Page 23 of Ice Cold Christmas
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?
“Or from the attack that came before that. The attack that left me bleeding and terrified in the snow. That was my nightmare tonight, by the way. I was back in the snow. Bleeding. So scared my whole body shook. And I ran and I was suddenly in front of the car and it hit me.” Her lips pressed together. “That’s all I could remember for so long, you see. Those terrible moments. For months, that’s all I could remember. Nothing before that. Just the snow. The blood in the snow. My terror. Trying to escape. Then having the car slam into me as I screamed. I screamed for someone—and I can never remember who I called out for, who I begged for help.”
A knife carved into his heart. Deeper and deeper with each word that she spoke.
“I kept thinking someone would come in my hospital room. Someone who was missing me. Someone who would know who I was. Someone who could identify me.” A shake of her head. Her hair covered her scar once more as his hand slid away. “But that didn’t happen. I left the hospital. I started over. And then…the flashes finally came. My doctors had told me that they might. As I healed, as time passed, the flashes could potentially start. Though they didn’t know how strong they’d be.”
“What flashes?” But he wanted to ask so much more. What hospital? Where were you? Who drove the car that hit you? Why were you bleeding in the snow? Who the hell can I kill for you?
“Flashes of my life before the snow and blood.” A nod. “Flashes of glittering parties. Of Dario, riding on a horse near me. A big, black horse. Of you, glaring at me across a boardroom.”
His hands fisted at his sides.
“Flashes of my father, marrying a much younger woman.”
Yeah, Sebastian had done that a few times.
“At first, you were all total strangers to me. Faces with no names.” A humorless laugh escaped her. “But then again, I was a woman with no name, too. Until I had more flashes. Flashes of this place. This life. People would look at me in the flashes—people I didn’t know—and they’d call me Melody. The name would echo in my mind. I began to put the pieces together. The memories came more frequently. I learned who the people were in those memories. Dario Mage. Sebastian Mage. You.” A swallow. “I realized I had a family. People who weren’t coming to claim me.” Her shoulders squared. “And I wanted to know why.”
“First, I will always fucking claim you.” Always. “Second, I have been searching the whole time.” He was still working to find out what had happened. His late-night call to Memphis Camden? It had been about updating the team on everything he knew so far. The Ice Breakers would find out how she’d gotten to the house. They would backtrack every step she’d taken to understand where she’d been. What had happened to her.
“I came here because I want to know who I am.” A slow exhale from Melody. “And I also came back because…”
He found himself leaning toward her. He had missed her so much. When Melody had vanished, she’d carved out his heart. Left a monster in place of the man that he’d been.
“I came back because I want to find out which one of you assholes tried to kill me. And I don’t care what hell I have to cause in this family, in this place, but I will do it.” Grim determination as she stood in his shirt, barefoot, with dry tear tracks on her cheeks. “I will rip your lives apart until I find out the truth. Someone tried to kill me. To leave me dead in the snow. And I will find out who that bastard is.”
She should have been dead. Dario Mage rushed back to his room. His hands were shaking with fury as he shoved open the door.
“Well?” Olivia sat in the middle of the bed, one of the delicate straps of her peach negligee falling down one soft shoulder. “What was all the screaming about?” She clutched a sheet to her chest.
“It was Melody.” She should have been dead. Out of the will. Out of his life. He’d been so certain she was gone. Never in a million years had he expected her to show up alive.
“Why was she screaming?” Olivia rocked forward. Her green eyes—a shade lighter than Melody’s—had widened.
“Fuck if I know. Bad dream, I think. Victor was with her.” That sonofabitch Victor. Talk about someone who was always in the way. That prick should not have control of the company. He was a nobody. He’d come from nothing.
Now Victor had everything.
“Victor was with her?” She bounced a bit on the bed. “As in…fucking? The woman is back one night, and Victor has already moved in on her?”
“No.” An adamant shake of his head. “I think he’d gone in to check on her.”
