32. Kaden
Chapter thirty-two
Kaden
Pain.
Melody.
Pain.
Melody.
It’s as if my whole world has just erupted—taking the only person I ever cared about with it.
The horror on her face is something I can’t erase.
No matter how long I scream or sob, it keeps replaying in my mind.
It’s a horror film that won’t end, a nightmare that will follow me until I fucking die, and an emptiness that can never be filled.
She took the light with her.
I didn’t care about seeing colors before her, but now that I have, I know it’s only because of her.
She breathed life into me.
She was my everything.
Without her, what am I? A failed experiment, the child of a billionaire who now belongs to the underworld and nothing more.
I failed her.
My Melody.
“Are you just going to stay in the dirt?” Ivan asks coolly from behind me. “She left an hour ago.”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
I ruined her.
“Our fiercest enforcer was brought down by a woman,” Sergey chuckles. “We all have our weaknesses.”
No.
She wasn’t just a woman. She was Melody. My reason for fucking existing this long. My only hope of a better future where I wasn’t constantly shrouded by the demons that had been dragging me into hell since the very beginning. My whole fucking world.
Everything snaps back into focus, but the pain twists abruptly into rage, building impossibly high as I stand.
“He lives,” Sergey muses.
I turn to Ivan, my eyes wide and unseeing. “Why?”
My friend takes a slow drag of his cigarette before flicking it toward me. “She deserved to know, Kaden.”
I’m on him so fast he doesn’t have time to process. My hands curl into the lapels of his suit, yanking him so close that he can see the insanity leeching through me. “That wasn’t your call!”
His face remains firm and set, not an ounce of emotion as he sighs. “Don’t make them put you down before you’ve even started.”
I shove him away, stabbing my fingers into my chest. “She saw it, Ivan! I never wanted her to see—”
“What you are?“ He advances on me, puffing up his chest. “You can’t contain yourself anymore. Admit it, Kaden! She would have found out eventually—”
“Not like this!” I yell, running my hands through my hair. “Not like this…”
He straightens his suit jacket, sniffing. “We need to erase every shred of evidence. Get some men to Mr. Wilder’s estate.”
“On it,” Sergey says.
“If you hurt her—”
“I don’t need to hurt her, Kaden,” Ivan curls his lip. “You’ve done enough damage to last a lifetime. Let her go.”
The rest of the night moves like a blur, everyone steering clear of me. Even as I abandon my bike by the side of the road, I’m not in my own body.
“Light it up,” Saint says from beside me.
I flick the lighter on, the small flame dancing. There’s nothing left of Kaden Wilder. That night, I died with all of my possessions—with her.