Burning in Madness Chapter 03
Arthur’s knuckles whitened around the butter knife before he
forced his grip to relax. Snatching a linen napkin, he a
meticulously dabbed at a phantom stain on his lips.
I narrowed my eyes at his forced nonchalance.
“I tell you to pull the security footage and call the
cops, and suddenly you look like you’re heading to the guillotine,” I gave a dry, mocking laugh. “Why so tense, Arthur? Don’t tell me you
stole my underwear.”
The dining room went dead silent.
looked up,
A low, guttural sound vibrated in Arthur’s throat. He slowly
his glacial dark eyes locking onto mine behind those
gold–rimmed glasses.
“What do you think?” his voice dropped to an unnervingly dark pitch.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
What was there to think? Arthur was a Wall Street puritan,
boring to his very bones. What the hell would he want with my panties?
Still, his absolute indifference sent a cold spike through my chest.
Our penthouse security rivaled the Federal Reserve. A creep had just breached it to steal his wife’s lingerie, and this obsessive control freak wasn’t even going to check the footage?
If my privacy and personal safety couldn’t buy a single second of
his concern, this marriage was truly dead in the water.
Instead of blowing up, I flashed a brittle smile and cut to the chase. “What time will you be home tonight? I have something for you.”
-The divorce papers sitting in my desk. I was making him sign them today.
Arthur stood up. His fingers stalled over a button on his suit jacket for a split second.
“As soon as you want me to,” he replied without missing a beat, his voice dangerously rough.
Before I could unpack that loaded response, his assistant cleared his throat from the foyer. Seconds later, the heavy oak door
thudded shut.
Alone in the cavernous dining room, I realized the tips of my
ears were burning.
Christ. The man was a walking glacier who looked physically
pained if our shoulders brushed. What was that? His pathetic
attempt at dirty talk?
That restless irritation clung to me all afternoon.
Curled on the sofa, I tried to review the divorce papers, but the
legalese blurred. My mind kept looping back to that raspy “As
soon as you want me to.”
Frustrated, I tossed my pen onto the table. The moment I pinched the bridge of my nose to force some focus, the front
door chimed.
The head of security hurried in, dropping a wax–sealed envelope onto the glass table.
“Mr. Rothwell ordered this locked in the master vault
immediately, ma’am,” he stammered, sweating as he stared at
the cracked red wax. “But it arrived damaged. I… I thought it
safest to hand it directly to you.”
Before I could say a word, he spun on his heel and bolted.
I rarely snooped. But the chief had clearly been too terrified of my husband’s wrath to handle a breached confidential file
himself.
A stark white medical report was already sliding out.
The bold header pinned my gaze: [Manhattan Center for
Advanced Psychiatric Care – Clinical Assessment: Severe Obsessive–Compulsive Fixation and Addiction]
I froze.
Addiction? Fixation? Arthur Rothwell? The man who bled ice
water was seeing a shrink?
My eyes snapped to the diagnostic summary on page two:
[Patient adamantly refuses clinical separation. Pathological possessiveness toward the ‘Target Subject,‘ combined with severe physical repression, has triggered acute clinical anxiety and volatile physiological distress…]
My blood ran ice–cold, only to be instantly incinerated by a
white–hot flash of rage and disbelief.
No wonder he was always so goddamn rigid every time he looked at me over the last two years. No wonder his touch always felt so violently desperate!
I was a supermodel. I routinely graced the covers of top–tier magazines. Half the billionaires in Manhattan would kill for a
single glance from me.
Yet my own husband only touched me when he was practically losing his mind, probably squeezing his eyes shut and
pretending I was her.
And this was why–because he wasn’t craving ME. He was just using me as a physical stand–in whenever his sick, twisted
obsession for another woman got too severe!
This sordid infatuation had actually pushed Wall Street’s untouchable tyrant into a clinical breakdown?
Wounded pride and pure, vindictive spite burned away my last shred of rationality.
Fine. I was handing him the divorce papers tonight anyway; to hell with his ridiculous, ironclad boundaries.
I was going to find out exactly what kind of goddess it took to make a Wall Street robot completely lose his goddamn mind in
the dark.
Driven by venomous spite, I stormed down the hall toward his private study—the one room completely off–limits to everyone.
He must have left in a blind rush this morning. The heavy door was cracked ajar.
I shoved it open. The air inside was thick with his signature
scent: cold cedar and Cuban tobacco.
I walked straight behind the massive executive desk, but as I pivoted, my hip clipped the heavy, black–and–gold kinetic
sculpture near the edge.
It tipped dangerously. My heart leaped into my throat, and I instinctively slammed my hands down to catch the brass base before it could crash to the ground. Click.
As my palm pressed hard into a specific groove on the metalwork, a harsh, mechanical latch released beneath the desk.
A heartbeat later, the floorboards vibrated beneath my feet. With a deep, muffled groan of interlocking gears, the floor–to- ceiling bookshelf behind the desk split down the middle and glided into the walls.
A hidden chamber yawned open. It was freezing inside, aggressively climate–controlled, yet bathed in the eerie, warm glow of amber track lighting.
Holding my breath, I crossed the threshold. Sleek glass display cases stood in the center of the room like museum exhibits. As I approached the main pedestal, my heart slammed against my ribs.
Resting on a plush black velvet cushion was a wisp of dark red fabric. My crimson lace underwear. The exact, unwashed pair that had vanished after the party last week.
Folded with sickening, obsessive neatness right beside it was the silk slip dress that had vanished from my hamper last week.
Every single garment bore deep creases. They looked as though they had been violently crushed in a white–knuckled fist–the undeniable, lingering proof of being repeatedly, ruthlessly gripped.
“Jesus…” I clamped a hand over my mouth, stifling a gasp.
There was no sick intruder. There was no secret mistress hiding in the shadows.
The ‘Target Subject‘ who had driven him to the brink of a
clinical breakdown, the singular, agonizing focus of his
addiction… was ME.