Page 35 of Ice Cold Christmas
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?
