Quotes from Lisa Renee Jones

That must have been devastating." "At the time, yes," I admit, "but it helped me become me. We grow with every mountain we climbed. Even the ones that we fall down." "Even those we fall down," she says softly, almost to herself. She flicks me a look. "I think falling down is better than not climbing.

I couldn't know that we'd meet and the world would spin beneath my feet, and somehow ignite a million shades of beauty in my life. I couldn't know that I'd change how you saw, well, everything.

It's our scars that define us, Sara. Diego has to live life to appreciate life.

One reckless note can change everything.

Know what you can bend to your will, and don't waste energy on what you can't. It'll suck you dry, like it is right now.

seemed like I was fucking him to get a favor.

My mother used to say that to me and my brother, Gio, and even in the years since she passed, the words echo in my mind, as I know they must in my brother's. After all, we heard those words on nearly a daily basis from the moment our father disappeared until the moment our mother died seven years later.

I'd been eleven when my father disappeared and eighteen when my mother was murdered. Now, I'm twenty-eight

I'm going to have to grow my own teeth.

unreadable. "I've always said my mother is the biggest bitch on the hill, and the kindest flower in the garden.

I refuse to believe Gio is dead. He's protecting me. It's the only acceptable answer.

only person I have left in this world is also missing. Gio

And I dare to believe that it really is. I dare to bet on us again.

I approach the double glass doors of the world-renowned Riptide Auction House. Nerves flutter in my belly with the idea that I'm about to do everything my mother warned me never to do—I'm about to place myself in the middle of the world that destroyed our family. But I'm also trying to save the only family I have left.

We'd had money in Italy before we'd fled after my father's disappearance, and did so with nothing.

Chocolate isn't food; it's a drug meant to cure all.

He's right. He is. But thankfully he's a dickhead who doesn't seem to know my panties are in Chris's pocket.

I'm Aria Alard," I say, speaking my mother's maiden name

No one here has to know who I really am. Ever. They can never know. We disappeared with my father, our historic bloodline ended forever.

I know, deep in my heart and soul, that I have to own how I allow myself to process life, how I allow events and people to affect me. I define my character. They do not.

minds forever, and sometimes our very souls. They change us, mold us, maybe even save us. But some are darker, dangerous. If we allow them to, they control us. Seduce us. Quite possibly even destroy us. The moment I stepped into the mansion that is the centerpiece of the Reid Winter Vineyards and Winery wasn't one of those moments. Nor were any of the moments I spent weaving through

It's Tuesday. Friday night is forever away when my brother's missing and that violin is absolutely what my brother was after.

My brother is looking for a violin. He has to believe this one is special, perhaps one of the three our father owned, one of which our mother claimed hid a secret—the "recipe," as Sofia had said, writing in obvious code, to make the renowned Stradivarius violin worth tens of millions of dollars. But I don't care about the recipe. I care about finding my brother.

I know my limits," he assures him. "You just don't like that I know yours.