I felt dizzy and groggy. My stomach was turning, and just the thought of opening my eyes was enough to make me want to hurl. Body parts that I wasn’t even sure I’d felt pain in before were hurting and aching. Or maybe it wasn’t specific parts. Maybe it was just every part of me.

“Wake up, Meyah,” someone cooed.

A voice I recognized.

Which for a moment made me feel relaxed.

Until I started to wonder where I knew it from. That thought sent a strange chill through my body. It was that feeling you got when a piece of ice touched your skin. For a moment it electrified your senses, it was cold, it made you shudder. But the longer it was held there, the more the feeling of coldness disappeared, and it started to cause you pain.

It burned, it stung.

You desperately wanted it gone.

I fought to force my eyes open, just managing to crack them enough to see a glass of water being thrown in my face. I gasped as the wave hit me, inhaling some of the liquid. It dripped into my eyes as I choked and spluttered, fighting to replace it with air so I could breathe.

If I could only get my hands free, wipe my face, see what was going on. My hands wouldn’t budge, each pull was more painful than the last with what felt like rope rubbing my skin raw.

There was laughter in the room.

A handful of voices.

Men.

People were getting a kick out of watching me fighting to breathe.

“God, someone pick her up, please. Before she vomits all over the floor.” A few seconds later, my body was lifted and jostled around before being placed in a chair. I could feel the leather on my hands behind me, it was slick and luxurious. I blinked furiously as I tried to get some kind of vision back. I don’t know what I’d been given, or drugged with, or how hard they’d hit me—that was all a complete mystery to me—but I was finding it really hard to focus and control my body like I normally would.

Slowly things got brighter, the outline of the world around me wasn’t so fuzzy.

My stomach clenched as I coughed again, this time, the voice wasn’t wrong. I almost did vomit. And while I held it all down, not wanting to add one more thing to this humiliation, part of me wondered whether I should have just let it rain all over what seemed like expensive everything.

My body slumped in the chair, the position awkward and not what I would class as comfortable, but it wasn’t being drowned to death on the floor.

“You know, you look a lot like your mother,” the deep voice commented thoughtfully. For a second, I wasn’t quite sure whether he was even talking to me, his body appearing in my line of sight. My eyes moved up his outline, taking note of the dark suit, the perfect way it was pressed, the diamond cufflinks that he twisted and fiddled with unconsciously. “Yes. You have Carly’s lips. Perfect. Pouty. Drove every man inside my club crazy.”

My heart stopped.

Isiah stared down at me as though he was looking back at the past. His eyes were glazed, giving him this soft, almost loving gaze. And even though he was staring directly at me, I knew it wasn’t me he was seeing.

One blink, and the look was gone.

Disappearing in a flash.

Replaced by a malicious and taunting smile. “Bet Huntsman didn’t share that part with you, did he?” Isiah spat, leaning in closer. “Didn’t share with you how he was one of my closest friends. How I considered him a brother, his family… my family. And then how he stole the woman I loved out from underneath me.”

I wanted to vomit again.

He couldn’t fucking mean what I thought he meant.

That he and my mother had been a couple?

That Mom had actual feelings for this psychotic piece of garbage?

I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe that it was true. That she could have been fooled by any part of his sick and twisted persona.

I’d heard the stories Romeo had told me what this man was capable of.

He nodded, a devious smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. He found absolute delight in this, and that wasn’t all. He had more up his sleeve. His eyes were excited, gleaming with mischief.

Isiah took a couple of steps back, and I took notice of the rest of the room. It was like some kind of library. Bookshelves lined the room instead of walls, bursting at the seams with books. Different colors, sizes, and textures. Some looking like they were hundreds of years old, while others had glossy covers that sparkled in the light of the room.

A couple of guards stood in the doorway. While I could feel one more just behind me, the one who’d picked me up off the ground and dumped me here.

“You know, that’s not the best part of the story,” Isiah continued, his brows knitting together as he reached up to scratch his chin. “Hmmm… best part? Or maybe I should say, that’s not the worst part… it really depends on whose point of view you’re coming from.”

“You’re insane,” I rasped, followed by another deep and intense cough that felt like at anymore moment, I might hack up a lung, or by the pain coming from my torso maybe a broken rib.

He grinned maniacally as he took a seat across from me on another leather seat. “Just wait, I haven’t gone all cartoon villain yet. I still have plenty more to tell you. And I’m still perfecting my evil laugh, so feel free to offer your critique on that when I’m done.”

Holy shit. This guy was insane.

I needed to get the hell out of here and fast.

Where was Romeo? Or Ham?

Or better yet, where on earth was I?

And did anyone know where I was? Or even if I was missing?

Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let Isiah know I might be scared. I wouldn’t go down without a fight, so if he was thinking he was going to break me…

“She came back when you were little, you know.”

I could feel my breathing beginning to lighten. Short, sharp breaths as opposed to the long deep ones I was using to try and keep the tears at bay.

You’re stronger than this Meyah. He’s trying to get inside your head. He’s trying to hurt you. Don’t let him.

“I don’t want to hear your stupid little story,” I argued, wiggling my body so I could sit up a little straighter, trying to prove I wasn’t weak like he thought. “Why don’t you write it on a little note, roll it up real nice and tight, then ram it all the way up your ass.”

His eyebrows went up, his eyes widening as he placed his hands on the arms of his chairs and pushed to his feet.

I pressed my lips together tightly and narrowed my eyes staring him down in defiance. At this stage, I didn’t care if he hit me, or hurt me, but what I didn’t want was to listen to what he had to say about my mom. That would break my heart. That would kill me more times over.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure he knew that.

“You have a dirty fucking mouth, anyone ever tell you that,” he sneered, reaching out and grabbing hold of my jaw, his fingers digging into my face. The pain made my eyes water. “You’re gonna listen to my stupid little story because like every good tale, there’s a moral. One you could learn from, I don’t doubt.”

He released me, but before I could find any relief, his palm connected with my cheek, throwing my face to the left and sending a sharp sting across my skin. My brain struggled through the buzzing in my ear, and I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut tightly as I fought to make it go away.

“Now be a good little bitch and listen,” he snapped, once I’d finally managed to force my eyes open and to focus again. He tugged on his suit jacket, straightening the cuffs and lapels before patting and primping his hair.

It was as though I’d thrown him a little. This asshole who was used to stealing women, drugging them, selling them off. You’d think he would be accustom to dealing with this kind of thing. Unless… the girls never really fought back.

They probably begged. Pleaded. And I bet that got him hard. Having them want to do whatever the hell he desired in order for him to just let them go. They would almost agree to anything.

It was fucking sick.

A new guard stepped into the room, handing Isiah a short glass with amber liquid and a handful of ice cubes. He swirled it around, the cubes clinking against the outside before he took a small sip. He hummed in approval before setting the glass down on the small glass table just in front of me. “You were five when Carly came back to town.” A smile touched his lips. One I wanted to say was genuine, but I couldn’t imagine using that word with a man like Isiah. “She told me all about you. How you were so smart, so outgoing, and ready to take on the world.”

His words hit me like a blow to the face.

Outgoing?

Ready to take on the world?

Coming from the mother who kept me caged up and wouldn’t even let me stir a pot on the stove even when I was thirteen.

He had it wrong.

“I thought she’d come looking for me. I thought she’d come to apologize and grovel. And you know what was worse? I loved her so much I would have forgiven her. Huntsman was always trying to take what was mine. Tell me I couldn’t do shit because he knew I was getting ahead, and the fucking MC was being left in the dust. I knew he’d stolen her from me purposely. I would have taken her back. I would have fucking loved her. I would have raised you as my own.”

“I would rather die,” I snarled.

“That comes later,” he threw back with a dark glare that burned right through me. “For now, you shut your mouth and listen. I’m getting to the good part, I promise.”

I needed to get the hell out of here, but there were guards on the door. My hands were bound so tight they were starting to go numb, and my body was running on adrenaline—which would only last so long. The aches and pains were becoming stronger and stronger.

“So then… your mom tells me she’s actually looking for Huntsman,” he continued, laughing loudly as if it was all one big misunderstanding.

I was starting to piece everything together now, and second by second my heart was cracking. That mom I’d seen in the picture with Huntsman, with the beaming smile on her face, the carefree way she lived, she was beautiful and free. Then my grandparents were killed, and she had to raise Kim, as well as a newborn baby, but she was still strong, she was still herself, she still had that soul I saw in the picture.

“What the hell did you do to her?” I whispered, my voice catching. I couldn’t stop the tears that trickled down my cheeks, not even caring about how his eyes lit up, and a dark and satisfied smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

He took that as his cue.

Coming over to me, picking up his glass and crouched down in front of me. His drink hung from his hands, the ice cubes once again clattering loudly as he gently swirled the liquid.

“I punished her.”

My breathing was shaky and uneven. Isiah was perfectly calm. He dipped his head, looked me directly in the eye and grinned. I imagined that this moment is what it would be like if I met the devil himself.

“I told her if she wanted to be a whore… then that’s what she would be,” he declared and took a sip from his glass. He swallowed and let out a satisfied sigh. “So I gave her to my men. And I let them destroy her.”

I couldn’t stop the distraught sob which forced its way up my throat and fell from my lips.

It was like a compliment to him. I saw the way his eyes lit up at the sign of my pain.

He broke her.

Isiah had turned my mom from that woman I saw in the picture with Huntsman, the one who was happy to announce how outgoing I was as a child, and who found happiness and freedom in life into someone who was scared at every second and every moment of the day that she was going to be hurt, and that she was going to have the people she cared about stripped away from her.

He left her barely hanging on.

He broke her.

“You’re a psychotic, jealous, and pathetic piece of shit,” I hissed, barely able to speak as my throat burned and tears fell continuously.

He didn’t flinch at my words.

I imagine he’d probably been called worse.

“And your mom is a fucking whor—”

I couldn’t let him finish it. Rage consumed me, and I threw my body back in the chair, lifting my legs and slamming both my feet into his stomach before he even had time to relax. The loud ‘oomph’ of air leaving his lungs and groans of pain were so fucking satisfying that I wanted to do it again. Over and over until he felt what he’d done to me, to Huntsman, to my fucking mom.

He ruined her, he destroyed her.

And I wanted to kill him.

Isiah climbed to his feet, hunched over, holding his stomach, his eyes burning through mine like fucking lasers. “Get her dressed into something pretty,” he murmured, the rasp in his voice letting me know he was in some serious pain. “I want to take photos and get them up in the next few hours. I already have a couple of buyers interested, the quicker, the better.”

Buyers.

Two men grabbed me, and I fought and struggled before Isiah stopped and grabbed my jaw in his hand, his fingers squeezing it painfully until I finally cried out. “Stop.”

“You’re lucky my buyers like their product feisty and mostly untouched,” he warned. “Or you’d be barely fucking breathing right now. Maybe even dead. Like father like daughter.”

I couldn’t hold back the sob.

I didn’t care if it made me look weak.

“Take her.”

Ham, where are you?