Marrying The Enemy: My Ex's Worst Nightmare

I spent ten years as the ward of Kason Oneal, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family. He saved me when I was a child, raised me, and made me believe I was his queen.

But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Dalia, returned, the illusion shattered.

Kason demanded I return the jade pendant-the one he had hand-carved for my sixteenth birthday-just so he could hang it around Dalia's neck. To him, I was suddenly nothing more than a placeholder who had kept his bed warm.

The cruelty didn't stop there. He stood by and watched as Dalia shredded my clothes with scissors, laughing at my tears.

When I collapsed on the floor in agony from acute appendicitis, Kason didn't call an ambulance. Instead, he dragged me to a shady clinic, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. He ordered the doctor to "terminate it" while I was dying of sepsis on the table.

He called me trash. He called me property. He stripped away every ounce of dignity I had left, all to please a woman who was lying to his face.

I realized then that the hero who saved me when I was ten was dead. I was done begging for scraps of affection from a monster.

Trembling, I walked to the phone and dialed the number of the one man Kason feared most-his sworn enemy, Hadley Payne.

"Tell him yes," I whispered into the receiver. "I accept the arrangement. I will marry him."

Kason thought he could break me. Instead, he was about to watch his "property" become the Queen of the rival family.

Chapter 1

Isabela Walker POV

The moment Kason Oneal demanded I return the jade pendant -the one he had carved for my sixteenth birthday -just so he could hang it around his ex-girlfriend's neck, I knew I had to sell my soul to the devil to escape him.

I stood in the center of the library, the place where he had once taught me how to read Italian, and stared at his outstretched hand.

His palm was calloused.

It was the same hand that had wiped away my tears when I was ten years old.

Now, it was waiting to strip me of the last piece of dignity I had left.

"Isabela," Kason said.

His voice was low.

It used to be the sound of my safety. Now, it sounded like a cell door slamming shut.

"Dalia likes it. It matches her eyes. Besides, you don't even wear it anymore."

I reached up and unclasped the cool stone from the hollow of my throat.

My fingers trembled, but I refused to look away.

I dropped the pendant into his hand.

The jade clicked against the gold band on his finger-no, not a wedding ring.

He wasn't married yet.

But he acted like he was already bound to her.

Dalia was the love of his life who had run away, and I was just the placeholder who had kept his bed warm and his ego stroked while she was gone.

"Thank you, Bella," he said, pocketing my heart like it was loose change. "You're a good girl."

He turned his back on me.

He walked out the door to go find her.

I stood there until the sound of his footsteps faded into the silence of the Oneal estate.

Then, I walked to the desk phone.

I picked up the receiver and dialed a number I had memorized but never dared to use.

My father answered on the second ring.

"Isabela?" Arvil Parrish's voice was weak, terrified of why I was calling from the main line.

"Tell him yes," I said.

"What?"

"The contract," I said, my voice flat and dead. "Tell Don Hadley Payne I accept the arrangement. I will marry him."

My father gasped.

"Isabela, are you sure? The Paynes... they are butchers. Hadley is a monster."

"So is Kason," I whispered. "He just wears a better suit."

I hung up the phone.

My legs gave out, and I sank onto the Persian rug.

I closed my eyes and let the memory wash over me.

I was ten years old again.

I was standing in this same hallway, clutching a dirty teddy bear, while Cora Stout and her daughter laughed at my thrift-store shoes.

They called me trash.

They said I smelled like poverty.

Then Kason had appeared.

He was eighteen, already dangerous, already the heir to the Oneal crime family.

He had stepped between us, a wall of muscle and expensive cologne.

"She is with me," he had declared, his voice silencing the room. "Anyone who touches her, touches me."

He had saved me.

He had raised me.

He had made me love him with a desperation that consumed my entire teenage life.

He knew I loved him.

He had used that love to keep me loyal, to keep me quiet, to keep me waiting.

And then Dalia came back.

The illusion didn't just crack; it shattered.

I looked at my reflection in the dark window.

The girl Kason saved was gone.

The woman who remained was going to burn this house to the ground, even if she had to stand in the fire to do it.