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“Hadley, meet Isiah Lenthum,” Simon introduced, gesturing to the man in front of me.
“I’d shake your hand but…” I said sarcastically as I gestured to the handcuffs that bound my wrists.
A small smirk came across Isiah’s mouth. “I’ve heard so much about you, Hadley. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Can’t say the same, unfortunately,” I replied, faking a sweet smile.
Pain shot through my cheek, forcing my face to the side. I gasped, breathing through the needles that seemed to be attacking my face, the blow not hard enough to throw me to the ground, but enough to stun me into silence. I took a few moments, inhaling through my nose as I rode through the painful wave and waited for the aftershock to ease.
I pulled my shoulders back, narrowing my eyes at the man in front of me. He was unfazed by my act of rebellion.
“May I have a few words with my wife?” Simon asked, his voice polite.
“Make it quick,” Isiah ordered, his eyes burning through my skin like a hot poker. “You’ve already taken too long to retrieve her. You’re lucky I’ve had the patience to wait this long.”
My head was spinning, and I couldn’t grasp what was going on.
Who was Isiah, and what was his part in this equation?
Isiah headed back to the table in the corner, and Simon dragged me to the opposite side of the barn, shoving me against the wall.
“You need to keep your mouth shut,” he snapped.
“What the hell have you got yourself mixed up in?” I growled.
“That’s none of your damn business, Hadley.” He got right in my face. “It stopped being your business the day you refused to leave Arkansas with me.”
“That’s why you’re angry?” I asked. “This is all because I wouldn’t go with you?”
“I thought if I let you have time, that you would realize that you needed me.” He turned his body so he could see the men across the room, but kept his voice low. “I watched you start stripping, I was so angry. Made me sick that you were using your body like that.”
“It’s who I am. You never wanted me to be that girl, so I didn’t. I kept her hidden for you,” I told him. “But when you left. I got to be who I wanted, what I wanted.”
“Like a whore?” he spat, slamming his palm against the wall beside my head before taking a deep breath and fighting through his anger. “I would have given you everything. By the time the Syndicate realized I was still married…” his eyes drifted to Isiah, “…we were already beginning the merge. I didn’t think it would come to this.”
My breath halted in my chest.
“Wait. What?”
His eyes hardened, the small slip of emotion he released quickly covered. “Isiah is a businessman, he produces the product that we sell amongst other side work,” he explained. My stomach churned. “We are merging the Syndicate with his family business. Our production and distribution will be unlike any the States have ever seen.”
“What does this have to do with me?” The words tasted awful, I forced them out anyway, even through my fear of the answer I would receive.
“In order for the merger to take place, I must marry his daughter.”
I didn’t expect the laughter that bubbled up my throat and out my mouth. Simon quickly slapped his hand across my mouth, using his body to press me against the wall, the handcuffs pulling at my wrists painfully.
He slowly removed his hand. “Don’t fuck this up for me, Hadley. You’ve already made a mess. The phone call from Angelo, warning us away didn’t sit well with Isiah.”
Angelo called them?
This was new.
“Obviously, you didn’t listen.”
“Instead of just sending someone to kill you…” I shuddered at how easily he muttered those words as if I was nothing more than dirt that needed cleaning away. Instead of the woman he married and vowed to spend the rest of his life with. “Isiah demanded I bring you in as an act of good faith, so he could see it done himself.”
“So you’ve become hisbitch?” I spat.
