Page 89 of Ice Cold Christmas
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.
