Normally, when she worked, Haley liked keeping her phone off to minimize any distractions and that morning she'd had an appointment with a lady who wanted pictures taken.
The nude kind, it was not normally a form of photography that Haley specialized in, but the woman, upon seeing some of Haley's works, had insisted that she be the one to do the photo shoot. So in the end, Haley had agreed and she had to admit it had been a lot of fun.
But now, as she finally turned her phone back on, all of her humor instantly vanished as her phone gained a life of its own vibrating so much it almost fell right out of her hand.
Sure enough, when she went over the missed calls and the messages, all of them were from her family. Her sisters had tried to reach out, but not as much as her grandfather.
In the first few messages, he had been admonishing her for her behaviour.
'We do not throw popcorn on guests'. But then, as he had kept sending more messages, the tone had changed until finally it came to the very last message that he had sent her.
'I know that there has to be a reason that your relationship with Prince Victor ended. But I really do believe that the two of you would be good for each other. Even so, I am sorry that I sprung his visit on you. It will not happen again. Please call me'.
Haley knew that the message was as close to a genuine apology as she was going to get.
But she was not satisfied with it. Her grandfather had apologized for blind-siding her with Victor's visit. But he had not promised that the man would not be coming back. Which meant that he most likely would. Her grandfather would keep him coming back for as long as it took for her to cave and allow Victor back into her life.
But Haley did not want that. She was through with that man. He had belittled her to the point where she had almost begun to believe all of the horrid things that he had said about her.
She was not going back to that. She had avoided the man for three years and had almost been able to fool herself into thinking that it was well and truly over. That Victor had moved onto some other victim.
But now after three years, he was back in her life and she was not stupid enough to believe that it was just a one-time thing.
Victor had her family on his side and he knew it. The only way to get away from him completely would be to cut them off, but Haley could not do that.
She had lost her parents while she had still been young. Even though they were not the closest of people, she valued her family. She would not lose them over somebody like Victor.
What was she going to do to make sure that he not only kept his claws far away from her? But that he also did not break apart her family.
More than anything, Haley wished in that moment that things between herself and her sisters were not so strained. She wanted to call one of them, to confide in them. To be able to just talk about the entire thing openly. But she did not feel comfortable enough doing that.
The only other person that she could have talked to about the entire thing was not in the country. The archaeological site where Erin was, was not really some place where mobile connectivity was at its best. Even if it had been, the time differences would have made it a nightmare for her to talk to her friend.
So Haley was stuck on her own trying to figure out a whopper of a situation.
Taking apart her camera in order to clean the lens. Haley tried to think of a way to solve the issue. But she could not come up with anything that did not sound too crazy in her head.
The closest that she'd come to a solution was a wild fantasy of what would happen if she poisoned Prince Victor and buried his body someplace where no one would look. Never in her life had Haley thought of killing somebody. But Prince Victor brought out the worst in her.
The man literally had her thinking of murder, and that was not something that she wanted to consider even jokingly. Apart from killing him, the only other way that she could think to get the man to stay away from her was through Deacon Roth.
Holding her lens up to the light to check if it was well and truly clean. Haley entertained the thought of asking Deacon Roth to stay on as her husband. To be the barrier between herself and Prince Victor.
If there was one thing that Victor hated, it was used goods. If he were to find out that she was married to Deacon Roth, the man would lose interest(hopefully)
The idea was very, very tempting and it took a great amount of self-control for Haley to not drop her lens, and pick up her phone to call Roth with the suggestion.
If she called him and made such a request, there was no doubt in her mind that he would laugh until he passed out. Or worse, he would be so offended that he would bring forward the date of their divorce.
Deacon Roth wanted out of their marriage with a quickness, there was absolutely no way that he would agree to stay married to her for any reason at all, But even though she knew that his answer would be a resounding no, Haley still could not help but wonder if Roth would help her out if she asked.