Filed to story: The LORDS Series Free PDF by Shantel Tessier
“You’re working for the Lords?” Kashton growls.
Shit! “No. Adam, tell them…please.” I beg him. He has to know that I’d never hurt my husband.
“It’s a long story,” Adam says, and I take a step back when Saint turns to face me.
“Last time an outsider was in Carnage, they had a bomb inside of them. I don’t put anything past her bitch of a mother. I say we cut her open.”
“What?” I shriek. “No. I’d never??”
“Why waste such a pretty thing?” Kashton interrupts me. “Let’s search her.” His eyes drop to my shoes and then run up over my body, making my panic rise even more. “Strip her naked and hold her down. I’ll look.”
I’d beg them not to if I could speak. I can’t even catch my breath right now.
“What the fuck, Kash?” Ashtyn pushes off the wall to step forward. “Absolutely not. Saint…” She looks at him, and his hard eyes meet hers. “No??”
“She’s not a threat!” Adam shouts, placing his hands out and moving to stand in front of me. I reach up and grip the back of his T-shirt, holding on for dear life. “You’re not fucking touching her.”
“Until she proves she’s innocent, I’m with Kash,” Saint states.
“I love him,” I say defensively.
Saint snorts, and Adam turns around. Prying my hands from his shirt, he helps me to sit down on the couch.
“Her phone,” Kashton announces.
My shoulders shake, knowing there’s nothing on it that will prove my love for Haidyn because I have no proof that I didn’t do this. All the emails I’ve been sent from the Lords were immediately deleted. There’s nothing to prove my loyalty to him. The only things I have on my phone regarding Haidyn are the videos and pictures he would send me after he fucked me.
I’m about to say I don’t even have my phone with me when Kashton pulls it out of his pocket. I guess he grabbed it when he picked up Haidyn’s ring and phone.
I swallow the taste of vomit once again. Not only have I lost my husband but now I’m also going to be stripped naked, cavity searched, and thrown into a cage in their basement.
You can’t reason with Lords. Once they make up their mind, you’re just fucked. I stare at the floor silently while they go through my phone.
“Think I’ve found something,” Kashton says.
“What is it?” Saint demands.
“Haidyn.”
I jump up to my feet at Kashton’s answer. A second later, Haidyn’s voice fills the office. “Hey, doll face…”
“Haidyn?” I yank the phone from Kashton’s hands and look at the screen to see it’s a video. He’s sitting on my couch, dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. The phone is propped up against something on the coffee table.
I place my hand over my mouth to hold in my sob at the sight of him. This was last night…when I saw my phone on the coffee table when he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my living room.
“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you goodbye. But in our life, we rarely get what we want.” A soft smile tugs at his lips. “You were my exception.”
He bows his head, his right hand twirling his wedding ring around his finger as he looks at it. “I knew that you were too good for me the moment I first saw you. That I’d never live up to the man you’d deserve. So I let you go…but when you were placed back in my life, I couldn’t stop myself.” He looks back at the phone and gives a soft smile.
Back in his life?
“I’ve done a lot of unforgivable shit in my life, but the best thing I ever did was make you my wife. I wish I could have done it differently. You deserved so much more than what I gave you. I should have gotten down on one knee and begged you to spend the rest of your life with me. I should have told you how much you changed me. That you showed me what being alive truly felt like. I always felt like I was missing something…my life was boring. Same thing over and over. And then you walked into my life with that amazing smile and when I looked into your eyes-I saw a future that I never thought existed…not for a man like me, anyway.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I blink to clear the tears from my eyes so I can see him on the screen.
“I knew you’d never give a man like me the chance at forever. So I forced your hand. I had to have Adam help me.” I look up at Adam, and his green eyes are already on mine. Blinking the fresh tears away, I drop mine back to the phone. “Because I knew that’d be the only way I’d ever get you. And I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be your husband.” He looks away from the camera as if he can’t look at me, and my chest tightens.
How dare he leave me this memory? Why break my heart twice? When I found him in the living room and asked if he regretted marrying me…he had just left me this video. He knew then exactly what he was going to do.
His blue eyes come back to the screen, meeting mine once again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the forever you deserved, doll face. But I promise I gave you all I had left to offer.”
The knot grows in my throat, and I can’t hold back the sob anymore as I remember what he said when I told him I chose to be with him forever. To some, forever is only a matter of seconds.
“Please know that I loved you more than anything in this world…and when I walk out this door, I’m leaving a piece of myself behind with you because nothing short of forever would have been enough.” He smiles, and I try to catch my breath. “You’ll be safe at Carnage and my brothers will protect you.” He leans forward and picks up the phone before speaking. “I love you, Charlotte.”
The screen goes black, and I fall to the floor. My knees no longer able to hold myself up and the room fills with the guy’s voices, arguing back and forth as my trembling hands push play again.
HAIDYN
The screeching of the steel door has my heavy eyes opening. I was placed in a steel cage while on the plane. It seemed like a short flight. Too short to even require a plane ride. Once we landed, I was blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed location.
When it was removed, I was in a concrete room with no window. Locked inside a new cage as if I was in the basement at Carnage. But it doesn’t feel like home. They put a needle in my neck, and when I woke up, I had an IV in my arm. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but I feel like it’s draining me of everything I have.
“Come on, Spade. She wants to see you.” My arms are grabbed, and I’m pulled to a sitting position. Several of them yank me to my feet, and I groan. Fuck, I’ve never been so weak in my life.
They pull my arms behind my back and use handcuffs to secure them in place. Then I’m shoved forward. “Walk,” one barks.
I follow one, while three trail me.
A set of double doors are open, and the guy in front of me comes to a stop once we’re in the room. “On your knees,” someone behind me commands.
I grind my teeth. “Fuck you??”
The back of my legs are hit, knocking me to my knees. The one in front of me turns around, grabs a chain on the floor, and hooks it to the thick metal collar around my neck. It pulls me forward, forcing me to arch my back.
“Hello, darling.” I hear her sing.
“What the fuck do you want?” If I’m lucky, she’ll leave me in that concrete room until I die.
Her laughter echoes through the large room before she enters from a door on the right. She comes to stand in front of me dressed in an all-black floor-length dress. It has a deep V showing off her massive tits. Her face is done up as if she’s twenty-one and headed to the club to party her ass off. “You look like shit, Haidyn.”
“What are you giving me?” I demand.
She grips my face, her long, pointy nails digging into my skin, and I try to pull away, but the chains are pulled tight, so it’s pointless. “Some people pay a lot of money for what I’m giving you for free,” she answers. “The Lords wanted me to give it to you and your brothers back when I was ‘training’ you guys, but I thought better of it. Now that I have you to myself…” She smiles. “Do you ever wonder how so many in the world live to be so old? How they’re able to hold their ‘positions’ for so long? No illnesses, none die at a young age other than the occasional freak accident…or the Lords put a hit out on them?”
“You’re drugging me to live longer?” I ask skeptically.
I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised that such a drug exists because I have had those thoughts before. People in power like to remain in power. It’s why we have so many older Lords all around the world.
“I had high hopes for you, Haidyn. I’m giving you a gift.”
I snort, and she lets go of my face.
“In fact, I still do.” She falls down into a chair in front of me. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist a pretty face.” My heart accelerates at the mention of my wife. “Hudson?” she calls out, and a man walks into the darkly lit room. My eyes narrow on him, knowing exactly who he is. I remember him from Charlotte’s kitchen when I found her lying on the floor thinking she was dead.
Walking over to her, he says, “Yes, Mommy?”