All the Truths by Rina Kent Spoilers

 TW: Suicidal thoughts

Book 1 spoiler here.

SYNOPSIS:

The truth doesn't set you free.

Revenge shouldn’t be rushed. It needs to be savored.
Reina ruined my life and it’s only fair I ruin hers back.
Or that was the plan.
That was before she got under my skin and flowed into my blood.
Life as we know it crashes and burns.
All we have left is revenge.
Or is it?

SPOILERS:

• “Reina'' is heartbroken about Asher’s betrayal and cruelty. She walks back to the house and Jason takes her to the pool house to show her a video with no sound of Reina and Asher having an argument. It shows the real relationship they had: Asher furious and yelling at her and Reina looking unfazed with her arms crossed but “Reina'' sees her clenching her arms. Jason doesn’t know who took the video just that it was posted online.
• Jason admits that Asher said Arianna said it was Reina’s fault before she threw herself off the roof. He doesn’t actually know if Ari ruined Reina’s life and retaliated but just that Ari was acting more clingy and Asher more distant. He also confesses that he didn’t say anything sooner because Asher threatened him and his mom, Izzy.
• Asher returns from Ari’s grave determined to fulfill his revenge to find them coming out of the pool house. He’s violently jealous and angry but notices that they depart without romantic intimacy/affection, especially her. She seems dazed and walks right past him without noticing him. He is conflicted with that because it’s exactly like her old self. He mourns the loss of the new Reina.
• “Reina” locks herself in her room for two days depressed. She won’t answer to anyone, especially Asher. She starts confiding in Cloud003 and he helps her to realize/refocus her goal of redemption right when Naomi and Lucy show up and help her out of the house. She finds out that Asher sent them over to get her out of the house and that he sounded worried.
• “Reina” decides to go back to the burned cottage to figure out if there is anything she can remember.
• Asher follows her. He is hanging on to his plot for revenge. He remembers the night of the incident where he follows Reina from the football game since her leaving early and going against her routine meant escaping. He shows up after Rai is beat up but he thinks it’s Reina. He scares off the two Russian mafia men with siren sounds and calls 911 for “Reina.”
• She starts remembering her reunion with Reina after nine years at the cottage and being called Rai Sokolov. Reina has been with the dangerous people studying them.
• A memory from nine years ago (at age 12), where Rai is united with her twin for the first time and they are on the run with their mom. Rai has been running away with their mom, being homeless when they run out of money, etc. The mom plans on taking the twins out of the country and has forged paperwork. But they are discovered by and the mom tells the twins to run. They do and the mom is killed. As they hide Reina decides she and Rai will switch lives. Reina has been living with the dad and has a peaceful life and she wants Rai to experience that. Rai agrees and Reina gets herself caught for Rai to escape. She is found by a cop and she says her name is Reina.
• Asher finds “Reina”/Rai in the burned cottage unconscious. He’s scared she’s dead but sees her breathing and murmuring. He takes her to her apartment where she wakes up and feels guilty for being the last of her family to be alive.
• Asher walks in to feed her and she confesses that she knows he was the one behind all the attacks and that he is trying to kill her. He isn’t phased that she knows and gets angry with her for crossing her arms to him and not looking at him.
• She walks to the balcony and threatens to jump off and also confesses that she isn’t Reina, she’s actually Rai and they are twins who switched places after their mom kidnapped Reina. He doesn’t care about the details since she is “the only Reina [he] know[s].” She pleads for him to postpone his revenge until she finds Reina, because she believes she might still be alive. He pulls her down from the railing and agrees, but that he will help her.
• They stay in her apartment and while he washes the dishes she goes to her room to message Cloud003 she tells him about her almost committing suicide and that she might have hurt the guy with her as she remembers that Asher’s sister also jumped off a building.
• Asher barges in and takes her phone. He asks if she is cheating on him and she fires back that he must have and he confesses that he has never. He eats her out three times and she falls asleep alone.
• They go back home the next day to talk to Alex, Asher’s dad. He tells them everything he knows, how her mom, Mia Sokolov, is the princess of the mafia, the daughter of the bratva’s Pakhan, Nikolai Sokolov, and cousin to Ivan Sokolov (big names in the state and Russia). Mia ran away and sullied the family name so they looked for her. Gareth, the dad, took her in without knowing who she was and when Sokolov found out their relationship they ordered him killed. They agreed to separate by the time she is pregnant with the twins, they agree to each keep one child. They made a deal with Gareth to keep one of the daughters if he allowed a share of his business, which he agreed to. Nikolai decided he wanted the twin with Mia to be the heir and raised as a princess, which Mia didn’t want happening. After 12 years of not finding Mia, Nikolai starts to pester Gareth about making Reina heir and his intentions reach Mia so she kidnapped her to run away. Alex suspects that Mia died by Ivan but was set up as an accident because Nikolai didn’t want her dead. When Rai returned as Reina, Gareth didn’t stop looking for the real Reina and had spies on the inside. Alex suspects that Ivan also killed Gareth. They learned that Ivan didn’t like the family business going to a girl and wanted to eradicate Nikolai’s descendants. Nikolai gets sick and dies, but Ivan can’t be the next Pakhan without a black book, a ledger that contains dirt on people, that only the heir has and it’s with Reina, which confirms that she is not dead and that an inside spy texted Alex that she was safe the day after the attack.
• Asher and “Reina” move out of the house and into the apartment once more security is stationed. A memory is presented three years ago where Asher is beating up a teacher that “Reina” gave a BJ to and finds out the teacher is also a pedophile. He has his dad clean up the place and get the teacher fired. He runs into “Reina” and makes out with her but she doesn’t reciprocate (as always). He gets mad and goes to his room. Arianna shows up and confesses to him that she is in love with Reina after making sure he doesn’t love her too. He tells her to confess and see what Reina says.
• Present day, “Reina” finds Bree and makes a deal that she can rejoin the team if she answers some questions about Arianna. Bree tells her that she was creepy and very obsessive. Bree saw Ari put a bra in Asher’s sports bag which caused a huge fight between “Reina” and Asher. Bree says old “Reina” didn’t believe her when she told her what she saw. Immediately after “Reina” gave a BJ to the teacher and Bree and Asher walked in on them. “Reina” is appalled by this and doesn’t believe the old “Reina” would do that. Soon after those incidents, Ari committed suicide.
• “Reina” remembers another memory from three years ago, where she is upset that Asher accused her of cheating when he did first. Then Ari comes and confesses that she is in love with her brother romantically and that “Reina” can find someone better so she can leave Asher to her. Old “Reina” is speechless and thinks it odd. She realizes the reason for the miscommunication, the fights, and the incidents, and decides she needs to talk to Asher immediately.
• Present day “Reina” doesn’t remember what old “Reina” realized and knows she has to talk to Asher about it. She’s at the gym alone releasing energy when Owen and Seb walk in. Seb looks disappointed that Naomi isn’t there. They confess to her that Asher was always chasing after old “Reina” and would cause trouble because of her, and she would reward him with a cold shoulder. They tell her that he seems better now and to continue what she is doing but to not provoke him with Jason, because Asher doesn’t trust him, thinking he was pretending to be Ari’s friend. They say Jason is always suspiciously around campus. She still believes Jason is Cloud003.
• Owen puts his arm around “Reina” and asks about a BJ, when Asher walks in and threatens Owen. Seb and Owen leave and “Reina” teases Asher. He calls her Rai for the first time and threatens to call her that every time she calls him Ash, but she confesses that isn’t a slight to her and that he secretly likes her calling him Ash but doesn’t want to. He doesn’t answer and says they are going home.
• At home, he tells her she will be punished and gives her five minutes to get naked and lay on her bed on her stomach. She remembers Cloud003 commanding her to do something very similar a year ago. She obeys and they have sex. He sticks an anal plug in her without warning during sex and she is shocked that it didn’t hurt. Afterwards, she has this thought that she is Asher’s queen in public and his slut in private. The statement confuses her, but she quickly falls asleep.
• Asher gets a call from Aiden King and questions him about how he got with Elsa. Aiden tells him to tie the woman to him and make her see who he is and to make her love who he is. Asher wonders what to do if she never wants him even after showing her who he is. He’s plagued by guilt and decides he needs to show her who he is.
• He takes Reina to the balcony and tells her how three years ago Ari asked him to meet at the roof of the college (her usual place away from people. She has mood swings where she wants everyone’s approval or wants them all dead). She finds her with Jason and Jason leaves at her nod. She is near the edge and he tried to placate her. Ari tells him that she confessed her feelings to Reina and she laughed in her face and was cruel. She states that she can’t live knowing he’s in love with the girl who rejected her so cruelly. He promises to do something about Reina and to stop loving her. Ari is happy that he’ll start hating her and that he’d do anything for her so she tells him to make Reina pay for her death and jumps off.
• “Reina” tells him her memory of what really happened when Ari confessed to her. Asher questions why she would kill herself to continue the lies and “Reina” theorizes that she wanted to make sure they were separated but that it takes a lot more than depression to come up with a mastermind scheme like that. So in order to investigate this new Ari she says she’ll need to speak with Jason.
• Asher doesn’t let her speak to Jason alone and Jason doesn’t say anything, but “Reina” knows he’s hiding something because Asher was there. She finds Izzy ashen and when “Reina” shows concern Izzy cries and begs her not to ruin his career after everything and gives her a flash drive and runs away. Alex says he’s close to finding his spy’s whereabouts. She messages Cloud003 (aka Jason) to talk to him alone without Asher. He gives her a time and place.
• She goes to the hotel Cloud003 tells her and brings her security. Instead of Jason answering the door, it’s Asher. Snippets of their nights together at the Halloween party come back to her and she gets mad that he never told her but he tells her that old “Reina” knew it was him. She believes him because she doesn’t believe old “Reina” would do one night stands.
• Then she remembers them together before that, right before he left for England at Seb’s lake house party, and he’s shocked she knew about that. He thought old “Reina” allowed a stranger to have sex with her, but she tells him that she knew he would follow her to the party and wanted to be with him before he left and never came back. She confesses that she wouldn’t have let anyone else take her virginity. He pauses at that and confesses that he was a virgin at that time too. They both stayed loyal to one another throughout the years. They have sex, and she gets sad when she realizes she’s in love with him and he doesn’t feel the same.
• She wakes up to Izzy calling and telling her to watch the vid on the flash drive. The vid shows a video of Jason recording Ari, who turns out to be a sociopath, as she confesses that she never loved Asher or anyone and that she was toying with them all these years because they were too stupid and easy; how easy Reina believed Asher cheating because of a bra, and how she blackmailed the teacher to say Reina’s name as she blew him, how easy it was to frame Reina with the cruel dares; and now she’s bored. Jason seems proud and gleeful about all of it and she demands that he continue her legacy of keeping them apart after her grand finale.
• “Reina” doesn’t know Asher woke up too and was watching with her. They are both heartbroken and regretful about the wasted time and everything. He apologizes to her and they try to sleep.
• They wake up to Detective Daniels having an arrest warrant on “Reina” and she tells Asher to get his dad since he isn’t picking up his phone. He tells her she is his whole world before she leaves him. On the way there, one of the police officers gets a call and he says, “We got her” in Russian and she knows they are working for Ivan. She asks to go to the bathroom and they comply. She finds a mirror shard and stabs Detective Daniels with it and grabs her bracelet from him. She gets stopped and beat up by the two Russians posing as cops with Daniels.
• She wakes up in an abandoned warehouse with Ivan. She refuses to tell him where “Rai” is and gets beat up. She keeps defying him and so he plans to torture her before he kills her. She regrets not telling Asher she loves him.
• Asher tells Alex that “Reina” has been arrested and they find out that she isn’t at the police office nor do they know Daniels’ whereabouts. Asher gets a call from “Rai.” Alex hires his usual hitman, Kyle (who happens to be the inside spy, “Rai’s” right hand man and bodyguard that took her to safety after the attack at the cottage) along with his partner, a sniper. Asher tags along, and once Kyle takes out the two Russian men and Daniels at the front, they are interrupted by “Rai.” She pounds on the door calling to Ivan and when Ivan arrives and makes a deal to trade the ledger for “Reina” but tries to get the ledger first. “Rai” stabs him in the eye and Asher pushes past him while “Rai” and Kyle deal with him. Asher finds “Reina” on the ground tied up, cut and beaten. Asher shoots and kills Ivan.
• “Reina” wakes up in the hospital with “Rai” and Asher is at the police station with Alex since he killed someone, but “Rai” gave her statement saying it was self-defense. “Rai” gives back her engagement ring which she tried on before they were attacked at the cottage and couldn’t return it sooner because it was dangerous. They agree that they will keep each other’s names and lives, that they are no longer “roles,” to “Reina’s” relief. “Rai” will continue as Rai and rule the bratva and “Reina” will be Reina who is a normal woman engaged to Asher.
• After a couple days, she wakes in the middle of the night to him in her room. He apologizes to her for his cruelty and hatred. He tells her that he will fight for her even if she doesn’t want him, he will fight until she does. She confesses she loves him and gives him the engagement ring to propose again because she doesn’t remember the first time.
• In the epilogue, it’s five years later and Asher and Reina are married. She got her MA in Sociology and helps kids like her who are runaways or need help, and he is working at Alex’s firm. Their relationship has improved a little bit after finding out the truth about Ari helped them release their blame on one another.
• Jason confessed he helped Ari and runs the sketchy gossip page on Instagram, Asher beats him up and almost ruins his football arm, Alex almost sends him out of the country, but Reina stopped them both for Izzy’s sake. Izzy offered to move back to the South for her family to deal with him. Seb and Naomi are “complicated,” Lucy got married to Prescott (the vice-captain on the cheer squad), and Owen is a star in the NFL. Rai has made a name for herself as the Pakhan, and her and Reina meet up sometimes but it has to be planned in advanced and on Rai's schedule.
• Asher and Reina have sex and she bring up wanting kids, so they have sex again to make it happen.

REVIEW:

3.5 stars

So this sequel was ludicrous. It was still entertaining and sexy but for the most part it was over the top. Think soap opera. The sister had to be a sociopath and behind everything that made old "Reina" seem awful (which makes a whole lotta sense since Rai was trying to preserve Reina's life. Like why would she make her seems super awful?), and Reina and Rai are part of the mafia, either of them the next heir. And of course they switched places.  Almost everything was tied up and most were satisfying. It was going to be a full 4 stars but the last few or so chapters seemed rushed and had more errors. It just seemed off/lacking depth and too easily resolved. Like really? Ivan wouldn't have brought a mini army of bodyguards? And like did Jason not go to the NFL? Did he not feel remorse? How are Seb and Naomi still complicated after five years? It just got really sappy in the last few chapters and it just seemed lame rather than awww. Overall, I'm super glad that the antihero apologized for his actions and cruelty and that the heroine knows that what he did was unacceptable and psychotic.