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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 72✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromance

Author’s Note: I can write love scenes like nobody’s business, but action scenes are so difficult. And that’s why this took so long, plus I was putting the ending together all the while making sure I set up King’s Paradise. Yes, he’s coming and I needed to get the back story set up so I could make sure things were in place so when the readers are hounding me about everything I can say, here you go, read this if you want to know more.

Things you should also note: ZZ means something… Please read Her Subsbtitue Husband… His Boss & Wicked Chances

Asum pulled through an abandoned industrial building. The sign on the outside read Coming Soon ZZ Enterprises/ Community Project in collaboration with Newman Construction. Surprisingly, El knew who was part of this project, but he also knew it was in its inception, less than six months old. They were still scraping out the lead and asbestos from the massive building. 
What could be in here for Asum?
The man didn’t pull through the front but drove around until a small opening that the SUV could barely squeeze through. Staying far away, El could get through with his vehicle and follow without being seen. Asum pulled through the buildings and finally stopped at a small shed in the middle of a large parking area with a courtyard. Weeds, old cars, and garbage were everywhere, but the shed was slightly new. Overcoming his gage reflex from the stench overwhelming him, he put on a double layer of the oil because he could barely see straight.
When El gauged there was only one way in or out of the area, he parked behind another building and quickly grabbed his gloves, sniper vest, rifle, an extra handgun, filled cartridges, and hand knife.
When he came around to watch Asum at the shed, the old man was getting a message on his phone. El watched as Asum approached the shed, cautiously opened the door, and went inside.
El had to add a heavy layer under his nose so the smell of everything didn’t make him pass out, but this gave him time to get over to the shed and listen outside. Heavy gears were moving inside. The seven-by-ten shed didn’t have windows so that he couldn’t peek inside.
An elevator? 
Slowly, El peaked inside. Asum was gone, but there was a platform-style elevator. One just had to step on, hold on, and be lowered into the ground. 
He didn’t see Asum and knew the old man had most likely gotten on that. Braving his sickness, El stepped on one of the narrow platforms and waited for the first opportunity to jump off while looking frantically around.
The platform lowered him into a basement, and El didn’t wait for it to stop but jumped off after the second floor was passed. The platform descended four more floors but continuously looped. It was only a churning noise, and he walked fifty feet away to a darkened area. The shadowed area gave him enough cover, and unless someone were a foot away, they wouldn’t be able to see him, but he could see everything. He kept looking around at everything, holding his handgun out, waiting for anything to jump off.
If he leaned over the platform a little, he could see Asum on the lowest level looking around and constantly checking his phone, but finally, the older man stopped fidgeting and walked to the center past mounds of construction debris,  where a work light was on.
“Who’s there?” Asum demanded.
El was sure the old man hadn’t seen him. Covered in darkness all around, El pressed back and took deep breaths. Raising his sniper rifle confidently, he knew this would be a perfect opportunity to take the old out. People would suspect Asum’s street contacts got tired of his bullshit and decided to take him out. 
A cold chill swept over him, and El knew it wasn’t the giddiness of killing Asum. Dropping the rifle to his chest, he took out the hand knife, readying himself for attack. Looking to his left and right, he knew he should have smelled or heard someone, but there wasn’t anything around.
“Don’t kill him,” King whispered, directly behind him, grabbing El’s wrist in a steel vise grip.
Glad he was trained in hand-to-hand combat and wasn’t startled by anything, El took a deep breath and relaxed his tensed arm, which had been ready to strike. Only then did King release him. 
“He can’t hear us from this distance,” King assured him, nodding at Asum.
El raised his sniper rifle again to aim in Asum’s direction, but only so he could see the man up close and anything else around.
King continued, “Trust me, I’d love to watch him take a bullet between the eyes. This bastard has been a pain in my side for a long time, but I need this meeting to occur.”
“What the fuck is going on?” El demanded, not taking his sights off Asum but seeing nothing else around the bottom floor. “And how the fuck are you here? You can’t step foot in Detroit.”
“I couldn’t until recently,” King revealed. “And this is why my little sister is causing havoc for you and me.”
“What the fuck, King. Spit it the fuck out!” 
King came to the side of El. Usually dressed in white, this time, the man was in a dark gray shirt and jeans with a gray jacket. He leaned on the side of the rusted bars. “I’ve been monitoring that asshole’s phone. He got an unknown text telling him he could exchange his daughter for the formula.”
“That bastard doesn’t have the formula! He barely remembers anything from all the meth he smokes. I can smell it from here. His brain cells are barely on a wing and prayer.” 
“I know this, but whoever set this up doesn’t know it,” King responded but suddenly went quiet and looked into the darkness on the lower floor. 
El could feel the sudden chill, and the hairs on his neck lifted. Checking through his scope, he saw nothing, but a dark area on the lowest floor of the industrial area told him someone was there. 
“Who’s there?” Asum called out nervously, rubbing his arms and shivering. 
King removed a small circular device, clipped it to the steel banister, and opened a case containing two earbuds. 
After taking one of the earbuds, he offered the other to El. “They’re brand new,” he stated.
El could smell the case had been rubbed down and cleaned, and there was no distinctive sour smell when he knew something had been used, so he took the offered earbud and put it in his ear. Immediately, Asum’s voice was amplified as if they were standing beside him.
“I can hear you,” Amus raged, pulling out a fixed-blade knife and frantically looking around in every direction.
El determined that Asum didn’t know what was around him, given the older man’s erratic turns and wildly waving a two-inch blade.
Asum cried, “Come out and quick fucking playing around. You called me here.”
Blaque seemed to jump out of the dark behind Asum with a blade to his throat. “Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
Asum seemed too terrified to answer, but he sputtered, “Y-Yeah, I double and triple c-checked.”
Blaque released him and looked around suspiciously, lingering only two seconds in King and Els’ direction. 
El moved his finger to the trigger.
“She knows we’re here,” King whispered.
The weird part about that statement was that El knew what King said was true. 
“I could take them both,” El angrily sneered, watching the floor. “It would save us a lot of headaches and others in the future.”
“Chill man E, unfortunately, that’s my baby sister, and her death isn’t up to us. She needs a face to face.””
“No one could handle her face to the face,” El snorted.
“No one, you know. Blaque makes her weaknesses look like her strengths. It’s the only reason I haven’t taken you out. You’re probably the only one who would know things about her; no one else knows. The trauma she made you endure was on purpose to make you forget things, but if you would let me dig around your brain for an afternoon, I’m positive I could get what she hid out of you.”
El didn’t think he wanted this cold, cruel man digging anywhere around dark places in his brain. He’d survived decades around Blaque and barely made it out with his sanity intact; there was no telling what would happen, giving his mental peace over to King Heart. 
Asum’s demand brought El back to the moment. “Where is she?”
“Do you have what you promised if I got her?”  Blaque questioned. 
Asum reached inside his coat and pulled out a ratted, almost disintegrated small notebook that looked as if it had come from when the Declaration of Independence had been written. Twine wrapped around it kept the journal together, and what was supposed to be a red cover was now a faded pinkish gray. “It’s here.”
“And that’s the only copy?”
“Yeah!” Asum said impatiently. 
Blaque snatched the notebook away from him. “If you’re lying to me, old man, I’m going to kill you with a thousand cuts. Just like I did your son.”
King had the nerve to chuckle and whisper, “I taught her well.”
El forced down his irritation and needed to get away from this evil man to concentrate on the conversation between Blaque and Asum.
“Unfortunately,” Blaque said with great disappointment, “Small dick, Dwayne could only survive a hundred, but with you, I’ll take it really slow. Sick a dirty roach-infested sock in your mouth to muffle your screams and watch the blood drain out of your body while roaches crawl out your ears and nose, trying to get into your breathing cavity. “
King chuckled again. “My girl,” he whispered proudly. 
El swallowed the disgust and didn’t doubt Blaque would do what she had horrifically described. Her depth of torture had been seen firsthand by his eyes, and those were not the days he ever wanted to remember.
“Was she born this depraved?”
“She’s softened up a bit since New York. What did you do to her?”
“Fucking nothing, it’s what she did to me. She pushed me too far, King. She fucked around and found out there are consequences to the decisions she makes, and nothing she can do could make me change my mind. I’m done with her shit.”
While they spoke, Blaque carefully examined the journal. “Is this all?” she questioned suspiciously. 
“Yes. That’s the entire formula, along with the new testing numbers.”
“And what happened to the former experiments? What happened to the women?”
Asum grunted. “They’re gone. Dead. It accelerated brain deterioration, and there was nothing I could do about that, but the new formula doesn’t.” He spoke proudly and grunted again. “They just think they’re asleep, and they don’t remember shit.”
“Why do you want this shit?” El hissed at King. 
“As I said, it will be personal only.”
Blaque asked Asum, “What about the symptoms?”
Asum shuffled his feet. “With the newer formula, there is an increase in Norepinephrine.”
Slowly, she perused the small diary. “Is it addictive?”
“Not the chemical itself, but the side effects can be.”
“What are the side effects?!” she demanded with significant irritation. 
“Touch sensitivity to the skin and for some reason there is an increase in the need for Vitamin C and Magnesium. But I should warn you the longer it’s used, the more it could take away the body’s natural way of producing the chemical.”
Blaque asked, holding the notebook high above her head, ‘And you are positive this is your only copy?” 
“I swear! Now, do you have what you promised?”
“Promised?” she teased.
“Stop fucking around. The money and my daughter.”
Blaque took out a set of keys. “There’s a car on the east side of the building full of gas and ready to go. I never want to see your face in Detroit again, Asum Folsom or you’ll be sorry.”
The man snatched the keys and started to walk away, but Blaque called for him, and he warily turned around. 
She pulled out a lighter and lit the journal.
“NOOoooo!” Asum cried and started to run to her, but a blade she threw swift as lightning penetrated the side of this calf, making him fall to the ground.
King growled, “El, you better have that formula. Little sister is trying to ensure I never get my hands on it.”
El was ten times positive he had more than what Asum was showing Blaque because he had meticulously gone through every one of Violet’s journals. The sister may have been cruel, but she inherited her mother’s attention to detail. All the information Asum had told Blaque was accurate, but there was so much more. El kept this fact to himself from King because he was still untrustworthy of this man’s intentions for the formula. “I suspect Asum made the majority of that shit up in the journal to assuage Blaque and get what he wanted. Are you going to tell me why you need it?”
“No.” His answer was firm, but El could see how agitated King was as the man squeezed the steel banister.
At that moment, El knew King had decided to stop Blaque’s destruction of his life; he would have to kill his little sister. El could almost feel he was looking at Lucifer, tormented and angry, but whatever secret he protected was more valuable than hell itself.
El knew he needed to get all of the Hearts out of his life as soon as possible if he didn’t want to be caught in the crosshairs. He didn’t think he would survive the battle that was coming.

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

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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