Madness: Part 2 – Chapter 46

For the past hour and a half, I’ve just been lying here on my side, staring out of his floor-to-ceiling windows and waiting for the sun to rise. My mind is running a hundred miles an hour.

I’m so confused.

The conversation I had with my friends at lunch, then the conversations I had at my mom’s…the videos from the Lords. What does it all mean? Where do I fit into this world if the man I’m supposed to marry is no longer an option?

Will they hand me over to someone new? If so, when?

Marrying a Lord isn’t something a Lady has control over. You are called to serve, and you serve, so they could tell me to walk down the aisle at any time. But I won’t get that order until I finish this assignment. But again, what is the endgame?

Do the Lords want me to find my future husband at Carnage and then report back…whether he’s a prisoner or he’s dead?

I’m literally giving myself a headache with all the possibilities.

Sitting up, I stretch my sore body and see the room is dark, letting me know it’s still early. This has been the longest night of my life. I watched my cell forever, waiting for another video, but it never came. I have to know what happened to Haidyn.

My mouth is dry, and I’m dying of thirst. Getting out of bed, I pick up a T-shirt of Haidyn’s and pull it on before I exit the bedroom. Making my way down the hallway, I go to enter the kitchen when his voice stops me.

“You look like shit.” Haidyn chuckles.

Pressing my back into the wall, I slowly look around the corner to see him in the kitchen, drinking a bottle of water as a man enters from the other side. It’s the same one who was in the bedroom upstairs when I was looking for Muffin.

“Your bike woke me up. Where the fuck have you been all night? Isn’t your girl in your room?”

“I had to run to Carnage,” Haidyn answers but ignores the question about me.

“Had to run to Carnage?” he repeats with a snort. “I can only think of one reason you’d rush back to the one place you’re avoiding.”

“I’m not avoiding Carnage,” Haidyn argues.

“But you’re also not arguing why you ran back to it.”

Haidyn rolls his eyes. “Don’t you have a woman in your room to fuck?” He avoids the man’s statement.

“She’s…marinating.”

Haidyn throws his head back, laughing. “Is that what you guys call it these days?”

I don’t know why, but the thought of a woman marinating makes me think of her tied up in a bathtub filled with barbecue sauce. With a Lord, anything is possible.

The man jumps up to sit on the counter, his sharp face growing serious. “What did she want?”

Haidyn stares at him, taking a drink of his water, but remains silent.

The man sighs. “You can’t let her keep doing this to you.”

“Don’t.” Haidyn growls.

“Look, it wasn’t your fault.” He runs a hand down his face, and I have no clue what they’re talking about. “The past can’t be changed,” the man adds. “But she was never your responsibility.”

“We all looked after her,” Haidyn states.

“It was my job.” The other stabs himself in the chest. “Her marrying Saint doesn’t change that.”

Ashtyn! They’re talking about Ashtyn. My eyes go back to the other guy, and I realize he was in the photo the Lords sent me. It’s Adam. He’s here and alive, which means my friends know less than I thought. I knew they were wrong about Ashtyn being dead, and here’s her brother in Haidyn’s house. Who is he hiding from?

“You need to lay low,” Haidyn tells him.

He shakes his head and demands, “What happened?”

Haidyn takes a deep breath before answering. “Saint messaged me⁠—”

A cell ringing interrupts whatever he was about to say, and Adam jumps off the counter, placing it to his ear and exiting the kitchen. “Yeah?” His voice fades as he walks down the hallway.

I stand and watch Haidyn take another drink of his water before he just stares across the open living room and out the floor-to-ceiling windows. I go back to Haidyn’s bed, lie down, and close my eyes. I’m pretending to be asleep for the second time tonight, and I’m more confused than I was an hour ago.

HAIDYN

I hear the faint sound of a bedroom door shutting, and I look up toward the hallway that leads to my bedroom. Was Charlotte listening to our conversation? I mean, nothing important was discussed, but I figured she’d be asleep.

I’ll have to be more careful. It’s no longer just Adam and me in this house, and there’s a lot of shit I don’t want her to know about.

My cell vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out, expecting it to be either Saint or Ashtyn at this time of night, but it’s a text from an UNKNOWN number. Opening it up, I read over it.

Cathedral. Friday 3 a.m.

Backing out of it, I set my cell on the counter and sigh. What the fuck now?

Just then, Adam returns to the kitchen. He comes to a stop and crosses his arms over his chest, waiting for me to continue our previous conversation. Taking a deep breath, I fill him in on what I know.