PART1

My Wife’s Boyfriend Beat Me With A Bat 23 Times — I Called My Cousin

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Royce Monroe built his life without shortcuts. Thirty‑four years old, three active sites, forty‑seven men on payroll, and a bankrupt father’s company turned into a million‑dollar operation. He read blueprints like weather maps and could smell when a slab needed another day of cure. His hands were his résumé—callus over callus, a thin white scar from a mis‑thrown sledge when he was sixteen.

His wife, Marjorie, didn’t love that truth anymore.

“Always covered in dust,” she’d said that morning, nose wrinkled as he kissed her. “Maybe hire people to do the actual labor.”

Royce laughed it off. Six years married—high‑school promises hammered into rings. She used to talk about the little Craftsman they’d restore, summers at Canyon Lake, kids with his stubborn chin and her movie‑star smile. Lately it was designer bags and the phrase you work too much.

At four o’clock—three hours ahead of schedule—Royce rolled into his driveway off Walnut Hill. The Henderson crew hit their marks, punch list down to two items, city inspector happy for once. He’d booked a table at Il Forno on McKinney and practiced the surprise speech in his head.

The garage door climbed, groaning.

That’s when he saw it: a silver Mustang in his spot. Not hers. Not his. The kind with a vanity plate bracket and a monthly payment.

He cut the engine and sat still. Inside: bass thumping, a laugh he didn’t recognize, glass against glass. He ran the innocent list—neighbor, repair tech—but Royce hadn’t grown a business by ignoring alarms.

He moved soft to the kitchen door and peered through the small window. Marjorie was in the pearl‑gray silk robe he’d given her last anniversary. She laughed, head thrown back. A man in designer jeans pulled her in like he lived there. His watch flashed when his hands went where only a husband’s belong.

Royce’s vision heated until the edges jittered.

He pushed through the door. “What is this?”

She jerked around. Shock. Fear. Then a look working men know too well—irritation, like he’d tracked mud on a white rug.

“You weren’t supposed to be home,” she said.

The man smirked, stretch‑cat casual. “Dante,” he said. “What Marjorie actually wants. A real man. Not some blue‑collar grease monkey.”

“Get out of my house,” Royce said.

“Your house?” Dante’s laugh slid sideways. “She owns half.”

“Dante, shut up,” Marjorie snapped. Too late. The math finished itself in Royce’s head: her new questions about ledgers, the life‑insurance talk, pressure to add her to accounts, a sudden interest in the company truck titles.

“How long?” he asked, voice flat.

“Eight months,” Dante said, grinning. “Two weeks after your last anniversary. She was bored.”

Something heavy shifted inside Royce’s chest. He stepped forward. Not toward her. Toward the man bragging in his living room.

Marjorie’s voice went winter‑cold. “Dante. Get the bat.”

For a heartbeat the words were just sounds. Then the closet door opened and Dante lifted Royce’s own aluminum Louisville Slugger, the high‑school sticker still flaking near the grip.

“Wait,” Royce said, backing up, palms open. “Marjorie—what are you doing?”

She raised her phone; the tiny red light blinked. “Insurance,” she murmured. “You’ll attack, he’ll defend, and I’ll be the traumatized widow who gets everything.”

Dante swung.

The first hit took shoulder and breath. The second cracked something that hummed all the way to his teeth. After five, counting turned useless. They dragged him toward the garage—away from carpets and consequences—while the phone watched with its unblinking eye.

“Make it real, but don’t—” Marjorie stopped herself, eyes flicking to the screen. “He’ll grab a weapon. You struggle. A gun goes off. Tragic accident.”

Upstairs, a shower answered like a timer.

PART 2

Four months earlier, the clues piled up while Royce lived at Riverside. Twelve‑million‑dollar job, six weeks of rain squeezes, a concrete plant behind on aggregate, and a city inspector who quoted code like scripture. Seventy‑hour weeks made cots sound like mattresses. He’d come home after midnight, boots off in the laundry room, tiptoe past a sleeping wife.

Reality wore perfume and a day‑rate membership card. Marjorie met Dante at an upscale North Dallas gym—dues higher than a car payment and eucalyptus in the locker room. Dante trained bored spouses. He had the smile of a man who practiced it and a Mustang no bank would call responsible.

“Your husband doesn’t appreciate you,” he said after session three, hands lingering on a paid‑for waist. “A woman like you deserves time.”

She drank it like sugar water. Hotels by week three. Drafted fantasies by month three.

“He has a two‑million‑dollar policy,” she said one night, sheets wrinkled like guilt. “The business is worth at least three. If something happened…”

“That’s a lot,” Dante said. “What kind of ‘something’?”

They googled careful: accidents invite questions, disappearances leave trails. But a fight—caught on video—can be called self‑defense. A story can be aimed if you hold the camera.

Back in the garage, the story they wrote collided with the life Royce built. Aluminum on bone. Breath in chips.

They left him by the truck, confident. The upstairs shower came on; voices thudded through ceiling joists. They always thought they had time.

Royce heard his father: Pain is a storm. Hold the beam and ride it out. He slid inch by inch, fingers slipping, until he hooked his phone from under the workbench.

One number mattered—the burner text from two weeks back: still breathing, primo. you?

He called.

One ring. Two. Three.

“Primo,” a cautious voice said. “That you, cousin?”

“Home,” Royce whispered. “Wife. Boyfriend. Bat. Twenty‑three. They’re coming back.”

A pause turned into ice. “You still breathing?”

“Barely.”

“Stay breathing. Forty minutes. I’m bringing Mike. Don’t call anyone else. Family business now.”

The line cut.

Footsteps above—two minutes, maybe. Royce scanned the garage with builder’s eyes. Options: an air hose, a pry bar, a coil of chain, a loaded framing nailer.

He gripped the nailer with his good hand and slid behind the truck, breath counting itself, world shrinking to edges and angles.

The door opened. Their shadows stretched across stained concrete.

“Time to finish this,” Dante said, a voice already writing its victory.

“Remember—he attacked first,” Marjorie said, steady enough to pass for calm. “The video shows aggressive.”

Royce rolled and fired. A nail punched denim and thigh; Dante’s shout kicked dust up from the floor. A second nail clipped shoulder and spun him sideways. A handgun clattered—Royce’s, from his safe.

Marjorie fired three times, wild, the rounds ringing off steel. Royce counted: six‑round cylinder, half gone.

He was boxed in. Kitchen door blocked by Dante’s limp, pride still bigger than pain.

Then tires on gravel. A door slammed. Bootsteps. Two voices—one he knew before memory.

Royce exhaled.

PART 3

The garage door didn’t open; it became air. Octavio Lester moved like a verdict—five‑ten, lean, a plain black T‑shirt that made his hands look inevitable. Mike Chavez followed, six‑four and quiet as concrete.

Marjorie turned the gun; Octavio was already there. Wrist twist, metal clatter, calm breath. Mike folded Dante into a professional hold in three seconds.

“Royce,” Octavio said, eyes finding family. “Still with me?”

“I stayed alive,” Royce said, each word a nail he meant to keep.

“That you did, Primo.”

“Mike, secure them,” Octavio added. Zip ties sang. Two chairs scraped.

“You need a hospital,” Octavio said, dropping to a knee, hands moving with practiced economy.

“No hospitals. Not yet,” Royce said. “I need to see this through.”

Octavio studied his face and nodded once. “Med kit.”

Marjorie found her voice. “You can’t do this. We’ll call the police.”

“Call them about what?” Octavio asked, mild as paperwork. “The staged video? The part where you planned a false story?” He slipped her phone into his pocket. “We’ll safeguard the evidence.”

Dante tried swagger. “People will come looking.”

“You have clients,” Octavio said. “They buy hours. They don’t buy loyalty.”

Mike returned with a field kit. Dressings, splints, an ice pack that hissed when it cracked. Controlled care, nothing reckless, until a licensed doctor could take over.

They moved downstairs to the seventies‑era workshop—concrete walls, one small window curtained, sound‑damp panels Royce had installed along the joists. Mike set two chairs under camera light that made everything honest.

“Please,” Marjorie whispered. “We’re sorry. We’ll leave. You’ll never see us again.”

“You tried to take my cousin’s life,” Octavio said, conversational as a clerk. “Twenty‑three swings. A false ‘self‑defense’ narrative. We’re going to put the truth on record.”

He sat backward on a chair. “Answer, and answer straight. If you lie, we stop and try again. Understand?”

Tears. Names of gyms and hotels. Notes about policy numbers. A timeline that made itself. An hour later they had it—on camera, calm voice, no raised volume.

“Thank you,” Octavio said, checking playback. “Very helpful.”

Dante swallowed. “What happens to us?”

Octavio looked to Royce.

“I want accountability,” Royce said. “Truth preserved. And them gone from my life.”

“Then we keep it by the book,” Octavio said. “Our book—clean, careful, documented.”

A quiet sixty‑something arrived with a black medical bag—Dr. Russell Duncan, licensed, discreet, the kind of physician who’d done triage in oil fields and stadium tunnels. He examined Royce in the bedroom while the camera downstairs cooled under its own heat.

“Three broken ribs, fractures in the left forearm, concussion, extensive soft‑tissue damage,” Russell said. “You should be at a hospital.”

“Can you treat me here until it’s safe?”

“Yes,” Russell said. “You’ll need weeks of recovery. But we can stabilize and set.”

“Do it.”

They converted the bedroom into a clean treatment space. While Russell prepped, Mike showed Octavio driveway‑camera footage from a neighbor—lawfully shared—time‑stamping Dante’s arrival and Royce’s return. The timeline spoke without adjectives.

“We’re clean,” Octavio told Royce quietly. “Record’s clear. After tonight, their trail leads away from you.”

“Four hours,” Russell said, easing anesthesia in. “Maybe five.”

“Don’t make any final calls while I’m under,” Royce told Octavio. “I decide the parts that touch my life.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Octavio said.

The ceiling light blurred, narrowed, went out.

PART 4

Royce woke at three a.m. Arm casted, ribs wrapped, pain leveled to something he could look in the eye. The house held its breath.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“You’ll heal,” Octavio said. “Six weeks ribs. Three months arm. PT after.”

“And downstairs?”

“Progress,” Octavio said. “Full confessions recorded. We found a side account—funds shifted from your business in small bites. We’ll return what’s yours with paper, not threats.”

“What’s next?”

“Finalize tomorrow,” Octavio said. “Then they leave this city and this life.”

By noon, Royce could walk with help. Russell left meds and instructions and promised to return in three days.

Downstairs, Marjorie and Dante looked wrung out. Not for spectacle—just people out of lies. Octavio rolled the camera again.

“Clear statements, one more time,” he said. “Then signatures.”

“What signatures?” Marjorie whispered.

“Divorce,” Octavio said. “Financial transfers returning misdirected funds. A non‑contact agreement. A sworn admission that the staged video was fabricated. You sign freely, on camera. No pressure—only choices.”

“And if we don’t?” Dante asked.

“Then we deliver everything to the authorities,” Octavio said. “Either way, we’re done.”

They signed. Each page bore a video timestamp and a calm statement of consent. No theatrics. Just ink and light.

Then Octavio laid out the rest, precise as a survey: “You’re leaving Dallas. No messages. No returns. If you contact Royce, the confession goes to law enforcement. If you try anything else, same.”

Dante stared at the floor. Marjorie stared at her hands. The camera captured the small sounds—the turn of paper, a pen clicking shut, someone swallowing hard.

That evening, before they were taken far from Texas to start over quietly, Octavio brought Marjorie to Royce one last time.

“Look at him,” Octavio said.

She looked. Bandaged. Steady. Breathing like a metronome.

“I loved you,” Royce said. “I would’ve given you anything.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “You’re sorry you got caught. Different thing.”

“You’ll wake every day and remember this. You chose greed over love and left with nothing but a name you can’t use. I’ll build the life we were supposed to have—without you.”

Tears tracked down her face.

“Take her,” Royce said. “I’m done looking at her.”

A car slipped into the night. No spectacle. Just an ending.

Octavio and Royce sat with two small whiskeys, careful with meds and pain.

“How do you feel?” Octavio asked.

“Empty,” Royce said.

“That passes,” Octavio said. “Maybe not today. But it will.”

PART 5

Two weeks later, the Dallas house hit the market. Cash buyer in four days—a man who liked the workshop and never asked why the floor felt newly scrubbed. The closing took forty minutes. The silence after took longer.

Six months later, Royce stood in a new office on 17th Street in downtown Denver, glass catching the Rockies like a postcard. He’d moved the company, rebranded as Monroe Commercial, and opened a second crew within ninety days. The forty‑seven who followed him didn’t ask for speeches; they shook hands, set levels, and made the new name mean something.

The bones knit. The scars turned to lines he didn’t hide. Octavio stopped by on Fridays for lunch—smoked turkey from a food truck on Blake Street, paperwork swapped between bites. They talked mountains, subcontractors, health insurance. Not the basement.

Royce dated carefully—coffee first, daylight, no grand promises. Trust is a beam you test before you hang weight.

A text from Mike blinked one afternoon: Package delivered. usual spot. It was a routine update from a licensed investigator—Marjorie working a normal job in Portland, Oregon, living under a different name, quiet and alone. No contact. No drama. That was enough.

Dante’s relatives filed a missing‑person report back in Texas. The loose talk settled into a theory: he’d left the country. The case cooled. Royce didn’t celebrate; he poured footings and signed checks.

His father used to say construction is foundations—ground that carries weight. Royce understood now. He tore down the old foundation—the marriage, the house, the story—and poured something stronger: himself.

One morning in late fall, a bank vice president tried to push predatory terms across the table on a construction line—adjustable rates hidden behind smiles. Royce slid the paper back.

“Not today,” he said. “Not ever.”

He walked out and found a regional credit union that still believed in relationships and job photos. The rate was better. The handshake meant something. He built a lobby that brought the smell of cut pine inside so people remembered wood comes from trees and promises come from people.

His crew put up a four‑story mixed‑use near Union Station. He walked the site at dawn, steam lifting from coffee, the city pinking behind cranes. The superintendent, Luis, pointed to a bow in the second‑floor corridor. Royce squinted, ran a palm along gypsum like he could feel tomorrow through paint.

“Float it again,” he said. “Proud edges make unhappy tenants.”

Luis grinned. “Thought you’d say that.”

They laughed. Work is a language, and he spoke it again.

PART 6

Winter laid white along the Front Range. Octavio came by with a folder, closed it on the desk, and sat without drama.

“What’s that?” Royce asked.

“Escrow documents,” Octavio said. “Your attorney holds the confession video and the signed statements. If certain lines are ever crossed, it routes automatically to the proper places. Until then, it sleeps.”

“Good,” Royce said. The word felt like a beam seated on bearings.

“Doctor Russell wants you to keep lifting light for another month,” Octavio added, a smile in his voice. “Try not to arm‑wrestle incoming steel.”

Royce flexed a hand. “No promises.”

They ate barbecue from a paper boat and watched wind push a flag above the courthouse across the street. Octavio tapped the window with a knuckle.

“You’re doing it,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Living. Not waiting for the past to hit you again.”

Royce considered the skyline—the cranes and the mountain line and the way the sun skated on winter glass. “I’m building,” he said. “Same thing.”

An invitation arrived in January—Denver Builders Association wanted him to speak on “Resilience in Small‑to‑Mid Construction Firms.” He wrote three bullet points on a yellow pad: hire character, teach skill; paperwork is protection; foundations carry more than buildings. He stood on a stage and told the truth without blood or names. The room understood anyway.

After, a young project engineer with oil‑black hair and a California accent asked for advice. She reminded him of ambition before scars.

“Keep your receipts,” he said. “On paper and in your life.”

At night he slept through until morning. Some nights he woke to a shadow that was only a coat on a chair. He learned the shape of quiet and let it sit with him like an old friend who doesn’t need conversation.

On a wet March afternoon, Mike texted a grainy photo of a small Portland apartment door. A woman with dyed hair carried a bag of groceries inside. The caption read: low profile, clockwork routine, zero contact. Royce stared for a count of ten and deleted it. He didn’t need the past to be a movie. He needed it to stay in a file drawer labeled finished.

Spring framed the mountains in new green. The Henderson team—now a Denver team—came into the conference room for a kickoff. Royce rolled drawings across the table. His assistant, Charmaine, set out whiteboard markers and a bowl of oranges like she was feeding a little league team.

“Let’s get to work,” he said.

They traced routes for plumbing stacks, argued about where the dumpster should live, drew arrows that made sense to exactly twelve people in the world. Outside, evening pulled long gold across the Platte. Inside, ink lines became decisions became schedules became walls.

When the room cleared, Royce stood at the window and let the city take another breath with him. He remembered the garage, the bat, the floor vibrations of footsteps from above. He remembered a cousin’s voice saying stay breathing. He remembered signing a deed to himself.

His phone buzzed—a calendar reminder: call Mom’s friend about the church roof in Dallas. He hit dial.

“Royce?” she answered, surprised. “I heard you moved.”

“I did. But I keep my promises,” he said. “Let’s talk flashing and gutters.”

He took notes, asked for photos, promised a call to a roofing sub he trusted in Texas. When he hung up, the room felt like a place something good might live for a long time.

On his desk, between a level and a steel ruler, sat a Polaroid from years back: his dad in a sun‑bleached cap grinning beside a wall they’d framed together. The caption on the bottom edge—his father’s hand in blue marker—read: Foundations first.

Royce slid the photo into his wallet.

Outside, the Denver sky went orange over the Rockies. Somewhere in Oregon, a woman under another name slept the light sleep of someone afraid of a knock on the door that would never come if she kept her word. In Colorado, under honest light and a new name on the office glass, Royce switched off the lamp and locked up.

The game was over. He’d won—by living well, building better, and never looking back. And tomorrow, like always, he’d show up in boots, measure twice, and pour a foundation that could hold whatever came next.