Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Melody’s scream didn’t wake him. Not like Victor had been able to sleep. When a ghost walked through the front door, you didn’t sleep. Especially when that ghost was your fiancée. You grab tightly to her. You didn’t let her go again.
But he wasn’t holding her. He’d left her room.
After she’d dropped the bombshell that she didn’t know him—or herself—he’d left because he had work to do.
People to call. People like Memphis. But the fast and furious chat with Memphis had only been the first of many phone conversations because he’d had a whole lot of plans to put into motion.
And she’d looked exhausted. He hadn’t wanted to push her, not yet. Even though he had so many questions.
How did you get to the estate? Where have you been? Who the fuck cut your stomach open?
But she was suddenly screaming, not sleeping, and he rushed into her room. He’d long since picked the lock. Not like he wanted to be away from her. And maybe he’d even opened the door after she went to sleep. The better to check on her. To make sure she hadn’t disappeared on him again.
She was in bed. Thrashing against the covers. And her mouth opened as she prepared to scream again.
“Melody!” He ran to her side. His hand flew out. Covered her lips before another scream could pierce the night and bring the others running to her room.
Her eyes opened. She grabbed at him. Her nails raked his skin, and he realized that, oh, hell, yes, he’d made the wrong move. He’d scared her even more. Shit. “Baby, it’s okay. It’s me.”
Instead of comforting her, that revelation just made her draw back her fist and aim it right at his face. He took the hit on the cheek. Not a slap. A punch.
Damn. He moved his hand. “You’re safe.” Fast words. “You’re with me. You’re safe.”
She sat up in bed. The first thing he noticed? She was still wearing his shirt. The second thing? Her breath shuddered in and out. Her hand flew out and hit the lamp next to the bed. Illumination immediately flooded the room.
Terror was clear to see on her beautiful features.
“Bad dream?” Victor asked softly.
Her delicate shoulders shuddered. His shirt swallowed her. She hunched in on herself, as if waiting for a blow to come.
Fury coiled within him. Maybe it hadn’t been a nightmare. “Bad…memory?” he guessed.
Her head whipped up. Tears gleamed in her eyes as she stared straight at him.
“What in the hell happened to you, baby?” He wanted to destroy someone for her.
Her lips parted.
A heavy fist thudded into the door. “Some of us are trying to get some freaking sleep!” Dario blasted.
She flinched.
“Don’t move,” Victor ordered her. He spun away from the bed and marched for her guest room door. Without a single hesitation—and maybe with utter deliberation, too, because the rules would be different this time—Victor yanked open that door.
Dario gaped at him. “What—” He blinked. “I…she was screaming?”
Yes, she had been. “And instead of checking on her, you decided to be an asshole and pound on her door?”
Dario closed his mouth. Then opened it again. Then he leaned to the side as he tried to look around Victor.
Because he knew exactly what Dario would see—a rumpled Melody, wearing his shirt—Victor let him look.
“What is going on here?” Dario asked, voice lower.
“Melody had a bad dream. Don’t worry.” Victor didn’t think the prick had been worried, even for a second. “I’ve got her.” He made sure the possessiveness in his voice was evident.
Dario rocked back a step. Suspicion clouded his pale, blue eyes. “Just what game are you running, man?”
The game where he would win. “Thanks for your concern. So nice that her brother came to look out for her.”
Dario swallowed. “Thought we were getting a DNA test before we all believed she was Melody. A woman flashes one tiny scar at you, and suddenly, you’re all in?”
When it came to Melody, he was always all in.
But he heard the rustle of the bedding behind him. Seriously, one order. He’d given one simple order to her. He’d told Melody to just stay where she was. And, yet, he could hear her padding toward him. Dammit.
“I’m taking the DNA test.” Melody’s voice. No longer fearful. Determined.
She edged to Victor’s side.
Dario gave a low whistle.
She wore Victor’s shirt. Nothing else. At least, nothing that he could see. Or that Dario could see. Her long legs were bare.
Victor thought he could also spy her nipples poking against the front of the shirt. She’d ditched her bra.
Did she have on panties? “Fuck,” he breathed. He might just have to beat the shit out of Dario that night, after all. Because if the prick kept gaping at her…
“If the DNA test doesn’t prove that I’m Melody Mage, I’ll get out of your life.” She nodded. “That’s a promise.”
Dario’s gaze swept between them. Then dropped. Lingered a bit too long on Melody’s legs.
Screw this. “Get your ass out of here, Dario.” And with that, he slammed the door in her stepbrother’s face. Locked it, too. Then he turned back, with his arms crossed over his chest.
Melody stared up at him. Beautiful. Tempting. With tears still clinging to her long eyelashes.
Once again, he wanted to destroy. To completely wreck whatever—whoever—had hurt her. But tears clung to her lashes, fear lingered like a perfume around her, and…Victor hauled her into his arms. “You’re safe.” Gruff.
She stiffened within his grasp.
Right. She didn’t know him. Didn’t remember a damn thing. As far as she was concerned, a stranger was hugging her.
He squeezed a little tighter. “You’re safe,” he repeated.
He felt her draw in a shuddering breath.
Slowly, he let her go. A hard task when all he wanted was to keep her close.
“Were you just trying to comfort me?” she asked as her head tilted to the side.
He had been. “Doesn’t happen often.” Actually, it pretty much happened never. As a rule, he didn’t have close emotional attachments. There had never been room for those attachments in his life. Not with all the plans he’d long since had in place.
Melody was the exception to that rule. She was an attachment that he had never, ever been able to shake.
“Guess I’m special?” she mused even as she swiped away a tear from her cheek.
Oh, baby, you have no idea. Instead of saying that, he decided to get to the point. No more bullshitting allowed. “Where the hell were you?” For so many months.
“Why does it matter?” A shrug of one shoulder as she turned away from him. “Not like you looked for me. Not like anyone looked. I don’t believe the story before about your PIs. You were just telling me what you thought I wanted to hear.”
What? His hand flew out, curled around her shoulder and, at his touch, she spun to face him. The tears were still there, but, now, anger gleamed in her gaze, too. A bright rage shined in the green eyes that had haunted him for so long.
Like he hadn’t woken up from plenty of his own nightmares over the last year. Nightmares where he woke up and he reached for her, but she wasn’t there.
Nightmares where he heard her crying out for him. Begging for him. But he couldn’t help her. He couldn’t find her.
“I looked,” he told her grimly. “I called the cops. I truly hired five different PI groups. You want to see the receipts for the fortune I paid them?” Money that had turned up nothing.
“I freaking ripped the state apart. Ripped the world apart.” There had been so many false leads that had wasted his time.
“There was a video discovered of you getting on a private plane, one bound for Mexico.”
Her brows rose. “Mexico?”
“Seemed like you left willingly.” The cops had finally turned up that bit of video evidence.
“Looked like you ran away. Left me behind.” His back teeth had clenched.
“I didn’t buy that bullshit. I kept digging and digging.
Found out that wasn’t you going to Mexico.
Just some weird-ass fake trail. Lost too much time searching for you there.
Your phone was never recovered. It turned off after your father and I received those final texts from you. ”
She blinked quickly. “What texts?”
“The texts you sent.” Except…I don’t think they were from Melody. I think they were from the sonofabitch who took my Melody from me.
“Tell me what the texts said.”
He already had told her what his said. Don’t look for me. “Tell me what the fuck happened to you.” There. Done. “Tell me everything,” he demanded. “Because I damn well deserve to know.”
Her lower lip trembled. “What were you to me?”
“Enemy,” he said flatly.
She jerked.
“Lover,” he said, softer.
She backed up a step.
“Which one do you think I was?” he asked.
She ran a shaking hand through her hair, shoving it back, and when she did…
He caught her wrist.
She stilled. “I think you might have been both.”
He hauled her closer. Let go of her wrist. With one hand, he carefully tilted her head to the side. With the other, he brushed back the hair near her left temple. A faint line, twisted, unsteady, slid from her temple and disappeared into her dark hair.
Another scar. One that she hadn’t possessed a year ago.
“There was swelling in my brain.” Her voice was soft. Emotionless. “A fracture to my skull. I had to be placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks.”
What. The. Hell. “Melody?” Victor’s gut clenched even as ice encased his skin.
“Not sure if the head injury was from the car accident—”
Car accident?