Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
He’d scared her.
He probably could have handled the scene in the kitchen differently. No need to just straight up drop the bombshell that she was his fiancée. Or, you know what?
Screw it. There was every single freaking need.
She’d been shot at by some bastard in the darkness.
Victor had just gotten her back, and someone had already wanted to take Melody away from him again.
Not happening. When they left the mansion—and they would be leaving ASAP, he’d already made arrangements to get her the hell out of there—she would be staying with him.
Staying as in living in his house. Staying under his careful watch.
Staying alive while he tried to figure out who the hell had taken her from him and why someone was still trying to kill her.
“I don’t want a DNA test.” Sebastian sat in his chair in the den. The lights of the Christmas tree gleamed beside him. His gaze was on the fire, not Victor.
“Pretty sure that’s gonna be necessary. Dario is already chomping at the bit for the test. And with the team of lawyers at Mage Industries—hell, you know that you can’t just accept her with no questions asked.
” Victor remained standing, his body tense.
He didn’t want to be in that room. He wanted to be with Melody.
She had gone back upstairs, supposedly to rest.
But the truth was that she’d practically run up those stairs after he dropped his engagement bombshell.
Yes, he really had more explaining to do.
Except he’d been summoned to the den for a meeting with Sebastian. Sebastian’s nurse had been the one to get him. Tracy Ryder had knocked on the kitchen door even as Melody had gaped up at him with a mixture of disbelief and shock on her face.
Clearly, Melody had a hard time believing she’d ever wanted to marry him.
Right, sweetheart, sometimes, I can’t believe you said yes, too. But she’d taken his ring. She’d said she loved him. The life he wanted had been right there, within his grasp.
Then some sonofabitch had snatched that life away. Had snatched Melody away.
You will pay.
The nurse’s interruption had given Melody time to flee, and Victor had headed in to face off with Sebastian.
Tracy Ryder, private nurse. A nurse practitioner.
Age thirty-eight. Divorced. She’d been a live-in caregiver for Sebastian since March.
“He’s having another good day,” she’d informed Victor, with a curious glance toward Melody as they stood in the farmhouse-style kitchen, “and he’s asking to speak with you, Victor.
” A delicate clearing of her throat. “Says it is urgent.”
Like there weren’t plenty of urgent issues facing them all.
So now Victor stood in the den, when he wanted to be upstairs. No, correction, he wanted to be a million miles away from that place. Curled up with Melody. Holding her tight. Telling the rest of the world to fuck off.
When you got a second chance, you did not screw it up. You fought like hell for it.
Sebastian huffed and shifted uncomfortably in his leather chair. “A DNA test is a waste of time. Why can’t I just accept her? You have.”
Yes, he had. But then again, he knew every inch of her body. Every birthmark. Knew every mole and freckle because Melody was his obsession. But he cleared his throat and replied, “Legally, we’ll need more to convince the others.”
“Then we’ll run a fingerprint check. Get her prints. Get one of your FBI buddies to run a match. See what the hell turns up. A fingerprint check will be faster, won’t it? Faster than DNA, I mean.”
Probably, if it could be a simple matter of matching prints. It wouldn’t be, though. Because of one obvious problem. “Her prints aren’t in any database.” They didn’t have a point of comparison.
“Oh, I have prints.” Sebastian narrowed his eyes.
“When she was sixteen, Melody was dating that troublemaker, Brant McKee. Asshole had been raised with a silver spoon shoved down his throat, but he thought he was some kind of badass. Picked Melody up one night in a car he’d stolen.
Didn’t tell her that fact, though. Fool just got off on riding around town with her in the front seat with him.
They were both busted. Taken in by the sheriff. Fingerprinted.”
This story was news to him, and Tracy had been right. Sebastian was definitely having one of his good days. His mind seemed razor sharp. “Let me guess. You made the charges vanish.”
Sebastian grunted. “McKee’s father did. Then he sent the dumbass boy to military school. Served him right.” An exhale. “The sheriff at the time was a total prick, though. He never uploaded her prints anywhere, but he kept the file on her. Even blackmailed me a time or two.”
Uh, come again?
“Had to pay him twenty grand, but the details never went public. In fact, her prints—and that old file—are in the safe in my study.” He waved vaguely. “You know the combination.” Bitterness came and went in his eyes. “You know everything, don’t you?”
“Apparently not. I wasn’t aware of Melody’s brush with the law.” He also didn’t understand why Sebastian hadn’t just destroyed the file long ago. Especially if it was an original and he was worried about Melody’s past sins coming back to haunt him.
Sebastian’s jaw hardened. “You think you’re gonna take her away from me.”
I think I’m gonna take her away from anyone who wants to hurt her. And some days, on Sebastian’s not so good days, the older man would rage about Melody. About how she was just like her mother. About how…
He would make them both pay.
Except Melody’s mother was long dead. The dead couldn’t pay any price. That pain was purely for the living.
“Open the safe,” Sebastian directed. “Get the file. Take her and the old file to your FBI buddies and get them to compare prints. If it’s a match, we don’t need any DNA test. The truth will already be proven.”
Victor considered the matter. “We can do both, you know. Fingerprints and DNA.”
“No DNA test.”
This was interesting. Sebastian was certainly adamant. “Why are you so against the DNA test?”
Sebastian swallowed. “There was always a chance…that she wasn’t mine.”
Fuck.
“The fingerprints will tell us.” Sebastian nodded. “The fingerprints are all we need to know if she’s Melody.”
Sebastian had just been damn honest with him. Time for Victor to be honest, too. “You were right before.” Flat. “I’m taking her away today.”
“Why the hell would you do that? Even if it turned out that she didn’t have my blood, Melody is my daughter. She was always my daughter.” Sebastian lunged from his chair, only to immediately falter. Before he could fall down, Victor was there. He lowered the older man back into the seat.
“I’m taking her away because someone wants to hurt her. I’m not letting that happen.” Victor stared into Sebastian’s eyes. “No matter what I have to do, it won’t happen.”
“I want to talk to her.” A shuddering breath. “Now while I’m…me.”
Victor nodded. “I’ll go get her.” He swung away.
Only to have Sebastian’s hand fly out and curl around his wrist. Sebastian’s grip was surprisingly strong. “It is Melody.”
Victor looked at the fingers holding his wrist. “I think it’s her, yes.”
“She came home?” Hope. Unmistakable.
The same wild, stubborn hope that Victor had held onto for the last year. “She came home.”
Fiancée. Fiancée. Fiancée. She was supposed to be Victor’s fiancée? For the last year, when she’d thought that she was utterly and completely alone, Victor had been out there…a man she was going to marry?
Nerves had her practically bouncing in the room. The guest room. She’d fled back up there as quickly as she could. To clear her head. To think. And now—
A knock on the door. Her head whipped toward the door. Not the connecting door. The door that led to the hallway. She hurried toward it, yanked it open, and blurted, “Are we really—” Getting married?
But those words didn’t come out. Because Victor wasn’t standing on the threshold of her guest room. A woman was. The one who stuck so closely to Dario’s side. Long blond hair. Gleaming, pale green eyes.
“Hi, Melody,” she said. She quirked a brow. “What? Seriously? No warm greeting at all for your best friend in the entire world?”
Olivia Hatcher was supposed to be Melody’s best friend.
She’d picked that up from searching through images on social media.
And now she believed that Olivia was sleeping with Dario.
Considering they were constantly touching one another when they were together, they certainly seemed to be heavily involved.
How long had that relationship been going on?
“Uh, hello?” Olivia prompted when Melody just stared at her.
“I get that it’s been a big twenty-four hours but, hey, how about a hug, at least?
Didn’t get one last night, what with your dramatic return home and all of that.
” Olivia pulled Melody into a big hug. Squeezed her tightly.
“I swear, you ever pull this shit again, and I will kill you.”
Melody stiffened.
Olivia eased back. Grimaced. “Probably shouldn’t have said that, what with the shooting and all, right? Terrible taste. But, it is me.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“Are you gonna invite me in? Or do I just get to stand in the doorway forever?”
Melody backed up. “Come in.”
“Gee, thanks. Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.” Olivia crossed the threshold. She paused to shut the door, then asked, “Are you still pissed at me?”
Melody had no idea. She crossed her arms over her shoulders.
“Figured you were, and that was why you didn’t tell me that you were splitting town.” Olivia wore designer jeans. A soft, gray sweater. Probably cashmere. The other woman adored cashmere.
Wait, how do I know that?
Excitement hummed in Melody’s blood.