Brice sat next to his high-priced lawyer, bored out of his mind and pissed off that the sheriff left without doing what Brice wanted. These people didn’t know anything. They didn’t get it. He resented them keeping him waiting in this small room that reeked of burnt coffee and other people’s desperation. The officers outside the inner wall of glass stared at him. Some with nervous smiles, overcome with their excitement at seeing a celebrity. He felt like an animal caged behind glass. His sense of freedom faded with every second that ticked by and they built their case against him for something they didn’t understand.

Ashley wanted to be with him. She wanted to be transformed.

“Brice, we need to come up with a better plan than accusing Ashley of kidnapping a child who doesn’t actually belong to you. The cops are going to ask about his mother, his father, other family members. Do you even know?”

“The boy doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I walk out of here.”

“That’s not going to happen. They want to charge you with kidnapping, multiple attempted rapes, assault, and attempted murder if they can get it because they think you starved that woman near to death over the last year,” Arthur W. Carroll III emphasized.

“Then it’s your job to convince them none of that happened. She’s a messed-up movie star with a self-image problem that manifested itself as an eating disorder. I tried to help her.”

Sergeant Foster walked in overhearing Brice’s last words. “You tried to help her?” He pinched one side of his mouth back in a derisive scoff. He pulled a photo out of the folder he carried and placed it on the table in front of Mr. Carroll. “Does that look like your client helped her in any way?”

Brice touched Ashley’s beautiful face.

Sergeant Foster pulled the picture away and held it up in front of Mr. Carroll, but addressed Brice. “You don’t even see her skeletal frame, the bruises you left all over her body, or the devastation in her eyes.”

“She’s a troubled woman.” Brice sat back in his chair, tired of trying to explain to everyone what he’d done for her. “I tried to love her enough to make her happy.”

“You love her,” Sergeant Foster spit out.

“Sergeant, my client and Miss Swan were friends, who became lovers.”

“Not according to Miss Swan. Mooney can’t get his tiny pecker up even for the so-called love of his life.”

Mr. Carroll interjected. “If that’s true, and that is her statement, then you see, he never raped her.”

“No, but the number of sexual assault charges alone stack up to a life in prison.” Sergeant Foster sneered. “He didn’t want to fuck her—he gets off on the pain he inflicts.” The sergeant leaned in close. “One hand on your dick, the other slamming a fist into her ribs.” He pulled another photo out of the folder and held it up.

Mr. Carroll gasped and fell back in his seat, his face turning green. He looked away from the red, purple, and blue splotches covering Ashley’s perfect body. Brice felt his manhood stir as he relived the last night they were together.

“Wipe that disgusting look off your face,” the sergeant ordered. “How can you look at that and get off on it?”

“You don’t understand the connection Ashley and I share.”

“Their relationship was tumultuous. Their lovemaking unconventional, but consensual.” Mr. Carroll tried to defend him again. That’s what Brice paid him to do, but Brice felt the reasonable doubt he’d built with his story slipping away.

“You think she wanted him to break eight of her ribs over the last year? That she liked it when he broke her arm because she stopped him from kicking a child? You think she got off on him hitting her so hard that he tore her muscles to shreds? Or that she liked it when he snapped her finger like a twig when she tried to get him off but he couldn’t get it up and blamed her?” He pulled another photo out. “Do you really think she liked being whipped with a riding crop until her thighs and back were striped like a tiger?”

“What we have here is nothing more than a domestic dispute.” Mr. Carroll tried to put things into perspective.

“He kept her locked in a windowless cell.”

“She had a beautiful room if she wanted it,” Brice pointed out.

His attorney grabbed his arm, a silent command to shut up. They didn’t get it.

Ashley needed the isolation to become that which he knew she could be. The person she wanted to be for him.

“She wanted to escape. And she finally did when you didn’t close the door all the way.”

Brice seethed. One mistake. She betrayed him. Now she wanted to see him behind bars after all he’d done for her.

“We have a warrant to search your house. Call it whatever you want, but we’ll find the evidence to prove you are the monster Miss Swan claims. Then, you’ll never see the light of day without looking through a set of bars or barbed wire. That’s more than you allowed her.”

Sergeant Foster turned to the commotion in the outer office, where two officers wrestled a drunk and belligerent man through the front door. The man slammed one officer into a desk, toppling a lamp and sending papers floating to the floor. The officer stumbled back. The one still holding the guy got a kick to the gut that sent him into a bank of filing cabinets.

“Stay put.” Sergeant Foster ran out the door, pulling it closed behind him, and ran to help the other officers wrangle the out-of-control man into submission.

Brice took this opening and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Mr. Carroll demanded.

Brice didn’t stop. With the officers intent on wrestling the drunk to the ground, he didn’t have much time to make his getaway.

Mr. Carroll tried to stop him. “You’ll only make things worse if you leave.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to earn the ungodly retainer I paid you.”

Brice left the sputtering attorney at his back and dashed around the corner and down the hallway that led to the restrooms and employee parking lot. The officers were all on their knees, subduing the drunk on the ground wrestling to get free. All the officers were inside, their attention diverted, as he walked out the side door while they were dealing with the man yelling that his wife was a cunt and he’d never laid a hand on her.

Brice didn’t think he’d get any further with that explanation than Brice had gotten trying to make them believe that what he’d done for Ashley had been her wish and her will. He’d do anything for her. And once he had her back, he’d finish what they started.