Reth Killing is easy. Being owned is the real nightmare. I’m controlled. Broken down and rebuilt into something lethal. I don’t feel. Don’t hesitate. Don’t want. I survive by staying empty. Sophia Sinclair is everything I was never meant to touch. Soft, bright… good. For years I stayed in the shadows. Watching her. Memorizing her. Every routine. Every habit. Every detail—from the O negative in her veins to the shade of red she paints across her lips. I convinced myself watching was harmless. Safe. Distant. But nothing I want can ever be mine when I’m leashed by an evil far worse than me. So I did what every villain would do. I took her. Sophia One moment I’m helping traumatized kids. The next I’m locked inside a house that looks exactly like my dreams with a captor who bakes my favorite pastry. Who turns up the heat when I shiver. Leaves heart-shaped candy around like it means something. Like I mean something. I tell myself he’s a monster. But I’ve spent years studying broken people, and Reth Hale doesn’t feel like evil. He feels like damage. And that might be worse. When an open door offers freedom, I hesitate. I've dedicated my life to fixing wounded things—and Reth might just be the most broken of all… …or the fracture that breaks me instead. TROPES: \- Stalker \- Obsessive anti-hero / Obsessive love \- Captive romance / Forced proximity \- Protective masked killer \- He falls first (and harder) \- Trauma-bond \- Broken / damaged hero \- Sunshine / soft heroine \- Slowburn

He comes back every time. Damaged. More damaged than before. He shows up in the dark and for a few days the world makes sense again—his hands, his voice, the muffins he makes before dawn because he doesn't know any other way to say ‘I love you.’ Then he leaves. He always leaves. Back to her. The woman who broke the boy and built the weapon. Valeria won’t stop until she consumes him. She wants the assassin, the monster, the man—all of it, every scarred and broken piece—branded so completely with her name that he forgets he ever had one of his own. There's a word for that. Possession. And she's just found the perfect way to make that happen. Me. I’m the leverage now. Which means nowhere is safe anymore, and the killer I’ve fallen for is the only thing standing between me and a woman who has never once lost. I know what this is going to cost us both. I'm choosing him anyway. A Lovely Kind of Madness is the second book in the Pretty Savage trilogy and should be read after A Pretty Kind of Violence.