Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Kreed
The sound of my wife screeching bled into my ears before I even got to pull my chair from beneath my desk.
Gritting my teeth, I set down the pack of cookies I’d grabbed, no longer hungry.
I needed to intercept her before she lashed out at Hudson.
Hopefully, she’d just come straight to my office since she was pissed at me and not him.
But if there was one thing I knew about Bonnie, she blamed her son for everything that went wrong in her life, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
She was a narcissist and just an all-around shitty human being.
And she loathed the man she’d given birth to for reasons I couldn’t understand.
Forcing my jaw to loosen, I let my mask of indifference fall into place before I turned and hurried out of my office. But I knew I was already too damn late the moment I heard her heavy purse smack onto the kitchen counter. Fuck.
“You did this, didn’t you?” she snapped at Hudson, venom coating her words. “This is all your fucking fault!”
I hurried into the kitchen. Nothing but contempt and pure hatred showed on her features as she stared at her son.
At a human being she’d fucking birthed. How anyone could hate Hudson was beyond me, but she did it so effortlessly.
And Hudson, who—as much as I hated to admit it—was one hundred percent his mother’s child, stared back at her with the same contempt.
Otherwise, his eyes were empty and cold. Flat.
It still sent chills down my spine the way Hudson could just turn off his emotions when it came to her.
He’d been doing it from the moment I met him—definitely longer than that, though I never bore witness to it before then.
He never should have been put in positions where he felt he had to protect himself like that, from her, but Bonnie had never been a safe space for him as a mother should be.
She’d never loved and nurtured him. All she’d done was make his life an absolute fucking hell.
And that was stopping now.
“Your problem is with me.” I calmly spoke from behind her before Hudson could say something that would undoubtedly worsen the situation. He just couldn’t help himself, but when it came to her, his mouth was one hundred times worse. “Hudson has nothing to do with it.”
She spun to face me, her cheeks flushed with anger and her eyes manic.
“He has everything to do with it. He just can’t ever let me be fucking happy.
You think I don’t know he talked you into it?
That he wanted me cut off? When the fuck does he ever come home for school breaks, Kreed?
” she ranted, growing angrier by the second.
“He never does! You expect me to believe he’s not the reason when he was already in here, no doubt discussing it with you, when I came home the other day? !”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, still remaining calm. Shouting back at her would solve nothing. “I opened that bill before Hudson ever came home. And you were already here before he walked through the door.”
Where the hell did she come up with these wild-ass fucking stories?
“Oh, like hell,” she hissed.
I gritted my teeth. This was just like her—twisting events to fit her agenda.
It didn’t matter that everyone in the room knew she was a liar.
She was of the belief that if she said it enough, people would begin to believe her.
It was a typical manipulation tactic, but I’d been around her son enough to know how manipulators worked.
“Oh, cut the fucking bullshit,” Hudson snapped, making her turn to him. I shook my head at him, trying to tell him to stay out of it, but Hudson ignored me. “You’re just a vindictive bitch. You don’t deserve any of what Kreed has given you. You’re nothing but a whore and a fucking gold digger—”
Her palm cracked across his cheek so hard, his face swung to the side.
Corvus gripped his arm, tugging him back a couple of steps.
Rage clouded my vision, leaving me unable to see Hudson’s reaction to her slapping him.
Bonnie had done a lot of fucked-up shit to Hudson—throwing things at him, to be the biggest—but she’d never hit him.
And today would be the first and last motherfucking time she ever touched him.
I gripped her arm and spun her around to face me. She recoiled at the anger burning in my eyes. I never lost my cool, especially around her. I was always calm and composed in the face of her shitty actions, but I’d had fucking enough.
I was laying my cards on the table, and she was fucking out.
Her days of hurting Hudson were over. I didn’t care that he was an adult now and that I knew he was more than capable of taking care of himself when it came to her.
It wouldn’t stop me from still protecting him.
From trying to shield him from her wild, unstable antics.
“You and I are done,” I snarled.
Her jaw dropped. She’d expected my love for Hudson to keep us together, but she was wrong. Maybe, at one point, it would have. But now, my feelings for Hudson meant I would forever put him first. She’d ripped enough away from him, and now, I was going to give it all back.
Starting with myself.
“You can’t be fucking serious,” she finally snarled.
I nodded, my jaw clenched. “Oh, I’m fucking serious, Bonnie. You and I are over. My attorney is already drawing up divorce papers, and you should be served sometime on Monday or Tuesday.”
Rage clouded her vision, and her face turned so red, she resembled a tomato.
“Because your son and I?” A dark smirk tilted my lips. “We’re together.”
She jerked back from me as if I’d burned her.
“What?” she whispered.