Bound By Sweet Madness

By the third month of keeping Rowan locked in the estate, he had barely spoken a word to me. The heavy blackout curtains were drawn shut. His phone was locked away in my safe. The passcode to the bedroom door was changed every twenty-four hours. When I walked in carrying a tray of warm oatmeal, he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, staring blankly down at the ring of fading bruises around his wrists. I softened my voice, trying to coax him. "Rowan, after you eat, how about I take you for a walk in the gardens?" He didn't look up. His voice was terrifyingly hollow. "Silas, when are you finally going to let me go?" I reached out to touch his shoulder, but suddenly, a line of glowing text flickered into existence, hovering right in front of my eyes. [Stop touching him. He's literally at his breaking point.] [Give it two weeks, and he starts hoarding pills.] [Silas crying over his cold dead body later won't change a damn thing. He pushed him to this.] My hand froze in midair. Rowan flinched away from me on instinct, his shoulders trembling beneath his thin shirt. I looked at his eyes—so empty, stripped of all the brilliant, fierce light they used to hold. Something inside me snapped. I turned on my heel, walked over to the dresser, and pulled out everything I had confiscated: his phone, his ID, his credit cards, and the keys to his Porsche. I dropped them onto the bed. "You can go," I said. Rowan froze. I grabbed a pen, scribbled today’s door passcode on a piece of paper, and slid it across the nightstand toward him. "I won't come after you anymore." Maybe it was just a trick of the dim lighting, but for a split second, the corners of his eyes looked stained with red. 1 Rowan didn't reach for the paper. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, his wrists half-hidden inside his long sleeves. The bruises were from last night. When I had caught him trying to slip out the door, I’d pinned his wrists and dragged him back to the bed. He had struggled once, briefly, before giving up. After that, he turned his back to me and hadn't said a single word all night. I thought he was just giving me the silent treatment. I thought he was using his silence as a weapon to force my hand, to make me yield. After all, Rowan Hayes had always been a master at that. He was ice-cold in the boardroom, and he was ice-cold at home. So cold that every time I saw that indifferent, one-foot-out-the-door look on his face, all I wanted to do was deadbolt the locks, draw the curtains, and drag him back into my arms until he remembered he was mine. But now, those glowing words were still suspended in my vision. Line after line, like a live feed of a phantom audience screaming at me. [Silas, stop being a psycho and look at his face.] [Where are all the toxic romance apologists now? Come get your boy.] [I can't even reread this part, it's too dark.] [God, he’s already hiding the pills right now. Somebody save him.] My eyes locked onto that last line. Hiding pills. I had personally swept every inch of this room. The medical kit was locked downstairs. The kitchen knives were secured in a biometric drawer. I had even replaced the razors in his master bath with electric trimmers. What the hell could he possibly hide? I turned slowly and walked toward the nightstand. Rowan finally lifted his head. Panic flashed across his pale face. "What are you doing?" I didn't answer. I gripped the heavy mahogany nightstand and dragged it away from the wall. The wood screeched violently against the hardwood floor. All the color completely drained from Rowan's face. In that fraction of a second, my heart dropped into my stomach. I pried off the false backing of the drawer. A small, unlabeled white plastic bottle rolled out from the hollow space. It hit the plush rug with a soft, barely audible thud. But the silence in the room suddenly felt like a graveyard. I bent down, picked up the bottle, and popped the childproof cap. Inside, it was half-full of heavy white sedatives. I looked at Rowan. "What is this?" He pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line. He didn't speak. I took a step closer. "Who gave these to you?" His eyelashes fluttered against his pale skin. When he spoke, his voice was raw, scraped hollow. "Do you really have to tear everything apart, Silas?" The phantom text exploded across my vision. [Oh my god, this is it! He actually found the bottle!] [Reading this chapter for the first time literally made my blood run cold.] [Stop interrogating him. He can't sleep. He’s been awake for weeks.] [He was already mapping out his way out of this world.] [If Silas had found this even a day later, it would have been over.] My fingers tightened around the plastic bottle until the edges dug painfully into my palm. "How many have you taken?" I demanded. Rowan let out a sudden, breathy laugh. It was a sound as fragile as shattering ice. "Do you even care?" My throat closed up. Of course I care. I wanted to cross the room and grab him. I wanted to pry his mouth open and force him to tell me where every single missing pill had gone. I wanted to kiss him, to shake him, to tell him that I loved him so deeply it felt like a sickness. But the moment I shifted my weight, Rowan’s shoulders violently flinched. He was terrified I was going to touch him. For the first time, the reality of it cut through my obsession with absolute clarity. Rowan was afraid of me. What I had interpreted as his stubbornness, his rebellion, his calculated silent treatment designed to torture me... it had mutated into genuine terror. The text kept scrolling. [Look at the state of him. And Silas still wants to hug him?] [Wake the hell up, Silas.] I stood glued to the floor, completely paralyzed. I couldn't take a single step toward him. After what felt like an eternity, I tossed the pill bottle into the trash can. Rowan stared at me, stunned. I turned my back to him, opened the top drawer of the dresser, and pulled out the rest of his belongings. His bank cards, his watch. I piled them onto the mattress. I walked over to the writing desk. I grabbed a pen and aggressively wrote down the estate's master gate code, the garage pin, and the combination to his personal safe. I pressed down so hard on the last digit that the pen tore straight through the heavy cardstock. I slid the paper across the desk. "Go." Rowan looked up at me. I forced my voice to remain completely steady. "The security detail is pulling out tonight. My driver is waiting downstairs. You can go wherever you want." He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. It took him a long time to finally whisper, "Are you done playing your games, Silas?" I glanced at the trash can where the pills lay. "Yeah." The edges of his eyes slowly turned red. I didn't dare look at him any longer. "I'm not coming after you anymore." 2 Rowan didn't leave that night. I sat in the dark living room until the sun came up. Upstairs, the house was so quiet it felt entirely vacant. Every ten minutes, a visceral urge seized me to go upstairs and check on him. I would walk to the base of the grand staircase, grip the banister, and force myself to stop. The floating text flickered in the gloom. [Don't go up there.] [If you show your face right now, you're only going to terrify him more.] [Give him room to breathe, Silas. For the love of god, act like a human being.] I stood at the bottom of the stairs, my palm slick with cold sweat against the mahogany railing. When morning finally broke, I called my private physician, Dr. Aris. While the doctor examined Rowan, I stood out in the hallway. The door was cracked open. I could see him sitting on the edge of the velvet sofa, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looked ghostly pale, but his expression had returned to its usual detached neutrality. Dr. Aris clicked his pen. "How has your sleep been lately, Mr. Hayes?" "Fine," Rowan replied. "And that bottle of sedatives?" Dr. Aris pressed. "Did you take any?" Rowan paused. Standing by the door frame, my fingers dug into the drywall. He lowered his eyes, his voice barely a murmur. "No." Dr. Aris frowned. "The bottle Silas showed me was half-empty." Rowan meticulously buttoned his cuffs. After a long beat, he said, "I flushed them." The doctor blinked, taken aback. "Why would you do that?" Rowan didn't answer. I lowered my gaze to the floorboards. Maybe none of those pills had actually made it into his stomach. But he had still hidden them inside the false back of the nightstand. He had still sat alone in the dead of night, unscrewed the cap, and poured those heavy white tablets into his palm, staring at them. Thinking about how easily they could dissolve into his bloodstream and shut his body down for good. I was almost too late. After Dr. Aris left, Rowan walked out into the hallway and stopped in front of me. He was still pale, and there was no light left in his eyes. "You heard?" he asked. I looked at him. "Why did you flush them?" He let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Take a guess." The air in my lungs felt like it was going to combust. If this were a month ago, I would have grabbed him by the jaw and forced him to finish that sentence. Instead, I took a step back. Rowan’s smile slowly faded. "Silas—" "The driver is waiting outside," I cut in. He stared at me. "You're really letting me leave?" My throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper. "Yes." Rowan turned and picked up his car keys from the console table. When he reached the grand front double doors, he paused. The morning light poured in from outside, blindingly bright. He stood silhouetted in the glare, his frame looking so terribly thin, as if a strong gust of wind would shatter him. "Silas." I looked up. He didn't turn around. "You're really not going to come looking for me?" I clenched my fists inside my pockets, my nails digging half-moons into my palms. "No." The sound of the heavy door clicking shut was incredibly soft. When the rumble of his engine faded down the driveway, I remained standing in the foyer, entirely paralyzed. The floating text went dead silent for a long time. Finally, a single line drifted across my vision. [He finally made it out.] [God, I hope he survives this time.] I brought my hand up and covered my eyes. My palm was damp and freezing. It felt like my boiling blood had instantly turned to ice. It's so cold, Rowan. Why couldn't you just love me back? 3 Rowan moved back into his downtown penthouse. On the first day, he didn't leave the apartment. On the second day, he returned to the Hayes Corporation headquarters. By the third day, he was chairing their executive board meeting. I was sitting at the head of the conference table at Montgomery Holdings, my phone resting face-up next to my legal pad. Halfway through my VP's quarterly report, my screen lit up. It was a photo sent from a mutual contact. In the picture, Rowan was wearing a sharp, charcoal-grey Tom Ford suit, sitting at the head of his own boardroom table. He still looked pale, but the icy, commanding authority had returned to his eyes. His cuffs were perfectly tailored, hiding any fading bruises on his wrists. He looked infinitely better than he had locked inside my estate. The text drifted by. [See? He thrives the second he’s away from you.] [This is where he belongs. Not chained inside some dark bedroom.] I flipped my phone face-down against the mahogany table. "Keep going," I told my VP. My executive assistant, Bennett, glanced at my expression and noticeably lowered the volume of his voice. After the meeting wrapped, I sat alone in my corner office until the city skyline outside turned pitch black. Rowan hadn't contacted me. And I hadn't contacted him. But I still had my security detail tailing him from a distance. Just to make sure he was alive. That was the lie I kept telling myself. A line of text mocked me in the dark: [So this is what Silas Montgomery calls 'giving him space'? Yikes.] I stared at the words. Right. Rowan wouldn't like this. I pulled myself together and texted the head of the detail: [Pull back. Stand down.] The reply came almost instantly: [Sir?] I typed it again: [Stand down. Now.] I tossed the phone onto my desk, but the suffocating weight in my chest didn't lighten in the slightest. At 10:00 PM, Rowan called me for the first time. I stared at his name glowing on the screen. My finger hovered over the 'Accept' button, trembling, unable to press down. The ringing stopped. A second call immediately came through. The phantom comments started arguing. [Just answer it! What if it's an emergency?] [I can't handle these two. Picking up a phone call shouldn't feel like diffusing a bomb.] When the third call came in, I answered it. The line was dead quiet. I could only hear the faint, shallow rhythm of Rowan's breathing. I spoke first. "Do you need something?" It took him a moment. "The door lock is broken." I immediately sat up straight in my leather chair. "Where are you?" "The penthouse." "Alright. I'll have maintenance head over right now." There was a few seconds of silence on the other end. "You're not coming?" I gripped the phone, my knuckles turning white. "No. I don't want to crowd you." Rowan let out a soft, breathy laugh. "You're being so considerate these days, Silas." The words felt like a surgical needle slipping directly into my eardrum. He hung up. I dispatched my best security tech to his building. Half an hour later, the tech texted me. The smart lock wasn't broken. Someone had manually popped the battery pack out from the inside. I stared at that text message for a long, long time. I didn't call him back. The comments scrolled by slowly. [His behavior is so off.] [It's a trauma response. He's testing the waters to see if Silas will actually show up.] [Don't romanticize this, oh my god.] I put the phone down. Outside, the Manhattan lights glittered endlessly. But all I could see was that suffocating, curtain-drawn bedroom back at the estate. 4 Rowan went to a club. He almost never stepped foot in places like that. The photo came from a wealthy acquaintance of ours who ran in the same circles. He had no idea we had severed ties, so his text was entirely teasing: [Hey Silas, who’s the pretty boy hanging off your guy? You gonna let that slide?] I opened the image. Rowan was sitting at a high-end mahogany bar. A young man in a black silk button-down was leaning in way too close, whispering something into Rowan’s ear. Rowan wasn't pulling away. I stared at the screen, a vicious, ugly fire igniting in my chest and burning straight up my throat. If this were before, I would have already been in the car. I would have stormed into that club, yanked Rowan off that barstool, wrapped my trench coat around his shoulders, locked the car doors, and driven him straight back to the estate. But now, I didn't even have the right to yell at him. The phantom text was having a field day. [Lmao, that guy is literally his cousin.] [We know that, but Silas doesn't. This is about to be a disaster.] [Stop laughing, I'm genuinely terrified Silas is going to relapse and kidnap him again.] [Releasing a man and then immediately dragging him out of a club? Straight to jail.] I grabbed my car keys. I made it to the elevator banks before I forced my feet to stop. Eventually, I turned around and walked back into my office. Thirty minutes later, my phone rang. It was Rowan. I answered. The heavy bass of club music thumped in the background, but his voice cut through the noise, sharp and clear. "Silas." "What is it?" "Did you get the picture?" I squeezed my eyes shut. "Rowan, stop playing games with your own safety just to spite me." He laughed. "I thought you didn't care anymore." I didn't reply. The background noise muffled slightly. It sounded like he had stepped out onto a balcony or an alley. The chill of the night wind hissed through the receiver. He asked, "Are you jealous?" My fingernails dug into the edge of my mahogany desk. "No." "Then why are you angry?" I kept my voice dead level. "I'm not angry." Rowan fell silent. After a long, agonizing pause, he murmured, "You wouldn't have acted like this before." My throat felt tight. "Before was toxic. I was hurting you." "Whether you were hurting me or not," he said softly, "was always up to you to decide, wasn't it?" The words landed lightly, but they crushed my chest like an anvil. "It's too late for this," I said. "Go home." "To which one?" I couldn't answer that. He couldn't go back to the estate, and my penthouse wasn't an option. He had already claimed the lock to his own apartment was broken. My heart spasmed, but I couldn't force a single word out. Rowan let out a bitter little chuckle. "Forget it," he said. "You're a coward now, Silas. You don't even have the guts to order me around anymore." The line went dead. That night, he checked into a luxury hotel a few blocks away. I drove there. But when I parked across the street, I didn't go inside. I sat in the driver's seat of the Aston Martin, watching the entrance from the dead of night until the dawn broke. Early the next morning, Rowan walked out of the lobby. He was alone, still wearing the suit from the night before. He stopped on the curb and, quite suddenly, looked directly across the street at my car. Through the heavy tint of the windows, there was no way he could see me. But his gaze felt like it was burning a hole straight through my skull. I didn't move a muscle. Rowan stood there for a few seconds, then turned, got into his waiting town car, and drove away. The text drifted past. [He totally knows.] [Yeah, he definitely feels Silas watching him.] I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the cold leather of the steering wheel. I didn't lift my head for a long time. 5 Rowan moved back into the estate. When Carson, the estate manager, texted me, I was in the middle of signing a multi-million-dollar acquisition contract. [Mr. Hayes has returned.] [He went into the master bedroom and drew all the curtains.] My Montblanc pen stalled on the heavy paper. The black ink bled out, forming an ugly, dark stain. I stared at those two lines of text, completely paralyzed. The floating comments were just as shocked. [Why the hell did he go back?!] [No, no, no. I'm actually terrified right now.] [He needs to stay as far away from that house as possible.] I didn't go back. At 9:00 PM, Carson texted to say Rowan had refused dinner. At 10:00 PM, Carson texted to say Rowan had shattered the bedside lamp. At 10:30 PM, my phone buzzed with an image sent directly from Rowan. It was a picture of the hardwood floor covered in broken glass. And a shallow, bleeding cut across the back of his pale hand. The caption read: [You used to get so angry when I did this, Silas.] I stared at that thin line of blood, my fingers trembling slightly. I texted back: [Dr. Aris is on his way to you.] His reply was instantaneous. [You're not coming?] I typed. Erased it. Typed again. Finally, I hit send on: [You need medical attention.] A long time passed before he sent back a single letter. [Oh.] Dr. Aris went to the estate. Carson reported back that it was just a superficial scratch, and they had bandaged it. I sat in my corporate office until two in the morning. Suddenly, my screen lit up again. This time, it was a photo of the white plastic pill bottle. The cap was off. The heavy white sedatives were scattered all across the nightstand. No caption. A high-pitched ringing exploded in my ears. I snatched my car keys and practically sprinted for the private elevator. The text was flying frantically across my vision. [Jesus, slow down! You're going to crash!] [Call an ambulance first!] [Silas, don't lose your damn mind, but also PLEASE GET THERE NOW!] I dialed Rowan’s number as the engine roared to life. Once. Twice. Three times. No answer. Thirty minutes later, I slammed the front doors of the estate open and took the stairs two at a time. The door to the master bedroom was wide open. Rowan was sitting on the edge of the bed. The white pills were scattered all around him like snow. He looked up at me. The corners of his eyes were rimmed in angry red. "You're here." I crossed the room in three strides, grabbed his jaw, and forced his face up. "How many did you swallow?" He looked at me, his voice lighter than a ghost. "Take a guess." My blood ran ice cold. I grabbed the water glass on the nightstand, sniffed it, then roughly pried his hands open to check for residue. Nothing. No smell of medication. Every single pill was accounted for. When I finished counting, my hands were violently shaking. Rowan just sat there, watching me. "Silas." I ignored him, spinning around to grab the medical kit Dr. Aris had left behind. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed the cuff of my shirt. His grip was weak. "This is the part where you usually scream at me," he whispered. I froze. His voice dropped even lower. "This is the part where you pin me down on the mattress, and tell me that if I ever try to scare you like that again, you'll lock me in a room without a single window." I squeezed my eyes shut. "That was sick, Rowan. That was wrong." His fingers slowly let go of my sleeve. I looked back at him. That red flush was still lingering at the edges of his eyes, but his terrifying stillness sent a shockwave of panic through my chest. "So now you're just going to do nothing?" My throat was parched. "I can't be the monster that terrifies you anymore." "What if I want to terrify you?" I stared at him. He stared back. In that split second, I felt like I was standing dead-center in an invisible spiderweb. Rowan was sitting at the nucleus—pale, broken, looking like he was about to shatter into a million pieces. Yet he was the one holding all the threads. But I was too terrified to take a step forward. I was terrified of making the wrong move, of slipping back into the toxic abyss where neither of us would survive. I swept the pills into a biohazard bag to hand off to Dr. Aris for testing. Then I ordered Carson to strip the bedroom of all medications, sharp objects, and glass. Throughout the entire process, I didn't lay a single finger on him. Rowan sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed, watching me sterilize the room. When I was finally done, he asked in a barely-there whisper, "Silas... do you even want me anymore?" My fingers locked up. The text flooded my vision. [Holy shit...] [Holy shit.] [HOLY SHIT!] I turned around, agonizingly slow. "Rowan. We need to stop." The last bit of color drained from his face. "Once you're stable," I forced myself to say, "we can talk." He let out a broken laugh. "Talk about what?" "You're going through withdrawal right now," I said, my voice cracking. "We are toxic for each other. We need to detox." When those words fell from my mouth, the final spark of light in his eyes completely extinguished. 6 Before I left the estate, I made Carson remove every single sharp object from the entire second floor. Rowan sat on the edge of the mattress, his head bowed. He hadn't said a word. He looked dreadfully pale, a pristine white bandage stark against his bruised hand, the sleeve of his shirt hanging loose over his cold, delicate wrist bone. Just as my hand touched the door handle, he finally spoke. "Silas." I stopped. His voice was thick, almost as if he were choking back a sob. "Where are you going?" My grip on the brass handle tightened. "Back to the office." "And then what?" I didn't turn around. I forced my mouth into a painful imitation of a smile. "I'm going to see a doctor, too." He let out a soft, mocking laugh. "You're certainly playing the good boy these days." The comment sent a spike of irritation and agony straight down my spine. I wanted to turn around. I wanted to ask him what the hell he actually wanted from me. I wanted to ask if he wouldn't be satisfied until he watched me completely lose my mind. The primal, obsessive urge boiling in my marrow was threatening to swallow me alive. I wanted to drag him against me, to kiss the breath out of him, to scream that I loved him. I wanted to shake him and demand to know why he couldn't just love me the way I loved him—with a terrifying, all-consuming devotion. But before I stepped through the door, my voice came out hard and clinical. "I won't touch you again." The room behind me fell dead silent. It was silent for so long I assumed he was done speaking. But right in the exact second the heavy door clicked shut, I heard Rowan whisper. "You're a liar, Silas." My hand froze on the knob. But the latch had already caught. I stood in the dark hallway for a long time, unable to move. The text began to slowly drift in. [Something feels off about that line.] [Wait, is it just me, or was Rowan not just running away out of fear back then?] [Does anyone remember earlier in the book? Every time he 'escaped,' he only ever made it as far as the garden.] [Shut up, both of their brains are completely deep-fried at this point.] I lowered my eyes. Yeah. My brain is deep-fried. From the second I saw that pill bottle hidden in the nightstand, I hadn't had a single rational thought. The best thing I could do right now was stay as far away from Rowan Hayes as physically possible. My therapist had diagnosed me with severe coercive control tendencies. I was a psychopath who had driven the man I loved to the brink of suicide. I knew what I was. So when I got into my car, I dialed my assistant, Bennett. "Set something up for me... a date. A blind date." Anything. Anything to break the cycle. Dead silence stretched over the line for five full seconds. "Mr. Montgomery?" I stared up at the second-story window of the estate. The blackout curtains were drawn tight. "Or a charity gala, a dinner party. Just find someone." Bennett's voice dropped. "Are you absolutely sure, sir?" "I'm sure." The moment I hung up, the text went absolutely nuclear. [???] [Oh my god, these two psychopaths are about to level up.] [Rowan is going to absolutely lose his mind when he finds out.] I threw my phone onto the passenger seat. I didn't start the ignition right away. I looked up at the house. The curtain in the master bedroom twitched. Just a fraction of an inch. Like someone was standing in the pitch black, watching me through a sliver of fabric. I stared intently at the window. The curtain immediately fell perfectly still. Half an hour later, I drove away. But the image of that shifting fabric haunted the back of my eyelids all night.