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Please continue reading if you’ve read the story starter – a very long Chapter 1 – and you’re ready to dive into the story with me.
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About the story: (short description. Click here for longer)
“Let Me Love You” is a tale of love and sacrifice and a poignant story of self-discovery, celebrating the human capacity to find love in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Please enjoy the current WIP of Iris and El. This will be published freely up to a point, like in the old days, and then the entire book will be posted for full download. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And don’t forget to check out the companion stories. (Wicked Chances, Dreams of Reality, The Convenient Wife, The Other Side of Love, She Works Hard for the Money & Ravenous)
Enjoy, Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard
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Read more: Let Me Love You – Chapter 71✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromanceAUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s late, and I’m posting slower than usual. I can’t blame a lot that’s going on in my personal life. Although there have been some pains here and there, I’m hoping it’s just old age. I’m adjusting my diet, but I have been trying to do this for the past year. Weaning myself from sugar and eating less fake food has been an adjustment, but it’s helped me get down ten pounds. It took a whole year to get there and stay there, but I’m hoping I can get ten more pounds by the summer. How? I’ll start to incorporate exercise permanently and not just when I feel guilty about not doing something.
I’m telling myself this process is very much needed and something I must do.
I’m going to finish this book. It’s a promise I made to myself. And I’m not letting you down.
A hard bump against the car shook Iris, and she strained to hear what was happening.
A woman’s wail of pain chilled Iris to the bone, and then there was silence for a couple of minutes.
“I’ve never seen anyone move that fast in my life!” the man said zealously. “Who the fuck are you?”
Blaque snorted. “You need to control that bitch if you plan to run for mayor. Next word, she mutters, and I’ll take her lips off.”
“How’d you know-“
“Don’t worry, Ernie, how I know shit. You’ve been trying to one-up Olorun since he fucked your mother? Or was it before that? You don’t even like this bitch sister of his. No one likes her. I’ll be doing O and you a favor, slashing her throat now and throwing her in the box with my other package.”
“DON’T!” Sharlie screamed.
“Oh?! You can order a hit, but don’t want to see the blood?” Blaque asked sarcastically. “I’m not cleaning up any of your shit, Sharlie, just because you want to get back at people.”
Sharlie retorted, “I remember cleaning your shit up in New York.”
“Pointing suspicious fingers at O wasn’t cleaning up shit, Sharlie.”
Something slapped on the ground, and Russell Wexford’s cold voice spoke. “That should be enough to get the job done. And we need it sooner than later.”
Something was shuffled across the ground.
“Sharlie should have told you; I don’t accept money for any jobs in the U.S., Wexford,” Blaque sneered, insulted.
“What do you accept?”
“You’ll just have to wait.”
Footsteps were coming close to the car.
“Did anyone check inside that box?” Russell demanded.
“You can check, but you put your fingerprints on that box, and they’ll still be there when the police discover the body inside,” Blaque said casually. “As I said, I could do you all a favor and slide that sister bitch with the other body.”
“She’s not dead, Blaque,” Sharlie protested. “You only knocked her out.”
“I know, but where I put that box, she’ll be dead soon enough.”
“Why don’t you do us all a favor and put El in there? We’ll pay you whatever you want,” the first man said.
Russell ordered, “Ernest, get your wife out of here and let me handle this.”
Blaque sniggered, “You think you’re better at negotiating than the councilperson?”
“I’m a businessman, ma’am. And if you don’t know me, I’m Russell Wexford-“
She cut him off. “I know exactly who you are, Wexford. I know you like to take advantage of drugged women, and I know how you like to hold things over your son to control him. I know you made up a lot of lies to destroy Olorun, but you’re still not satisfied. I know Sharlie did it because she hates him. Ernie’s jealous of him, and Ola is mad at him for not spoiling her. But you? You destroyed his father because he exposed who you were. Olorun had all the reasons to come after you? Is it because he beat you at your own game? And then turned your son against you? Who’s idea was it to kill him off?” She sniggered again. “Sharlie, don’t have the tits, and Earnest is all talk, but you, sir, have a vendetta against him because he’s a better man than you will ever be.”
“He’s been passing for what he’s not for way too long. Men like him need to be put in their place.”
“Their place? O only lets people assume what they want to assume. It’s his blessing and curse. He can’t change his parentage or past, but you know this and are still jealous of him.” Blaque snorted. “Perhaps you wish you had a son like that?”
“You know a little too much, little girl,” Russell snarled. “Has Sharlie been spilling all our secrets?”
Blaque chuckled. “Sharlie, don’t need to tell me shit when I can smell it right in front of my face, old man. The reason I don’t kill everyone in this room is because I think death is too nice for you all.”
The back hatch slammed shut, and then the driver’s door to the car banged closed, with the engine starting.
“This is the last time you pull this bullshit with me, Sharlie, or I’ll slit your throat myself,” Blaque sneered.
The garage door could be heard rolling up, and Iris cringed as she rolled around in the vehicle, maneuvering erratically. The tires burned rubber to get out of wherever they were. She could hear Blaque raging in curses, and it sounded like the woman was killing the steering between screams of frustration.
The only coherent words Iris could make out, Blaque repeatedly yelled, “Kill them fucking all.”
Did that mean her as well? Iris wondered.
El was a madman driving around the city, looking everywhere for her. Iris hadn’t checked in at the hotel, but he didn’t inform her of his plans for their belongings. He had moved all their items to the new house. He had been worried King would get his hands on her and try to force her to tell the location of the journals. His second stop was her aunt’s fortress, where he had connected to Iris. Their first night was so clear in his mind.
And El could still feel his body’s initial reaction to her proximity.
Aunt Rose cautiously answered the door, barely opening a crack to him even after confirming who he was through the door.
Before he could say why he was there, Aunt Rose ordered him, “Go around back. Standing out there causes too much attention.”
The iron gate on the driveway opened for him. El wasn’t used to anyone ordering him around, but he needed this woman’s help. This relative was the only one who could explain what could’ve happened to Iris.
Tyler’s words had gotten in his head during his whole drive from Detroit. Yes, Iris had what she needed just being married to El—freedom from her old life. Even without his money, she could establish herself independently and have nothing to do with him.
Yet, it wasn’t what El desired. He needed this woman in more ways than he could imagine. Iris had become his world, his savior, and his heart. Dammit! She couldn’t leave him. And then El thought perhaps her father had been stalking around, waiting for the perfect opportunity to abduct her. Yet to grab her from out of town had to be difficult for the older man.
Logic came in immediately, and he knew this had to be Blaque’s doing. El had a horrible gut feeling that he would never see Iris again if that was the case.
Since he couldn’t contact Blaque directly, there was nowhere he could start on that angle. Since El had known Blaque, she had always instantly appeared whether he wanted her around him.
But just in case, El decided to start with Iris’s relative.
Jumping out of his car after pulling through the gates and to the open area behind the back door, a click of a rifle stopped him right in his tracks. Rose was standing inside the house behind a thick iron screen door with a shotgun pointed at the ground but ready to fire.
“What did you do to my niece?” the older woman demanded.
El automatically held up his hands in surrender, pausing at the bottom of the steps. With his layer of the homemade oil Iris had made on the top of his lip, he could handle the smells coming from the home – plants, old people, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The way Aunt Rose handled the gun, El knew what she could do and could open that door and get a bullet in his chest before he could reach for his weapon tucked behind him.
“That’s why I came here, Ms Rose. Iria disappeared after the ceremony. She left her purse and phone, so I can only assume it was against her will unless that was to throw me off. But I know Iris wouldn’t go anywhere without her nephew, nor would you find a way to contact her.”
The aunt shivered. “Dear lord. Her father took her? I thought you could protect her.”
“I didn’t think-“
The old woman cut him off. “That’s what’s wrong with you, new age. You never think there is danger afoot.”
El was not about to wallow anymore in his failure to protect his new wife as he had promised. “Is Clem safe here?”
“He’s not here now. I let him leave with Uncle Pete to get him out of the house for exercise after his lunch. What are you going to do to get Iris back?”
He had been trying to devise a plan, but nothing had come to mind yet. “If her father took her, how’d he know where we were? How’d he get there?”
“I dont have the answers you’re looking for, Mr. Olorun, but I know he has something to do with it. My best bet is if you follow him around town, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Suddenly, a beating on the front door startled both of them.
“Rose, you bitch, I know you’re in there!” an older black male boomed. “Open this door and give me my grandson!”
Aunt Rose cursed under her breath and coolly said, “Speak of the devil, and he will appear.” She pressed a device on the wall nearby. “I’ll keep him fussing until you can get in your car, get around the block, and follow him. Bring my niece back, Mr. Olorun. Or you’ll be sorry.”
It wasn’t the first threat he had ever received he was scared about, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t want to disappoint someone. “Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged before he jumped in his car. The iron gate in the rear had already started to open, and the older woman had disappeared from the back door.
He could maneuver to the beginning of the block and still see the commotion Asum Folsom made in front of Aunt Rose’s house. Of all the documentation El had seen on Iris’s father, he had never seen this man as real until now, and he hated every cell on his body.
Gripping the steering wheel to push away the urge not to go over there and shoot this man for what he’d done to Iris and all the times he’d terrorized Aunt Rose, El waited as the older woman had instructed him. She must have antagonized Asum to keep him there, which made him angrier because he slammed his large fists against the iron front screen door, demanding she open it and let him in.
El also noted that the man never expressed concern about Iris’s whereabouts, which could only mean the man knew something.
Iris had been given the horrible privilege of being a part of this monster, but she didn’t deserve it.
Yet, did El deserve her? He’d always thought of himself as the monster.
Asum threw more threats, but distant sirens made the man jump in an old dark green Chevy Bronco and leave. El gave the man distance, but he followed the SUV to a mid-part of Detroit, which was primarily industrial but with small residential areas inset over the area. This was the dead part of the city where the car factory life used to live. The air was thick with old motor oil, rusted metal, and degrading houses people used to occupy that weren’t cleaned out, and El could almost smell the remnants of the people that used to live there.
El pulled out the rolled oil Iris had made and swiped it under his nose. Subtle yet potent, the woman’s small gestures and presence had made his life ten times easier.
His need to find, save, and make her his forever was ever-present, and he planned on doing anything to locate her.
End of This Chapter | Post your thoughts in the comment | Let the author know what’s going on in your head
Let Me Love You (c) 2025 Sylvia Hubbard All Rights Reserved
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