Madness: A Dark Revenge Romance

We’ve moved her mother to a cell, and today is the day we bring out Hudson. He’s strapped in the same spot as Isabella was several days ago. He’s remained silent. Tyson’s men brought him back with them, and he’s been in the hospital. It was the first time I saw Kash actually smile since they rescued me from that hell. His face lit up when he told me my wife shot Hudson. He was so proud of her.

My wife stands next to me while Adam stands on the other side of her. Saint and Kash stand by Ryat, Tyson, and Sin. Bill is still here as well.

“What can you tell us that Isabella can’t?” I ask.

He purses his lips and lifts his chin. I’ve slept beside my wife the past few nights, wanting to put a fucking knife through his chest but have refrained. I know what he was going to do to her, and it makes me sick to even think about it.

I know what I hallucinated wasn’t far off. He’s a sick fucking bastard.

“He asked you a question, motherfucker!” Kash steps forward, and I grab his shirt, pulling him back.

“I know something.” My wife speaks, and everyone in the room turns to face her.

“You don’t know shit, bitch.” Hudson laughs at her. “You didn’t even know that I was in on it. You thought that I was actually interested in you. You’re pathetic,” he spits.Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.

She turns to face me, ignoring him as she speaks. “He was the one who slit your wrists.”

I stiffen at her words, and Kash spins around to face him. “You what?” He looks back at my wife. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“He told me when he and Bill threw me in the cell with Haidyn at Dollhouse. He was bragging. Said that my mother should have let him slit your throat…” Her eyes fill with unshed tears, and she adds, “I just put two and two together.”

Saint steps up to him. “So you were here…? In Carnage with Isabella when she was training us?”

He gives us a cruel smile.

Saint punches him, knocking his head to the side. He spits blood from his split lips. All this time, this piece of shit had been with my wife long before I even knew who she really was. Isabella told me that he set her up for me to find her car on the side of the road. Once I got that call from Adam informing me of who she was, I spent the next two weeks setting up cameras in her house, preparing her basement…he knew all of that. That’s why I never saw him on the cameras. I had her tell everyone that she was going out of town, and it gave him an excuse to stay away, and she never questioned his distance. Then he showed up pretending to be mad when he found her notebook. He had to give her a reason to walk away. To make her feel like she betrayed him. He was just playing with her mind, adding to her mother’s bullshit game. And I never took the opportunity to check the cameras when she told me he had been there while she sat in her bathtub. I was too busy making sure she married me that night. If I had just checked them, I would have seen him in her house. I would have recognized him. I never showed her the picture I had of him in my pocket. She never saw it when I showed Ryat and Tyson. LeAnne showed up, and my wife was attacked. It just never seemed important.

“Who is this?” I demand, stepping forward holding out the picture of him and Benny. “How do you fucking know him?” Benny already told us, but I want to hear him say it.

Hudson just laughs.

A cell phone goes off, and Adam pulls his out of his pocket. He reads over something and then sighs.

“What is it?” I growl.

“It’s Gavin. The results are back…”

“And?” Kash snaps when he trails off.

“Benny was telling the truth. Hudson is Benny’s cousin.”

“That’s how Benny got inside Carnage,” Kash whispers. “If you were here with Isabella, then you knew how to get in and out.”

“But…but you didn’t have a Lords crest.” Charlotte frowns, just now learning the information that we already knew.

“That’s because he never passed the initiation,” I add. Not surprised both Benny and Hudson failed.

“Then how the fuck did he get so close to Isabella? No way she would have brought civilians to help her. The Lords would have never allowed that.”

Hudson’s laughter fills the basement. “They let her do whatever the fuck she wanted.”

Kash runs a hand down his face with a growl.

Getting a thought…I walk down the hallway to the cells and unlock the one that holds a prisoner. Opening the door, he shrinks back into the corner, shielding his face from the harsh light. “Let’s go.” I grab his hair and yank him to his feet and drag him out into the room, shoving him forward.

He cries out, his knees and hands slapping the concrete floor. “Do you know him?” I grip his hair and yank his head up to look at Hudson.

“Yeah. Yeah.” The guy rushes out. “He’s the one who hired me.”

“Shut the fuck up, you son of a bitch,” Hudson barks. “Fucking snitch.”

“Tell me everything you know, and I’ll make it quick.” I promise him.

He whimpers, closing his eyes tightly before they open and look up at me. “He⁠—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth!” Hudson screams, yanking on his restraints.

“I’ll give you one minute to decide your fate.” I inform him, letting go of his hair.

He bows his head taking in a shaky breath. “He came to me. Showed me a picture of her. Gave me her name and address. Told me he’d pay me to keep an eye on her and would give me further instructions once I was ready. When I questioned what he meant by ready…he gave me a cell that had an app that tracked hers.” He rocks back and forth, hugging himself.

I nod my head in understanding. That’s how this motherfucker knew we were at the gas station that day. Her cell phone. They gave her that new cell, laptop and watch in order to monitor everyone she spoke to, everywhere she went. There was no way for her to escape them. “And?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“And…” he looks up licking his busted lips. “That day I followed you guys to the gas station…I had gotten a text earlier that morning giving me the green light.”

“Green light for what?” It’s Kash who demands when he doesn’t elaborate.

“He…he sent me ten thousand and told me I was able to do whatever I wanted to her. Make it rough…and messy.”

“Rape her?” I clarify, my skin on fire at the thought. “Why the gas station?” As much as the thought of him succeeding makes me fucking rage, his actions don’t make sense. If he had the resources to hurt her, why do it when she was with me? Why chance getting caught?

His shoulders shake and he leans forward, bowing his head once more and whispers. “He said it had to be done when she was with you.”

“He wanted you to leave her for me to find.” Looking up at Hudson, I see he’s glaring at the man on his knees. Reaching down, I grip the man’s hair once again and yank his head back to look up at the ceiling as I pull the pocketknife out of my pocket. Flipping it open, I bend down and slide it across the man’s exposed neck, pushing the blade deep into his skin. Blood instantly pours from the split skin, and I shove his body forward where he lies at Hudson’s feet and the blood puddles around the now dead body.

I hear my wife gag but I ignore her. I’m too wound up. I want to kill every single mother fucker that has ever had ill intentions against my wife. Taking a deep breath, I remind myself that death is the easy way out. It’s too quick.

Ignoring the dead guy, I place my attention on Hudson.

“Who went to Charlotte’s house with you?” That’s another piece I’m still missing. Charlotte said there were two guys there when she had the wine and I found her practically dead in her kitchen.

I went back and watched the cameras for that night. I needed to know if they had raped her. What had happened between her passing out and me showing up. Along with how much time had passed. The other guy never took his mask off to show his face.

He just laughs, and I find myself losing my patience.

“At Dollhouse, you told me that you had watched everything I did to her. How did you see it? I had cameras all over that house, and you were only ever there that one time.” The one time my dumb ass didn’t check them.

“We gave her that phone,” he answers with a bloody smile. “Every text, video, or picture that you sent her, I saw.”

He looks at Charlotte, and his laughter fills the basement. “You were so stupid, bitch. Your mother was actually worried that you wouldn’t crawl on your hands and knees to Haidyn. I knew you’d be easy, though. I assured her that she didn’t need the added hormones to your IV treatments. But she said it couldn’t hurt. That she would do anything to make sure you were his willing whore, begging him to do anything to you.”

My teeth grind, but I let him talk. I want him to run his mouth. He knows we’ve caught him, but he thinks he’s won when it comes to my wife. I’ll let him continue to think that.

He looks at me and goes on. “You also set up cameras all over her house, and I was able to connect to them.”

Motherfucker. I never thought to have Adam secure the ones I installed in her house. Why would I? I thought that I had the upper hand.

CHARLOTTE

I lean my back against the wall. My eyes shoot from Saint to Kashton and then my husband. He’s got his back to me, facing the opposite wall that has Hudson chained to it.

He licks his bloody lips and just smiles.

Haidyn shifts his stance, getting irritated. The Lords ignore the dead guy lying naked at Hudson’s feet.

“Haidyn?” Tyson speaks up and holds out a phone to my husband. “My guys found this in his pocket when they loaded him back at Dollhouse.”

Haidyn takes the phone, and I look down at it as he skims through contacts before going to his pictures and video. He stops on one and presses play.

My voice fills the basement from the phone in my husband’s hand. “Pl-ease,” I cry.

Haidyn’s voice is heard next. “Please what?” he demands.

“Please…fuck my ass.” I sob, and Haidyn ends the video before anything else can be heard.

The phone begins to shake in Haidyn’s hand, and he looks up at Hudson.

“I saw it all,” he says, laughing.

“When I decide I’m done with you, you will have no dignity left. All you will know is me. All you will want is me.” Haidyn’s words echo in my mind from the day we returned to my house after the enema. He was right. I no longer have any dignity because it didn’t bother me at all that the other Lords in this room just heard me begging Haidyn to fuck my ass when we were in my basement.

Haidyn tosses the phone to his right, and Tyson catches it midair. Haidyn rushes over to Hudson and begins to untie him from the wall. Hudson tries his best to run off, but Haidyn wraps an arm around his neck from behind.

I’m pushed back into the wall by Kashton who comes to stand in front of me in a protective manner.

“Help me secure him,” Haidyn growls and tosses him onto a metal table in the center of the room.

It’s the same one that I watched them strap Haidyn to before they waterboarded him. I swallow the awful taste in my mouth, refusing to miss what is about to happen. I’m going to prove to these Lords that I can see what they can dish out.

Saint and Tyson both go to the end of the table and secure Hudson’s ankles, then his thighs along with his stomach, arms, chest, and last, his neck. He’s screaming and fighting as Haidyn steps away and goes over to a wall lined with cabinets. He opens and closes several of them, obviously looking for something.

After a second, he turns and walks back over to stand at the head of the table, and he grips Hudson’s face with one hand while the other holds something to his eye. It looks like some type of medieval device that holds your eyelid open—a speculum.

Ryat picks up the second one on the counter and walks it over to Haidyn because he was the closest and Haidyn mumbles his thanks as he does the same to the other—keeping them both wide open.

Then Haidyn goes back over to the counter and fills a syringe that can be none other than adrenaline. “Don’t want you to pass out,” he says, stabbing Hudson in the chest and pressing the plunger.

I take a quick look around to see all the guys watching my husband. No one looks as sick as I feel. They’ve seen this before. They’ve been this way before. I’m pregnant and can’t even keep fucking toast down, but by God, I’m not leaving this room without my husband. The awful smell down here alone is enough to make me vomit every time I get off the elevator. I avoid looking at the dead guy lying in a pool of his own blood, shit, and piss. The body expels its waste once it dies.

Hudson’s entire body goes rigid as he pulls on the restraints from the rush of the adrenaline. Haidyn tosses the used syringe onto the counter, then leans over Hudson’s face and digs his fingers into his eye.

I place my hands over my mouth when I realize what he’s doing.

Hudson lets out a blood-curdling scream that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Haidyn’s fingers dig into Hudson’s eye socket before his eyeball pops out.

My knees go weak, and I swallow the vomit down, not wanting to embarrass myself.

Haidyn holds up the bloody eye with one hand while the other grabs his bloody knife out of his pocket that he slit the other guy’s throat with and flips it open. He cuts off the nerves that still hold it in place. Then he hovers it over Hudson’s good one and squeezes his hand into a fist. It pops the eye in his hand and blood squirts all over them.

My body jerks involuntarily, trying not to vomit again, and Kashton steps back into me as if my knees are going to give out.

“There’s one.” Haidyn’s voice is as cold as this basement. He digs his fingers into the other one and the table rattles while Hudson’s screams continue to fill the large space. It echoes off the concrete walls and ceiling, carrying down the hallway.

Haidyn rips the other one out just the same, and I gulp down the acid taste that fills my mouth as he pops it in his hand just like the first. My husband slaps his bloody hand over Hudson’s mouth to muffle his screams and speaks. “I hope your memory is better than your eyesight because that’s the only way you’re going to see my wife.”

I push off the wall, unable to swallow it down anymore. I don’t even go to the elevator; I won’t make it. I shove open the door to the staircase, bend over, and vomit on the concrete floor.

After I finished puking up my guts, I made my way to Haidyn’s room. I had called down to Jessie and apologized profusely that I had gotten sick in the stairwell, and he told me it was okay.

I went straight to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and washed my mouth out and am splashing my face with cold water when I hear the bedroom door unlock.

Straightening my back, I wipe the water off my face as Haidyn enters the bedroom. He comes to a stop when he sees me through the open bathroom door. He’s washed his hands, face, and tattooed-covered arms, but it’s still on his shirt, neck, and jeans.

He takes one more step into the room and stops. His eyes search mine as if he’s unsure what to do. I look weak and pathetic. As if I can’t handle whatever he can do. I hope he knows it’s the pregnancy. I’m not scared of what he’ll do to me or judge him for what he’ll do to others who threaten our family.

I exit the bathroom and rush to him. I throw my arms around his bloody neck, and he wraps his around my waist. I hug him, and he holds me to him.

“I’m sorry, Charlotte.” He sighs. “I wasn’t thinking.”

I pull back, placing my hands on either side of his face. “I love you, Haidyn Jamison Reeves.”

He frowns at my words, and it makes my stomach drop at the thought he could ever second-guess how I feel about him.

I once asked him—don’t you want someone you know will love you unconditionally? I want him to know that he has me. No matter what the Lords throw at us. “I love you,” I repeat.

He runs his knuckles down my cheek while his eyes search mine. I thought I knew who Haidyn was when I agreed to marry him, but I was wrong. He’s more than I could have ever imagined. He’s got a heart of gold and will protect who he loves fiercely. I want to do the same for him.

His hand moves to cup my face, and I push up on my tiptoes to press my lips to his. He grips my ass and lifts me. I go to wrap my legs around his waist, but he’s already got me on the bed, hovering over me.

My hands go to his belt, and he pulls his lips from mine, then sits up. He yanks his bloody shirt up and over his head while I unzip his jeans and pull his hard dick out.

I want him to pull my hair, drag me to the floor, shove me to my knees, and fuck my face while I look up at him with tears in my eyes. But we’ve got plenty of time for that. Right now, he wants to show me that he loves me too. He thinks I’m too sensitive to see who he really is. Thankfully, I’ve got the rest of my life to prove him wrong.