assassinations. Mob enforcement. I don't need much.

Then I meet Áine Gallagher. And suddenly I want everything.

With curves that walked right out of my darkest fantasies, she's brave and mouthy and more than a little dramatic with her emojis. She's also a mother who would burn the world down for her girls.

And now, every inch of her is mine. Mine to protect, mine to keep, mine to ruin for every other man who ever thought he had a chance.

I'm not built for soft. But I'm built for her — every lush, tempting, infuriating inch.

Themes: Contemporary, Mafia

Rating: 4.5 stars

Heat Rating:

Review:

More often than not when you get into a new trope or subgenre of romance you find yourself really enjoying certain authors and their style of taking you into that world, and others just teach you exactly why you prefer your old favorites. I was lucky when I first began reading darker romances set in the world of mafias and criminals where the hero is sometimes considered the villain that the first author I started with was one of my favorites from my past, Lucy Monroe, and she didn’t lead me astray in this brand-new world. Once I got a few stories into the original series in this world (Syndicate Rules) I quickly learned that I LOVED this darker underbelly being a part of my romances and I needed more, but sadly no one managed to ever hit the note just right the way Lucy did. That said I am loving this spinoff series even more as we learn more about these Irish mobsters and the women that keep them on their toes (ok I might be biased being Irish descent, but still). So, I am dying to dive even deeper into this series and cannot wait for the third story when we return to Mick and Kara and get to watch them revisit their relationship and prove to those around them that you should never challenge an Irishman OR the Irishwoman who stands up at his side against all comers.

Áine Gallagher is a widow whose late husband was killed for selling out his own mob, but she didn’t learn the truth until his death was already called for and carried out. Now 6 years later, after being forced into servitude by one of the Mob boss’s lieutenants she is almost on her last nerve, when a man walks into her life and changes it forever. Kieran Lleshi is one of Mick Fitzgerald’s top people and when he is sent to collect Áine after an incident with her oldest daughter he is immediately drawn to the beautiful curvaceous and fiery woman and when it comes down to it, he claims her and her family as his own to protect and shelter them from harm. Faced with very little choice and determined to protect her family at all costs, Áine agrees to marry Kieran but she has no idea the trouble she is signing up for because Kieran has decided that he is not going to let her keep their marriage to anything convenient and he will make her his in every sense of the word. The more time they spend together, allowing Kieran and her girls to get to know one another and for their hearts to become invested, so that he can become the husband they need and the father he’s always wanted to be, the more dangerous their existence becomes. Kieran has dangerous enemies after him and Mick’s problems are only beginning but hopefully, they can find the traitor in their midst and cut out the rot, before it’s too late for them all.

I thought my favorite characters in this series were Mick and Kara but honestly Kieran and Áine were even better and Áine is definitely such a kickass character that I want to be her when I finally grow up. Kieran has had a terribly difficult past, with far too much heartbreak, but instead of being a bast@rd and a misogynist like he could have become, he is a protector of women and really is the perfect girl dad because he will slaughter anyone would even speaks a cross word against his girls (any of them). I loved watching him lose his heart to ALL the new women in his life and finding his place as a husband, son, brother, and father as he made Áine’s family his own and learned lesson after lesson with the help of “his girls”. His heart is so much larger than he ever realized, right alongside the darkness that has made him such a dangerous enemy for those that stood in his way, but he never imagined just how much he would rely on the love and passion of one tiny woman to bring him to life until he met Áine, much less the sweetness of three little girls or the fire of one old lady that has protected her girls. Áine has spent far too long under the thumbs of the men around her and this new drama really is the last straw, but when Kieran comes into her life she immediately feels, even subconsciously, that she can trust him implicitly, and it allows her to be able to express her anger and frustration and the truths she has been surprising for far too long. Finally allowed to stand up for herself and her daughter, with a strong man at her side, Áine finds that her brains and abilities are actually appreciated and she is made to feel a part of the organization she has married into in a way that she can use the skills she worked hard to develop. Her greatest power is her willingness to love a man that other have written off, but the most important thing she has ever done in life is bring together a family that had fractured and a man that was badly in need of a family of his own, allowing love to bloom and grow into a gorgeous new organism. One that will continue to grow and change as more members are added or return to find their home in their family again (sorry no spoilers).

I was really surprised when I learned this series was going in the direction it was, but I loved that we got to see Kieran and Áine not only find love but bring down one of Mick’s greatest enemies and bring some stability (hopefully?) to the organization so that Mick and Kara might get a break (guess we’ll find out in Honorable Sins). Kieran is the perfect anti-hero in that he seems to be a silent semi-psychotic character that we are going to have to worry about being a danger to the heroine and her girls, but as soon as she manages to get him alone and pries open his heart you see how squishy he really his for “his girls”. Kieran is dark, dangerous, loving, and passionate, and his ability to kill with precision accuracy is matched only by his expertise with turning Áine into a melted puddle of lust. Áine fears she has made a terrible decision in aligning herself with another made man, but the more she gets to know Kieran, allowing him into her heart and seeing him interacting with their girls, the more she begins to wonder if she hasn’t given her heart away to just the right type of killer after all. But with danger around every corner, ultimate trust is the only way they will survive, and that level of trust is terrifying for Áine and Kieran on every level. I loved seeing both of these broken hearts find a way to heal as the passion between them flared off the pages from the very first moment they met, and she mouthed off to him, the fire only getting hotter with each passing day. I cannot wait to see more of them in later novels and hope that soon we will see more little Áine/Kieran’s coming into the world. The next book in the series will have lots of overlaps with this one’s timeline so it’ll be fun to relive moments from their story in different viewpoints and get to watch the drama all over again, but all in all I am loving this series and am for sure along for the ride!

*eARC provided by author for the purpose of an honest and unbiased review. No compensation was provided.