Page 7 of Hellebore

I will peel the skin from your fingers, the same fingers that dared touch what is mine. I will break every single bone in your hands one by one until they are useless crushed things. I will cut out your eyes so you never look at her again. I will rip out your heart so you never feel anything for her again.

Because she is mine.

She has always been mine.

I will burn this entire fucking city to the ground and paint the streets red before I let another worthless piece of shit think he has any right to what belongs to me.

“No. No.” I breathe the words out loud, forcing them past the rage choking my throat. “Drystan, keep it together. We wait. We fucking wait.” I repeat it like a mantra, knuckles white on the wheel.

She unlocks the door. The man follows her inside without waiting, without any respect. The second the door clicks shut behind them, he is on her.

He pushes her against the wall. His mouth crashes down on hers and one of his hands gropes her breast hard, squeezing, claiming.

She lets him.

She. Fucking. Lets him.

I can’t breathe.

The cameras are merciless. Every angle shows me the truth in sickening, unrelenting detail, his hand sliding down her body, yanking at the waistband of her cargo pants until the fabric drops low enough for his palm to cup her over her underwear, fingers pressing and rubbing with crude possession. She makes a small sound, half protest, half moan.

“Easy, Luke.” she whispers.

He does not stop. He laughs against her mouth and keeps touching her. Keeps touching what is fucking mine.

This is not real. She would not choose this. Not after everything.

My vision pulses black at the edges. I grip the steering wheel so hard something cracks in my hand. The sharp pain barely registers through the roar in my skull.

I want to break that fucking door down right now. I want to rip him off her by the throat, carve his heart out while it is still beating, and shove the bloody thing down his throat so he chokes on his own arrogance.

I shove the car door open and step out into the pouring rain. Cold water soaks through my clothes instantly, plastering fabric to skin, but I feel nothing except the violence clawing under my ribs. I walk straight into the middle of the empty street, boots splashing through deep puddles, rain hammering against my face and shoulders.

Headlights slice through the downpour. A car swerves wildly, horn blaring as it barely misses me. I do not flinch. I do not move. I simply stand there, soaked and shaking with barely contained fury, staring up at her building.

Do not make me come in there before I am ready.

I force myself to turn around, every muscle in my body screaming to charge inside and end this now. Instead I climb back into the car, drenched, chest heaving, fists bloody where my nails have dug deep into my palms.

She lets him keep going. Lets his fingers push harder against her. Lets him kiss her neck. The neck I have dreamed about every single night.

A single tear mixes with the rain still dripping down my face as I drop back into the driver’s seat.

I rub my finger across my cheek and stare at the wetness. I do not cry. I never cry. Not in prison. Not when they took her from me. Not once in all those rotting years behind bars. But this, watching another man put his hands on her, rips something wide open inside my chest.

“No!” The word tears out of me raw and broken. “No! No! No!”

I slam my fists into the steering wheel again and again. The horn blares once before I rip my hands away.

“Why are you doing this, Briar?” I growl at the screen, my voice cracking. “Why are you letting him touch you? You are mine! You have been mine since the first second I saw you. That sweet hair, those scared blue eyes, that untouched skin, all of it was waiting for me. Not him! Never him!”

I slam the laptop shut. The feeds die.

The silence inside the car is worse. Rain hammers the roof so hard it drowns out everything else. My chest heaves. Blood roars in my ears.

He will die for this. Slowly. Creatively.

And Briar… my beautiful, ruined Briar… she will learn exactly who she belongs to. I will strip every trace of that man’s hands off her skin. I will burn the memory of him out of her body until the only name she can moan is mine.