Madness: Part 2 – Chapter 7

I sit at a round table with my girlfriends on a gloomy Sunday. We return to Barrington next week for the second half of our junior year. I went through initiation at the beginning of the school year, and it’s been heavy on my mind. I hate to say how much sleep I’ve lost over what I did. I thought I could handle anything they threw at me, but I see that naked woman every time I close my eyes. It’s been five months now, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.

Hannah gets my attention as she laughs. It’s for show. I love her to death, but everything about her is fake. And I’m not talking about what you can physically see. I mean everything else. The part of her that she hides from the world.

She hates her husband. He’s a Lord. She was his chosen, and they were forced to marry when he knocked her up. She swears that the baby might not even be his, considering the night of conception lines up with the fuck-fest weekend when he passed her around to his friends. But their parents didn’t care. It’s whatever you make it look like to the world, not what it really is. I’m not sure what they expected to happen. He wasn’t letting her take birth control, and he didn’t have his friends use condoms. That’s how a baby is made.

He flew her to the Bahamas, had a lavish proposal set up, and made sure someone recorded it all. She posted it on social media the following day with the typical I SAID YES post. It was followed with a hundred photos of the trip showing off the happy couple, kissing on the beach, cuddling in the infinity pool, and sharing romantic dinners.

She’s gorgeous in a supermodel runway way, and he’s hot in that “I wear loafers, drive a Rolls Royce, and work for Daddy” kind of way. They look like real-life Barbie and Ken except they hate one another.

He cheats on her every chance he gets, and she fucks his friends behind his back. A Lord can do whatever and whoever he wants, married or not. But a Lady? She has rules. If he caught her…well, I don’t even want to think about what he’d do to her. But then again, maybe he knows and doesn’t care. To each their own.

His best friend has a breeding kink, and since Hannah is currently four months pregnant, she meets up with him almost daily and lets him pretend he’s the one who knocked her up. Which might actually be true since he was one of the many that her Lord let fuck her that weekend. Who knows.

“Were you even listening to what I just said?” she asks, setting down her water.

I nod, eyes meeting hers. “Mm-hmm.” Lie.

“Then what did I say?” She arches a perfectly shaped dark brow.

“You said that you and your mother-in-law are fighting over where the baby shower will be,” Margaret answers.

Hannah narrows her eyes at her. “Thank you, Annabelle, for answering.” She calls Margaret by my name because she asked me, not her.

“You’re welcome.” Margaret smiles, picking up her coffee.

“Why are you letting her decide?” I join in on the conversation. “She’s not the one going to give birth.”

She rubs her growing stomach. “I swear she would if she could, which is creepy. I’ve never known a woman so obsessed with her son.”

“He’s a mama’s boy. What did you expect?” Margaret laughs.

Margaret is also married. But she and Clint don’t want to kill one another. I wouldn’t call it love, but he knows she sleeps around and doesn’t care. She was also his chosen. Their marriage was already arranged before the ritual even took place. He proposed on her father’s yacht after the vow ceremony, and they married the following month. Clint thinks they’re trying to get pregnant, but she’s still taking the pill behind his back. She’s not ready to become a mom. Her words. I give her three months before he figures it out.

Then there’s me, midway through my junior year at Barrington. I’m twenty-one, single, and still a virgin. My parents didn’t want me to be a chosen. I can’t say that I cared either way. Saving myself isn’t something that I care about. My mother said I was meant for something greater than spreading my legs in a tub of water for all to see. I know how the ritual works, and although I didn’t mind participating, I also didn’t really see a bad side to it.

I accepted long ago that I’ll live in a loveless marriage to a bastard who will cheat on me and probably pass me around like a piece of cake at a wedding. Some women would be terrified by that thought, but I’m not.

If I can’t have love, I want power. I want what a man in our world gets, but I’m going to have to work twice as hard for it because I have a pussy and tits. Fine by me. I’ll show them that I can do whatever they throw at me with a smile on my face while bleeding between my legs.

My cell rings, and I pick it up off the table where it sits next to my mimosa. UNKNOWN lights up the screen.

“Sorry, I have to take this.” I get up and rush outside, hitting answer. “Hello?”

“You have been given your assignment,” the voice announces. It’s altered so I can’t make out who it is. Not like I’d be able to anyway. No one knows who is ever actually in charge. There are rumors, of course, but you can’t believe everything you hear.

“Okay.” I’m excited and nervous. I’ve been waiting for this call since I completed my initiation back in August. “What do I need to do?”

“A package has been delivered to your house. You will have three months to prepare before the official assignment begins.” The voice continues. “During that time, you will get a new life.”

I frown. “A new life?” I figured it would be a quick “kill this person and you’re in” type of situation. That’s what I get for assuming. The Lords always like to throw curveballs at you.

“New identity. New friends, new occupation. And…a boyfriend.”

What the fuck do the Lords have me doing? Why does any of that matter? “O-okay.”

“You will remain untouched.”

“Wait.” I give a rough laugh. “You want me to get a boyfriend but not put out?” Another laugh, thinking I heard him wrong. The Lords world revolves around sex. It’s literally all they think about and want. It’s not their fault. It’s what we’ve all been conditioned for. “He won’t stay around long.” I’m not dumb. I know how relationships work and what men expect. Hell, I’m horny all the time. I’d like to get fucked, but the Lords hold power in sex. They tell you when you can get it and who you get it from.

“He likes to ruin his toys,” the voice says cryptically.

Ruin his toys? Is he telling me that I have to fuck someone? “Who?” I wonder.

“Three months, Annabelle. If you don’t have everything ready to go within that time, you have failed.” Click.

HAIDYN

“SKELETON LORDS” by HALLOW fills the small concrete room from my phone while the Lord lies on the floor, covered in his own blood, but he’s not dead. That’s not what we do here.

Death is a luxury we don’t supply.

Exiting the cell, I lock him inside and go over to the sink in the corner. I turn on the water and begin to wash his blood off my hands and ink-covered arms.

The sound of someone coming has me looking over my shoulder to see Kashton joining me. Turning off the water, I grab some paper towels and turn to face him.

He’s got his head down, staring at the empty pits recessed in the concrete floor while rubbing the back of his neck. Kashton has always been the most expressive out of the four of us. He can’t hide how he’s feeling. “What’s on your mind?” I ask. If he’s down here, he wants to talk about something.

“Saint just got a call,” he says, and my heart picks up, hoping it’s not what I think it’s about.

For almost four years, I’ve lived on pins and needles while Saint has continued to look for Ashtyn, and I’ve kept quiet. I made a friend a promise.

“And?” I question when he doesn’t elaborate.

“And they found a woman…she was restrained with barbwire, and her throat was slit.”

“What do they want us to do about it?” I ask.

His eyes meet mine, and he looks hopeful. “It reminded me of our meeting at the house of Lords back when…” He pauses. “Do you think it’s Adam?”

Senior year at Barrington

“Over five months last year, twenty girls went missing. Five of those were found raped and murdered,” the man tells us—me, Saint, Adam, and Kashton sit down in the basement at the house of Lords. Lincoln called us in for a meeting while we were at the party tonight. We had to wait for Saint to arrive because he had to take home a drunk Ashtyn—Adam’s twin sister.

“The other fifteen?” I ask, scanning the picture of a naked woman that he gave us. She’s covered in blood. Her head hangs off the side of a bed. Her throat was slit, her ankles tied with barbed wire, and her wrists bound behind her back with barbed wire. Whoever did this to her made her suffer. They must think a Lord did it. But we’re not the only sick bastards out there.

“Still missing,” the man answers my question.

Adam slams his folder down. “What does this have to do with us?”

“Did they attend Barrington?” Kashton questions before he can answer Adam.

“No.” He looks at Kashton. “All were still in high school—seniors—but none of the five were connected to one another. As far as we can tell, they didn’t know the Lords existed.”

“The ones who are still missing?” Saint questions.

He shakes his head. “Not that we have found.”

“I’m with Adam,” Lincoln adds, scanning the folder Adam put on the table. “What does this have to do with them?”

“Adam didn’t kill anyone.” I shake my head, answering his previous question. “Not an innocent woman anyway.” We’ve all got a body count. Just as many kills as we have fucks.

But someone tried to set our brother up, which resulted in his mother being killed and Ashtyn almost dead. Adam’s been gone ever since.

“Then why did he leave us?” His soft voice sounds like a little boy asking a mother why his father left. Four years have passed, and Kashton can’t seem to accept that our brother isn’t coming back.

“You’ll have to ask him that.” I shrug, knowing the truth, but it’s not my story to tell.

He sighs, and we hear the elevator ding, letting us know Saint is about to join us. He storms into the room a moment later. He looks pissed off as usual.

Things changed after Adam left. We took Ashtyn in to protect her, but it was beyond our control by that point.

“What else did they have to say?” Kashton asks Saint.

“They think Adam is in town,” he says through gritted teeth.

“He’s not⁠—”

“I don’t believe he did it either, Haidyn, but you have to admit it looks bad.” Kashton interrupts me.

I run my hands through my hair, wanting to scream. I know where Adam is, and he’s nowhere fucking close to here at the moment. He’s in Las Vegas, where he belongs, but I can’t say that. “It’s never as it seems,” I argue.

Saint snorts. “Yeah, well, until he shows his fucking face, I’m going to assume he’s fucking us all over.”