Page 32 of The Madman's Nightmare
“Incoming,” Gunner replied a moment later and when James’s phone dinged, he opened the message and turned the phone to let me see.
My vision was blurry from tears as I saw my sweet boys playing with Matthew and Anna, their cousins, and Hawk and Stella’s kids. Blaire, my mom, was sitting behind them, speaking with Stella. They were all smiling at something, and I suddenly began to feel stupid.
Swiping the tears from my cheeks, I whispered, “Thank you, Gunner.”
He lowered his voice and replied, “We just want you back home. The boys are safe, Elise. I promise.”
James disconnected the call and left the picture on the screen, handing me the phone so I could look at my boys, A noise drew my attention, and I looked to see Chuck slipping out behind the curtain and the sound of the door closing echoed into the hospital room.
The IV in my hand was uncomfortable and I hated the flimsy gown they had me in, so I pulled the covers up and pushed the button to raise the head of the bed. James stood beside the bed, watching me intently while I got as comfortable as I could before he sat on the edge.
“What did she say to you?” James asked and I crossed my arms, feeling the ache from my ribs. “You know she’s crazy, right? That everything she told you was a lie.”
“The marriage certificate and pictures of the ceremony told me everything I needed to know,” I reasoned. “And what they didn’t show me, the beating I took did.”
“Elise, I’m sorry that all of this happened to you, but I need to help untangle the lies and manipulations they played on you.”
Manipulations?
“Did she and Devlin have a relationship?” I asked and his eyes cast down briefly.
“They did, but not the kind you’re thinking,” James explained. “She got attached when he never did, and when she got clingy, he sent her away.”
“Well, she came back,” I tacked on.
“They were never married. None of what she told you about them was true.”
“I’m not stupid,” I angrily said. “I know what I saw.”
James lifted his blue eyes to mine and explained, “You saw Artificial Intelligence created documents and pictures.” He shook his head. “None of it was true.”
AI?
“I don’t understand,” I honestly replied.
James looked sad as he began to tell me what they had discovered. “After we found you and made sure you were safe and okay, we went back to the house and began looking through everything she had left in the office.” Standing, he ran his hands through his brown hair and turned back to me. “Kendra used an AI program and, I assume publicly accessible pictures, to create a fake past for her and Devlin. My guess is she was trying to wear you down mentally and thought by making you think he betrayed you, you’d leave, and she’d have another chance.” He smiled and explained. “There was never anyone who held his heart, but you, and she always hated that. She tried to get him to choose her years ago, and he told her to leave. I guess she got tired of waiting and became desperate.”
“So, everything she showed me, everything she said about taking my boys, was a lie?”
“Yes,” he said with no uncertainty. “She used whatever means she could to try and get you to leave. She knew she could never win Devlin’s heart, so she tried to destroy you. And by doing that, she hurt in in the process.”
I didn’t know what to believe, but I didn’t feel like James was lying to me. But how could I be sure? He could be telling me what he thought I wanted to hear.
“I can prove it to you,” James said, and I snapped my gaze to him. I guess he knew me pretty well. Lifting his phone from the rolling table where I’d placed it, he pressed a few things on his phone and then turned the volume down before he looked back at me.
“I’m going to show you something and I think, even as upsetting as it is, it will show you that I’m telling the truth and everything she said was false.”
He turned his phone to face me and pressed the screen, starting a video playing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It seemed to be a video of someone murdering me, intermixed withthe beating Bradon gave me while Kendra watched. When it was done playing, he tucked the phone into his pocket, and I just stared off into the distance.
If it wasn’t me on the screen, I would have believed it was a video of someone killing me. Only it was mostly AI, and it was truly disturbing.
James’s words broke through the haze I was locked in as the days with Bradon and Kendra played in my mind.
“Do you see how they manipulated everyone?”
I nodded, starting to realize that I’d been conned. The marriage, the claim to take my kids, the façade of their lives, was all created to support their narrative.
There was one more thing I needed from James. “Where’s my husband?”
