A Dark Revenge On My Cheating Husband Chapter 01
It was common knowledge in their circle that Madeleine Pynson and Xzavier Kenward had been childhood sweethearts and were made for each other.
One was a top-tier tech expert, the other a business management prodigy. It was a formidable union.
But right now, her body was buried in the frigid dirt on the outskirts of town, only her head exposed above ground.
The smell of fresh soil mixed with rotting grass roots weighed down on her chest. Every breath sent a sharp pain tearing through her lungs.
Ahead, the blinding headlights of a car tore through the night.
Xzavier sat in the driver’s seat, the engine growling low. His face looked cold in the backlight.
“You’re crazy! Xzavier! What are you doing?!”
Madeleine’s voice warped with fear and suffocation.
“Now you’re scared?” He rolled down the window, his voice eerily calm.
“Did it even cross your mind what would happen when you cut Ella out of the patent application? She was totally devastated over this, and almost got run over by a car.”
With that, he slammed on the gas pedal!
The tires crushed gravel as the car shot forward, aiming directly for her immobilized head.
A screeching brake sounded at the last second, but the inertia still sent the front bumper slamming hard into her forehead with a bang.
A searing pain erupted. Warm blood gushed from her nostrils and temples in an instant, blurring her vision.
The earthy stench of dirt mixed with the metallic tang of blood.
Xzavier stepped out, his polished leather shoes coming to a halt right before her eyes.
He crouched down and patted her bleeding cheek with his cold phone.
“Call the judging committee.”
He uttered mercilessly, “Tell them you got a sudden emergency and you’re voluntarily giving the award to Daniela.”
Madeleine’s breath hitched.
For five years, more than a thousand eight hundred days and nights, she’d poured her soul into this, for the recognition, the honor, to build the company up to its current size.
But Daniela Lennard was merely a fragile imposter, constantly playing the victim to garner sympathy. She was showered with his affection simply because she resembled his long-dead sister.
How could he do this?
Xzavier seemed to read her resentment. A cruel smirk tugged at his lips. “Because your little brother’s hanging over a vat of molten wax right now.”
He swiped open his phone screen.
A live surveillance feed appeared.
At an abandoned wax museum, a rusted crane hoist held a thin-limbed young man suspended in mid-air.
Below, a vat of bubbling wax churned, its rising heat distorting the image.
“Maddie!” Nineteen-year-old Ryan Pynson screamed, his voice raw with terror.
“Xzavier! That’s Ryan! He’s the boy you swore you’d treat like your own brother before my mom’s grave!”
Madeleine’s eyes were bloodshot as she thrashed around wildly, but the dirt just trapped her even tighter.
“So, be a good girl.”
He pressed the phone to her bloodstained ear, his tone soft but unyielding. “Make the call.”
The judging committee chair’s concerned voice came through the line, “Ms. Pynson? Is everything alright?”
Madeleine closed her eyes and swallowed the metallic taste in her mouth. Every word she spoke was laced with agony. “I’m giving up … the award. It goes to Daniela Lennard.”
The second the call ended, the coldness on Xzavier’s face melted away, replaced by a flicker of genuine satisfaction.
He even reached out, like he used to do, to wipe the blood from her temple.
“Honey, don’t go blaming me for being cruel. Ella is my only sister now. She needs this award to establish herself. As her sister-in-law and senior, it’s only right that you step aside for her.”
Madeleine stared daggers at him, at the man who had shared moldy orphanage bread with her, who had scaled walls to get her medicine when she burned with fever, who had vowed at their wedding, “Madeleine and Ryan are my only family.”
Now, for another woman, he’d slipped sleeping pills into her milk to knock her out, buried her alive, and hung her little brother over a boiling vat of wax.
“Let him go.”
Her voice was hoarse. “I did as you said.”
“After she gets the award, I will.”
Xzavier glanced at his watch.
“Ella’s waiting for me at the venue. I gotta…”
His words were cut short. The surveillance feed on his phone shuddered violently.
At the control panel in the wax museum, Daniela, in a floral dress, “accidentally” bumped against a lever.
The cable whirred, plunging downward.
“No!”
Madeleine’s scream tore through the air, overlapping with Rylan’s split-second shriek.
The scalding hot vat swallowed Rylan, who had just received his music conservatory acceptance letter.
The last frame froze on his hand reaching toward the camera, his fingertips solidifying, twisting, and freezing in the wax.
Everything went dead silent.
“What happened?!” Xzavier barked into the phone.
Daniela’s tearful, choked voice came through the line, “Zavy, I didn’t mean to… The button was so sensitive. I…” She coughed before finishing speaking.
“Ella! What’s wrong? Don’t be scared!”
Xzavier grabbed his jacket and bolted for the car. “I’m coming right over! You look so pale. Are you in shock? Hang on. I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Xzavier! Save him! Please save him! That’s Ryan!”
Madeleine thrashed around like a madwoman in the pit, screaming at the top of her lungs. Tears, blood, and mud caked her face.
Xzavier’s hand paused on the car door handle for a split second.
He turned to look at her bloodshot, desperate eyes, his brows furrowing in annoyance at the interruption. “Madeleine, have you had enough of this? The wax wasn’t even that hot. I was just trying to scare you. Ella’s shaken up now, and she’s in poor health. I gotta go right now!”
He slammed the car door shut.
The engine roared to life. The car sped away, its taillights shrinking into the darkness, taking the last glimmer of light from Madeleine’s world.
***
The morgue was as cold as an icebox.
Beneath the white sheet lay her brother—once so lively and bright, now nothing but a cold, lifeless form.
As the cloth was finally drawn over his face, Madeleine lost it, overwhelmed by heart-wrenching grief.
She dropped to her knees beside the table and sobbed her heart out.
The doctor’s clinical, detached “My condolences” was the final weight that broke her.
She staggered to her feet.
Her nails dug deep into her own palms until skin split and blood welled, but she felt no physical pain.
Only this could ease the guilt and despair that were about to tear her apart from the inside out.
She sobbed until she’d drained the last bit of her strength. She pulled out her phone with trembling hands and dialed an international number.
“I can sell you the full set of core technologies and patents for the Astroride S9 intelligent system.”
Her voice was hoarse, yet it carried a deathly calm. “I have only one condition. Make Xzavier and Daniela pay for what they’ve done!”
The second she hung up, the phone screen lit up again.
That familiar custom avatar stung her eyes under the morgue’s pale, stark lights.
Xzavier’s voice boomed through the speaker, his tone the usual unyielding command laced with lingering anger. “Madeleine! The award ceremony isn’t over yet. The press needs details on the project. You have to come help Ella. Get your ass over to the venue right now!”
