I removed the water bottle from my pocket, throwing the lid on his lap and pouring the frigid liquid on his face. He heaved in a breath, spurting, and whacking his cheek against the wall.
Letting the empty bottle fall, I removed both our phones from my other pocket. I swiped on the camera on each and started duplicate videos of his face as I leaned down. I waited to make sure he was at least halfway focused on me before I spoke.
“Aaron Walsh, this is your only warning. I have documentation, both written and photographed, of your physical and emotional abuse of your ex-wife, Madison. It is thorough and graphic.”
I ground my molars together, fighting the desire to punch him in the face again as those pages flipped through my memory on repeat. The bruises, the threats, the fear. Fuck, if it didn’t kill me every time I thought about it.
“If you so much as think of her again, tonight will seem like a frat-house prank compared to what I will do. If you return to her home, you will have thicker medical records than she does. And if you ever lay a finger on her again, you won’t even make it to the hospital.”
I clicked the videos off, tucking my phone back in my pocket and throwing his next to him, the echo of it against the plastic loud in the enclosed space. “Do you understand me?”
“I hear…I hear you, man.” His words mumbled out through his swollen lips, and part of me reveled in it. The part of me that had come alive the second I’d seen his motherfucking hand gripping Maddie’s face.
“That’s not what I asked,” I said, grabbing and twisting his arm. “I said, do you understand me?”
“Jesus fu—fuck! I understand.”
I released him, brushing the smear of blood across my knuckles on my jeans, ready to ditch this piece of shit. I wanted to go home and check on the little family that was intent on stealing my goddamn heart.
“Madison Hartland does not exist for you. She never has and never will. She was never fucking yours.”
And then my fist met his face again.
About the Author
Lilian T. James was born and raised in a small town of Kansas until she finished high school. Enrolling at a University on the east coast, she moved there with her son and obtained degrees in Criminal Justice, Social Work, Psychology, and Sociology. After graduating, she met her husband and moved to the west coast for a few years before settling back in Kansas in 2022. She has three kids, one miniature dachshund, and has been an avid fantasy and romance reader her entire life. Lilian was finally able to publish her first novel, Untainted, at thirty-years-old and has no plans of stopping.