Chapter 1 (Mother): Hopeless

                                        

                                              
*** TW for references to domestic violence ***
Copyright © 2025 by GroveltoHEA
I had no right to fall in love with her. Saw her picture when I was looking into her husband's background so we could kill him, and I fell in love with her. Hit me harder than Butcher's fist to my face when I joined Mayhem, but it hit just as fast and with just as much force.
From a fucking picture.
Her soft brown hair, her sweet hazel eyes, her slightly crooked smile spoke directly to my heart. This was the woman I'd been waiting for all my life. For a man more comfortable with numbers and logic, I didn't even question it, and I normally questioned and analyzed everything that didn't make sense.
It was her wedding picture I first saw and she looked so happy, so in love.
And that was the last time she looked happy in pictures with her husband.
She tried. I could tell as I looked closely at pictures of her after her wedding day. She tried to fake it, to fake that wedding-day happiness, but it never reached her eyes again. Wariness had replaced happiness. Fear and distrust had replaced the love. Glory Treacher had married a monster and had to pretend she'd married a prince -- and look happy about it or else she'd pay for it later.
His family was beyond wealthy. They had power, they had connections and they had intimidation down to a science. They turned the graceful, delicate beauty into a clumsy ox. She walked into doors. Be more careful, Glory. She tripped and broke her arm. You need to watch your step. She had delicate skin that bruised easily when she was at the gym. Ease up on the workout routine, sweetie.
He'd put her in the hospital three times. The first time, she said she'd fallen down the stairs.
The second time, they said she'd been in a car accident. No one at the hospital pressed for details, and Glory was too scared to say otherwise. She'd learned she couldn't win against her husband and his family, so she stopped trying to get anyone to listen.
The third time, the worst time, he'd caught her trying to leave him. She tried to press charges, but his family had gotten him out on bail, providing him an airtight alibi, spinning some unbelievable 온라인카지노게임 about her trying to frame her husband so she could divorce him and go after all that money. 
I took off my thick, black glasses and spun around in my chair to look at Big and Butcher. "If he gets his hands on her again, he's going to kill her. He almost succeeded this time."
"Tabitha's father said the same thing," Big commented.
"Fucker's been hurting women since high school," I said in disgust. "Always gets away with it because the parents step in and offer the girls enough money to quietly go away. But he's been escalating for years, and the payouts were getting bigger and bigger as his crimes were getting worse and worse. With a wife, he didn't have to make payouts anymore, the sick fuck."
"Bring him in," Butcher said, both of us understanding he meant now, then walked out. I sighed, relieved, even though I'd known Butcher would make that call. 
Big walked out to get together a liberation crew, and I'd stayed in my computer fortress to take care of any cameras that could pick up anything incriminating as we relocated Treacher to Mayhem's guest quarters. All told, it took less than an hour to pick the little fucker up.
Then, while Big was explaining to Treacher the errors of his ways, I couldn't help myself. I went to the hospital where Glory Treacher was recovering and two Mayhem brothers were watching her room just in case the asshole's family tried to get to her. They nodded at me, and I nodded back before I walked into her room. No one was with her and she was sleeping, looking inhuman still, though it was several days after her attack.