Victor: My Ruthless Owner
Ruthless Triad, Book #2
By Theodora Taylor
Author’s Website: https://theodorataylor.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Dawn had loved Victor. Part of her still did, even though she knew she probably shouldn’t. It’s been nearly four years since her dad and the rest of the SWAT team busted into Victor’s apartment and took down Red Diamond. Four years since her dad told the lies that made Victor believe she was working for him. Lies that made him think she was acting the whole time and never actually loved him. She still thinks about Victor and wonders what it would be like if they had been able to fulfill their plans of coming to the states and getting married.
At Dawn’s college graduation, on her way to fulfilling her mother’s dreams of her becoming a doctor, she thought she saw Victor in the audience. However, when she looked again he was gone. It must have been a figment of her imagination. Or so she thought until Victor’s cousin, Phantom, shows up at her dorm and kidnaps her!
“Whoa. What kind of weirdo kidnapped someone in the middle of packing but makes sure to complete the job?”
Dawn wakes up in the back of a car across from Victor. He details how he is going to make her pay for betraying him. He forces her to marry him and he will own her for the next ten years, making her life miserable. If she doesn’t do as he commands, he will destroy her family and everyone she loves. She has no choice and her life is no longer her own. He promises to release her at the end of the ten years, but can she survive that long with the callous man he has become?
I absolutely loved and devoured the first book in the trilogy, Victor: Her Ruthless Crush. I loved it so much that I had to rush into reading this book. This novel picks up right where that one left off. With Dawn’s forced reunion, of sorts, with Victor, in the backseat of his car. However, it was really hard to read the beginning, and I knew it would be. I had loved teenage Victor sooooooo much. Dawn and Victor’s romance was sweet and innocent then. And, I knew I’d hate what Victor has become. He is the man that his dad always raised him to be: cold, callous, heartless and cruel. The more pain he could cause Dawn, the better in his mind. And, I knew all along the book would get better, but it was still hard to read. And, the evil Victor was around for the majority of the book, which didn’t help.
There were glimpses of the old Victor toward the end of Dawn’s prison sentence.
“She shook her head at Victor. Like he was signing a version of ASL she didn’t understand. But then she asked, “What kind of work do you do? What would I tell my classmates who have a lot of questions about you after today, by the way?”
“Import/export,” he signed. Then he spelled both words when she clearly didn’t understand the signs.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Import/export. Is that the classic Chinese mafia cover story?”
“No,” he signed back, giving her a stern look. Then he let himself grin a little to admit, “It is all mafias cover story. Not only Chinese. Don’t be racist.”
However, those times didn’t really seem to make sense to me. It was kind of out of character for him at that point. But then he had one last act of cruelty up his sleeve that trumped all the good he had done.
However, by the end of the book I was completely hooked once again. And, now I’m rushing through this review so I can go delve into the third book, Victor: Her Ruthless Husband, which is bound to be even better than this one.
