My rating: 4.5/5
This series has been a whirlwind. It started a bit slow and changed course so fast that I was taken by surprise. I am not a fan of Mafia Romance, but I think this will be the start of a beautiful friendship. I had to face so many things in this story, and I saw so much suffering and injustice that I really feel like my friends need space and healing time, because they deserve it.
Annihilator is the story of Lyla and Shadow Man, a character that was introduced to us from the beginning and we got to know a little better in Finisher. We don’t know a lot about him, only that he was dropping clues to Alpha in order to take down the Syndicate because “they broke his toy”. Now, we get to meet his “toy”, named Lyla, a girl who has been in the Syndicate from a young age and went through hell. From my POV, this is the most emotional, impactful, shocking, and raw book, because it has so many triggers I cannot count. We were warned from the beginning, but I didn’t want to listen to the author and believe it is THAT bad, but it was; it was worse.
Lyla went through so many things, endured too much, suffered immensely at the hands of the Syndicate, that her life will never be the same. She cannot be a normal person; she doesn’t know what she likes, what she doesn’t. She doesn’t know WHO she is, only a puppet that the Syndicate sold for her body. She is so used to being used that this is her normality, her sad reality. She is numbed, the only connection that kept her alive for the past 6 years being the one with the Shadow Man, because it made her belong to somebody and gave her the impression that somebody wants her.
“You’re the oxygen that feeds my flames—without you, my existence is questionable.”
The Shadow Man is killing every guy who wants to touch her, and because of that, Lyla becomes a decoy. She is used to trap him, only to be brought into more darkness. This has been going on for 6 years, in which time several past/present moments are shown to us – we get to understand how they met, some major events from their past, and most of all, who Lyla and Shadow Man really are.
They are both broken, but find solace in one another in the most twisted ways. None of them are adaptable, good people, but together they make sense. Shadow Man is a natural-born criminal, but with Lyla, he is her salvation, her lifeline, her haven. Lyla is coping with her reality, but considering she doesn’t know or understand the world around her completely, her WORLD is the Shadow Man. Lyla will be a surprise in this story, will be the revelation that we have been waiting for, but I don’t want to spoil it, because it’s major information.
“You’re mine!” She slammed her hands on the table, standing up. “You’re the only person, the only thing in this entire world that is mine!” Her chest heaving, she glared at him. “My killer, my stalker, my lover. The thought of sharing your obsession makes me sick to my stomach.”
The book is heartbreaking, difficult to read in one sitting, and completely devastating. From my POV, it’s one of the saddest I have ever read, and I thought about it a lot after finishing it. When projecting it into reality, the impact of knowing that women like her suffer like this is devastating. Not all of them had a Shadow Man to protect them, and not all of them had somebody to lean on. I think the aftermath of the story is the one that stands out the most after finishing it, because it doesn’t leave your mind for a very long time.
