Broken Illusions (His Agenda Volume 3) (13 page)

He stopped laughing and his mouth hung open as he tried to crawl across the floor, his useless legs dragging behind him.

“Stop,” I said with authority. “You son of a bitch. Stop moving.”

He collapsed, and so did I with tears streaming down my cheeks, my body shaking uncontrollably. Through the blur caused by my tears, I saw him moving and then he reached out to touch my ankle, his hands cool and wet with blood.

I gulped down my tears and aimed the gun at his head. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. And then I did it again. His grip on me loosened.

My eyes flew open and I broke down as I watched him lying at my feet, face down.

Still sobbing, I collapsed to the carpet and felt his pulse. Nothing.

Jude was dead.

All of a sudden my body relaxed and the pain he had inflicted on me with the whip flooded into my body.

My head jerked up when I heard a crash coming from down the corridor, followed by loud voices, and then hurried footsteps. Moments later, the bedroom door crashed open and Dustin burst in, looking bewildered. First his eyes took in Jude on the floor next to me, and then he dropped to his knees beside me, gathering me into his arms.

“Jesus, Haley,” he said, his face buried into my hair as I cried harder, clutching his shirt with bloody hands. I felt him shaking in my arms as well. He pulled away and looked into my eyes. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I thought…”

I nodded, and then I realized what was going on. The room started filling with cops and paramedics. As I became conscious of my nakedness, Dustin pulled a sheet off the bed and draped it around me. As I tightened it around my body, I prayed the paramedics wouldn’t find a pulse on Jude either. I was so ready for it to be over.

Chapter Thirty-One

Jude

What went wrong? How could this be happening? Jude’s mind raced as Haley struck him again, this time on an ankle. He was in too much pain to determine whether it was the left or right one. But he’d heard the crack that told him she had broken something. The bitch. She still thought she could win this game. A game he had invented. She had no idea. As long as he had a breath in him, he would be the master, her master until the end. He would not be killed by her. He would not die at the hands of anyone. He was the killer. He took life, not the other way around.

The iron rod slammed onto another part of his leg and he gritted his teeth. She hit him again and again, everywhere, but he held on until he not only felt the pain, he tasted it on his tongue. He still held on to life, even as blood poured into his eyes. And then his body betrayed him. He couldn’t take it any longer, couldn’t take being degraded by her like this.

He had to do something about it, to snatch some power back so he could use it to finish her off. She was soft at the core. And he still had the power of his words, words that had brought her to her knees more than once. But he was in a vulnerable position. He had to do something that reached her heart faster. He tried begging, but it didn’t get the results he had hoped for. She had no ounce of sympathy left for him. Instead of weakening, she rewarded him with a bullet in the shoulder. He fell face down, his mouth open with shock as he hit the carpeted floor. He tasted more than pain now. He tasted death. But he was still breathing.

He was never one to give up easily. Using every ounce of energy he had inside his body, which wasn’t much, he lifted his head off the floor and met her eyes, registered the shock of having hurt another human being, her own husband. He started to laugh then, even if it hurt him to do so. He couldn’t help it. How did she think she could kill a man like him? She didn’t have it in her. He told her as much. He had to crush her where she was weakest. He struck her conscience.

To his horror, it didn’t work this time either.

Shit
, he screamed inwardly when she drove a bullet into his other shoulder. Death was closer now, laughing in his face, taunting him, and calling for him at the same time. He couldn’t die like this, not at the hands of a woman. His true love. But the pain drove him to the brink of insanity.

A flicker of hope raced through him when he saw her collapse as well. She had reached the point he’d wanted to bring her to. She had lost her murderous streak. He could grab the gun from her now, finish her off and then himself.

He swallowed the blood lodged inside his throat and pushed himself forward, stuck out an arm, groaning inwardly with the agony that the simple move unleashed. He reached her, his bloody fingers meeting her skin. He didn’t have the energy to lift his gaze, to see what part of her body he touched. He stretched out his fingers to touch more of her, and then a shot rang out and the bubble of pain inside his head exploded. Shit, she had shot him again.

Now he was falling into a dark place. He was seconds from dying.

Final, blood-stained words settled into his fractured mind before his eyes drifted shut:
I own you, Haley Macknight. I’ll find you in hell.

Then, after one last breath, Jude Macknight became nothing but a memory.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Haley

Dustin knew I preferred calling to texting. When he got the text about me going out of town, he called right away but was unable to reach me, not even a couple of hours later. He knew then that something was going on. He came over to my place to find out if I was really out of town and found my apartment door unlocked.

“How did you know I was next door?” I asked him as Becca treated the wounds on my back and neck. I flinched at every touch of the antiseptic.

Dustin took my hand and kissed it. “There was an old woman with bandages around her head standing at the door with a cop. She said her name was Mary Lou and that was her apartment.” He paused. “She told the cop that a man was hiding inside and he had hit her on the head with a pan.”

I raised my hand to my mouth. Another person who had suffered because of me. “How… How did she escape him? I can’t imagine Jude letting her live.”

Becca came to stand in front of me and Dustin, her face creased with worry. “I talked to Mary Lou when she came in for us to check her head wound. She said the only thing that saved her was playing dead. He stuffed her into the trunk of a car, but someone managed to hear her crying.”

“Thank God.” I shook my head and looked at Dustin. “I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if she’d died.”

“The most important thing is that she’s fine. And it’s all over now.” Dustin shook his head. “Haley, why the hell didn’t you tell me what was going on? You even went to Madison without saying a word. I would have come with you. If that’s what you felt you had to do, I would have supported you.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Becca leave the room to give us time alone. We hadn’t had much of that with all the cops and nurses swarming the room earlier.

“I don’t know.” I bit back tears. “I think… I guess I was scared. I’ve put you through so much already. I didn’t want you to think I was too much of a burden, that it will never end, you know? I was afraid to lose you.”

He placed his hands on both sides of my face and pulled my forehead to his. “Never, you hear that? You can never be a burden to me. I want to be there for you and I don’t care how long it takes until you’re fine and safe. You hiding this from me was dangerous. You should have at least called Rimes. Jude could have killed you… this time.”

I moved my head from between his hands and looked down at my lap. A tear trickled down my cheek. “There’s something else.”

“What is it? What else happened?” There was a slight tremor to his voice.

“Some weeks ago, not long after we got back from Stony Creek, I sleepwalked. Becca slept over at my place that night. She saw me.” I swallowed hard and raised my gaze to his face.

“You sleepwalked? I don’t understand. You’ve never done that before.” Worry set itself in the faint lines on his face.

“No, and I was shocked when I found out.” I sighed. “Well, one of the reasons I didn’t tell you about the weird things that were happening was that I thought maybe I had done some of those things while sleepwalking. I didn’t think Jude had something to do with it.” I shrugged. “I never thought he would be alive, never in my wildest dreams. I did worry sometimes about Nolan still being out there, but…”

“I can’t believe Jude sacrificed his brother like that. Why didn’t they just run off together?”

“Jude wanted me to believe he was dead. He wanted the cops to have a body to prove it. He fooled me yet again.”

This time I’d made sure he was dead. No more surprises. No Jude coming back from the dead, and no Nolan to worry about.

Dustin took my hands in his and lifted them to his lips. His eyes sparkled. “I love you so much, Haley. I’m so glad you’re okay. And I’m so sorry about your sister.”

“Thank you.” I didn’t want to talk about Liz, didn’t want to think about her. It hurt too much to think about what she had gone through. My only comfort was believing she was in a better place now.

I’d kept one more secret from Dustin. I had told him about the beatings I’d suffered at Jude’s hands, but I didn’t tell him about the rape. I just couldn’t.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Haley

I grabbed a handful of dirt and tossed it onto Jude's coffin. I had asked to bury him. Not because of any emotional attachment to him or the past we shared, but because I wanted to make sure he was gone for good. I wanted to see him off.

My heart had been hard as I’d looked into his coffin earlier, making sure he was inside. I had felt his pulse after shooting him, but Jude had eluded death in the past. Not this time.

During the ride to the graveyard in one of Dustin’s limousines, I had not glanced away from the hearse in front of us for one second. Now, along with Jude’s body, I was burying my past. When I thought he'd died last time, I'd still been left with a heaviness in my heart, but now, the weight had lifted. For the first time in a long time, I was truly free.

Maybe I should have been remembering the good times we'd had before everything came crashing down, but I couldn't. All those snippets of good memories had been built on lies. Knowing what he did to my sister, I would never be able to feel pity for him. To show how much I despised him, I wore a cream cocktail dress to his funeral instead of black.

“You okay?” Dustin whispered into my ear, drawing me close.

I looked up at him and smiled. “You know, my father used to tell me that when you forgive, you do it for you, not for the other person.”

“And… do you think you will ever forgive Jude?”

“I'm not talking about him,” I said with conviction. “The person I need to forgive is the old, naïve Haley. For being so blind.” That Haley was being buried with Jude today. Haley Macknight had died so Haley Bradley would have a chance to live.

“What about Jude,” Dustin said. “Can you ever forgive him?”

“The truth is, I don't know. I don't. He took so much from me, but I also know he was a very sick man.” I slipped my hand into Dustin’s and pulled him away from the grave. From beneath a sycamore tree, we watched in silence as more earth was thrown onto Jude's coffin.

I breathed slowly and consciously as I listened to the birds singing in the trees, the sound merging with that of the wind whistling, with the sound of my heart beating.

Through it all, I had to admit that I felt somewhat sad for Jude. He had lost everything because of his obsession. He had been locked inside his own kind of prison. One he never had a chance to escape from. He died inside it.

After his death, Detective Rimes called to tell me that they now knew Jude’s real name. He had been born Terence Pirone, a name that didn’t seem to suit him. No wonder he’d changed it. Jude Macknight seemed like a better name for a monster.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Haley

Dustin brought in more of my boxes from the car, followed by the employees of a local moving company. How could I have accumulated so many belongings in only two years?

In the end I decided to move into Dustin's mansion. Without Jude's shadow hanging over my heart, the idea of starting a life with Dustin had become more exciting. Initially I had planned for us to stay in my apartment for a couple of months, but after what had happened there, it was time to give it up. Since the incident with Jude two months ago, I had been living with Dustin. It was time for me to move in for real.

“I can't believe I didn't want to move in to this place,” I said, throwing open the windows of the downstairs living room. “It's too big, but it still feels like home.”

As more boxes were brought in by men in gray uniforms, Dustin came to stand behind me. He wrapped his arms around my body and rested his mouth on the side of my neck. “You make it home. Whatever you don't like, you can change. This is not my place. It's ours.”

I twisted around in his arms to face him. “You are my home.”
“I have something for you.” He kissed me hard on the mouth. “I'll be right back.” He let me go and started giving instructions to the men. They did what they were told, and ten minutes later, they left and we were alone.

“Come to me.” Dustin sat on one of the plush couches and tapped his thigh. I went to him and he pulled me onto his lap. “I still can't believe I have you back in my life. I hope you'll stay this time around.”

“You know I will.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a small box. I stiffened. Dustin had made several hints about marriage, but I'd brushed them off because I wasn't ready. I loved him, and marrying him would be a dream. But marrying Jude had seemed like a dream too.

“Dustin,” I whispered and bit my lip to hold back tears. “You know I—”

He drew in a breath and opened the box to reveal a sparkling, cushion-cut diamond ring that must have cost a fortune. He took it out of its white satin bed and held it up.

“I know you're not ready for marriage. This doesn't have to be what you don't want it to be. But please wear this ring. For now it's just a promise that when you're ready, one day, you'll start calling it an engagement ring.”