Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
He should have been more tactful. One hundred percent. The shock and horror on Melody’s beautiful features showed him that truth. She’d just been dealing with the bombshell about Brant McKee. He should have been way more careful as he told her about his own past. It was just…
Victor had woken up, feeling as if he was running out of time. He’d kept secrets from her before, and he’d hated doing that. As much as he could, he wanted to tell her the truth.
As long as I don’t lose her.
But the way she was staring at him right then…
“Yes,” she told him, voice firm, “I do have other questions. The main one would be why? You’re not some vicious predator. You don’t go around hurting people.”
“I can be quite vicious.” And he could not wait to hurt the bastard who’d abducted her. When he got his hands on that bastard, Victor would be incredibly vicious. He will die.
“Victor! Stop trying to scare me.” She shook her head, as if in confusion. “Why would you want to scare me? I told you, I love you. All of you.”
He wasn’t trying to scare her. Wait, was he? Was he afraid because she’d said she loved him and she— “You don’t know all of me.” Gruff.
“Yeah, shocker. Amnesia.” She rolled her eyes. “But I think I know that you’re not some sadistic killer. I’m holding the file about an asshole who broke my ribs. Pretty sure you’d cut off your own arm before you’d hurt me.”
Hell, yes, he would. And wasn’t that why he was clinging so tightly to one particular secret? A secret he feared might shatter her? Victor wanted to tell Melody as much as he could about himself, but he did not want to hurt her. Ever.
“So, who were you protecting?” Melody waved toward him with her left hand.
“Come on. Just spill it. You’re not a monster.
But I have noticed you tend to have some big, hyper protective tendencies.
” She bit her lower lip. “You know what? I think those tendencies might be what drew me to you in the first place.”
Now she’d surprised him. His eyebrows climbed.
She leaned toward him. “What happened with Colton Crane? I refuse to believe that you’re some horrible villain.”
“Not to you,” he rasped. “Never to you.”
She smiled back at him. Her dimple winked. “I know.”
She did, he realized. She knew, because she trusted him.
She’d trusted him a year ago when the detective had paid her that secretive visit.
She trusted him now. So he’d dig up the ghost from his past for her.
“Colton Crane was an asshole who got off on hurting people weaker than he was. We wound up in the same foster home. Baby…” An exhale.
“I bounced around those homes so many times. I was labeled as having oppositional defiance. I was flat-out called a troublemaker. No one wanted me. There was no permanent place for me.”
She put down the file on the seat next to her and reached for his hand. Her soft fingers curled over his. “I want you. Your place is with me.”
He knew that was exactly where he belonged.
With her. But he had to tell her the rest of the story.
“That home…the foster parents had a biological daughter who lived with them. Shannon. A sweet kid. Always smiling. Always warm and welcoming. She was the first person who’d really welcomed me anywhere.
And Colton…” Fuck, he didn’t like going back to that dark time.
But he would, for her. “Shannon was barely ten years old. The sonofabitch slipped into her room. I heard her crying, so I burst inside. He was—holding her down. Trying to hurt her. When I saw what he was attempting to do—” Victor stopped. “I beat the hell out of him.”
She nodded.
He spoke slowly, clearly, as he said, “I ripped him off her. I drove my fist into him again and again. His face, his stomach. Torso. He fell, and I was still going to attack again because she was crying, and she was just a damn kid. A sweet as hell kid. The only innocent, sweet person I’d ever met, and he was trying to destroy that innocence. So I wanted to destroy him.”
She stopped holding his hand. Instead, she threw her arms around him and wrapped him in a fierce hug. “Victor.”
“My foster parents came in. They’d heard all the screams. His screams. They pulled me off Colton.
Called the cops. The cops had already locked me up before Shannon managed to get everyone to listen to her.
To tell them what had happened.” He felt Melody’s lips press to his neck in a soft kiss.
He was telling her about one of his most violent times, and instead of being horrified, she held him.
His eyes squeezed shut. “I do not deserve you.”
She just held him harder. “What happened to the little girl?”
He opened his eyes. “Shannon grew up to become a nurse. She works in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She helps premature babies live. It’s perfect for her. She was always so loving and just good.”
“You kept track of her.”
He’d done more than that. He’d paid for her college. “She saved me from going to jail. I felt it was only right to look after her.”
She pulled back, and her solemn gaze studied him. “Define ‘look after’ for me, would you?”
Not like it was a big deal. “I set up a fund to pay for her college. I wanted to help sooner, but it took me a while to get established. For a long time there, I was dragging myself up. Fighting fucking hard for every crumb I got.”
“And what happened to Colton Crane?”
“He’s been in and out of jail most of his life. Currently, he’s serving a ten-year term for a gas station robbery. Prick pulled a gun on the attendant over four dollars and fifty-seven cents.”
The limo slowed once more. Victor glanced out of the window and saw that they were pulling into the parking garage. They’d made it to Mage Industries.
“How did you do it, Victor?” Melody asked him. “How did you go from the life you had then…to everything you have now?” She dipped her head to indicate the limo.
He’d fought. Every single day. “Shannon’s dad was grateful when he realized what could have happened to his daughter.
” Victor hadn’t wanted the man’s gratitude.
He’d just wanted Shannon safe. “I didn’t go back to that house.
Her parents didn’t want either me or Colton around Shannon, and I don’t blame them. ”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I nearly beat a man to death right in front of her. Not sure that falls into the right category.” An exhale.
The limo had stopped. “Her dad got me enrolled in a pilot program in a school the next town over. It was an engineering and science focused high school, only it was also a boarding school. The kids accepted into the program lived on campus. That’s where I wound up.
” Things had changed then. “A boarding school in Mobile, Alabama. I worked my ass off. I’d always been smart, when I fucking tried, anyway, and I was more motivated than I’d ever been in my life.
I’d almost gotten locked away. Almost saw everything end in one night.
I knew I had to change. And I did.” Short version of the story.
The long version? It had taken hours, years of work.
Sleepless nights. He’d gotten into college, but the scholarship he’d received hadn’t covered everything, so he’d worked two jobs around his classes.
He’d kept working his ass off, shifting his focus from engineering—which he’d always loved because once upon a time, he’d wanted to be an inventor—to business.
He’d eventually gotten his MBA. His law degree.
Practiced business law as he positioned himself in just the right way, at just the right time…
For Mage Industries. Because Mage had been the goal.
Until I met you, Melody.
“You’ve come a long way,” she murmured.
A long way from that sad kid who’d been waiting in a trailer park for a father who never came home.
The limo stopped. He heard the engine die. Jenner opened the driver’s door, and Victor knew the guy would be coming toward the back.
“Any other run-ins with the law you think I need to know about?” Melody asked.
He swallowed. She wasn’t fleeing from him.
Wasn’t staring at him as if he was, indeed, a monster.
She sat beside him. She’d hugged him. She was right there for him.
“No more run-ins with the law.” His shoulders rolled back.
The weight felt a bit lighter, but he still needed to tell her, “I swear, I will never hurt you.” Never.
“I know.”
Jenner opened the door.
Melody climbed from the limo, and her gaze swept the cavernous parking garage. Only a handful of cars occupied the spaces. The place felt light, actually. Open. Plenty of illumination.
The SUV that had trailed them parked nearby.
Calista turned off the vehicle and climbed out, with Luis exiting on the passenger side.
Victor had introduced her to the guards right before they’d all left his place that morning.
Melody knew she was safe, with Victor and Jenner and the two guards, but, standing in that parking garage, a shiver still skated down her spine.
She found herself looking toward the elevators. Two elevators were at the elevator bank. All the doors were shut. She had the random, sudden thought that they needed to open. The doors should open. He had to hurry up and appear. He was coming and—
“You always parked right over there.” Victor pointed to a space near a large, white column. The black coat he wore stretched with his movements, sliding over his broad shoulders. “When I came out that night, you were already gone.”
She walked toward the indicated spot. It was empty, so she stood in the middle of it. From that position, she had a perfect line of sight to the elevator. Her gaze kept wanting to go to the elevator doors.
Once more, she thought…The elevator should open. Fear pulsed. The doors would open, and he would help—
“I was supposed to follow right behind you.” Grim words from Victor. “But Dario stepped into my path and wanted to talk about the company. Or, more specifically, my plans for the company and where the hell he’d fit into them.”
So, Dario had been upstairs when she left. Victor had been upstairs. Her gaze shifted a bit to the left. “Were those security cameras always here?”
“Yes. The footage was reviewed after you vanished. You were seen entering your vehicle. Just you. You cranked it up, and you drove away.”
A shiver slid over her. “And my car was never found?”
“Never. I had an investigator tell me it was probably sold, chopped up, and sent out in pieces.”
At least I wasn’t chopped up in pieces. Except…her hand dropped to her stomach. Slid over the scar that rested beneath her sweater.
“The camera perched on the column gave us a clear view of your front seat,” Victor added. “It was just you in the car.”
“What about the backseat?” The question pulled from Melody as another shiver worked over her body. “Could you see that?” She forced her hand to drop back to her side.
Victor had followed her to the empty parking spot.
“No.” His lips thinned. “And I wondered about that. Was some bastard in the back of the car? Had he snuck in the vehicle? Was he waiting for you? Because you didn’t go home.
You were supposed to go home, but you never made it there. This is the last place you were seen.”
Calista advanced toward them. Her gaze was considering as she surveyed the scene.
“Probably would have been easy enough to avoid the cameras and slip into the back of her car. Perp would have just needed to stay low, beneath the line of sight.” She pointed to the closest camera.
“It wouldn’t pick up a ground image from here. ”
Behind her, Luis nodded. “The trick would have been getting into her car without setting off the vehicle’s alarm, but a good booster would know how to get inside, no problem.”
Benny Turner had been good at boosting cars. Benny Turner had been waiting behind the police station. He’d had the knife, and he’d slashed at her with it.
Melody’s scar seemed to burn on her stomach.
An elevator dinged. She jumped, and her gaze flew right back to the elevator bank. The doors of one elevator opened and—
Dario rushed out. Dario, followed by two uniformed security guards.
What in the world was Dario doing there?
Red mottled his face as he charged forward. “You sonofabitch!” he snarled at Victor. “I know what the hell you’ve done!”
The two uniformed security guards locked their hands on him and hauled Dario back before he could get within fifteen feet of Victor.
“You stole the company!” Dario yelled. Spittle flew from his mouth. “You took everything!”
“Sir?” One of the guards—his name tag ID’d him as Rodney West—fired a fast glance at Victor.
“He has his security pass, so he got upstairs, but then he broke into your office. We were gonna escort him back to his vehicle. Didn’t, ah, know if you wanted the police involved.
We were gonna call you first, once we had him off the premises, since it was a family matter. ”
“He’s not my family,” Victor said flatly.
Dario fought the hold of the guards even as Calista and Luis took up protective positions near Melody. Jenner inched closer to Victor, and Melody noticed that Jenner’s hand began to rise toward his waist.
Is Jenner carrying a weapon? She’d wager that he was.
“I talked to Amaya!” More spittle flew from Dario’s mouth. His hair shoved out at odd angles, as if he’d run his fingers through it. Or as if he’d been yanking at his hair. “I talked to her right before I came here! Demanded to see the fucking will!”
Amaya had the will? Well, she was the chief counsel for Mage Industries so…
“I know what Sebastian did, hear me?” Dario raged. “I know the man is a freaking killer!”
What?
“I told Amaya that I was taking over. Had to, what with him confessing to killing! I had to take it all. The estate, the cars, the bonds, all the accounts—only there is nothing, is there? Because you have it! You control it all!”
“Take him back upstairs,” Victor ordered, his voice as calm as you please. “Secure Dario in his office for now.”
The guards began to haul Dario back toward the elevator.
“Fuck that!” Dario yelled as he struggled. The struggles didn’t free him. “Fuck you!” Dario bellowed at Victor. Rage twisted his face. “You took it all, didn’t you? Took every single fucking thing!”
The guards had gotten him back in the elevator.
“Don’t trust him, Melody!” Dario shouted. “He conned every single one of us! He took what he wanted! And he’s left us with nothing—”
The elevator doors closed on him, muffling his fury.