Page 5 of Ice Cold Christmas
“She has to be dead,” Dario Mage announced with a dramatic sigh. Not a Mage by birth, but by marriage. Though he’d taken on the last name as fast as possible. “I mean, come on, this is my sister we’re talking about here…”
Actually, he was talking about his stepsister. An important distinction that the guy seemed to be missing. Though it was a distinction that Dario had made the time he tried to fuck Melody.
I hate the sonofabitch and his smug face. He’d be an easy enough one to kill. Victor tried to ease his grip on the fragile wine glass. If he wasn’t careful, he’d snap the stem.
These days, he just wasn’t good at being careful. Or good at handling fragile things. Or, well, good. At all. Darkness had swallowed him whole, and only rage lived and breathed inside of him.
“Melody hasn’t touched any of her bank accounts in the last year.” Dario’s voice kept right on grating. “The woman cannot survive without her expensive accessories.”
Cannot survive.
Dario ambled toward the fireplace. Gas, not wood. The flames flickered and danced. “Not like she’s taken up a lifestyle waiting tables some place. If she could have accessed the money, she would have done it.” Dario braced his forearm against the mantel. His black hair was perfectly styled. Just like the trousers were perfectly pressed. The white shirt perfectly ironed. “We have to face facts. She isn’t coming back.”
A twitter of nervous laughter followed his pronouncement. Victor clenched his back teeth even as his gaze darted toward the source of that laughter.
Olivia Hatcher—Dario’s current lover and Melody’s one-time best friend—had bright patches of color staining her cheeks. Probably from the wine she’d been downing. At last count, she’d had three glasses.
Olivia weaved in her heels before announcing, “Just because she hasn’t touched the money, it doesn’t mean Melody is dead.” She beetled her eyebrows toward the quiet man sitting in the corner, Sebastian Mage.
Melody’s father.
“Melody lived—lives,” Olivia hurriedly corrected, “for adventure. She probably found a new lover, hooked up with him, and for all we know, they’re sunning it up in the south of France right now. She hasn’t touched her money because she doesn’t need it. You don’t have to take a doom-and-gloom perspective.”
Sebastian stared into the fire. “It’s been a long time.”
It had been one long-ass, painful year.
“My Melody was many things,” Sebastian continued in his deep, but slightly shaking voice. “But she wasn’t cruel.” His fingers trembled slightly. The tremors had been getting worse lately. “She wouldn’t vanish. Wouldn’t just disappear without ever talking to me again.” He shook his head. “No, something more is at play.” His gaze slowly turned from the fire and landed on Victor. “You haven’t said a word all night.”
Because he hadn’t wanted to be in that damn house. Everywhere he looked, Melody haunted him. Her picture was on the mantel. A smiling image of her at her college graduation.
He refused to look at that picture.
He was already feeling murderous enough. One fucking year had passed. A year where he’d been living with his heart cut out of his chest.
“Victor, do you think my Melody is dead?” Sebastian asked him.
He didn’t want to answer that question. Because if he answered it, then there would be no going back. No more pretending. No more thinking that he’d turn around, and Melody would just be there. Smiling her mischievous grin, the one that made the dimple in her right cheek flash. Just the right cheek. She didn’t have a dimple in the left. Her green eyes would sparkle. Her full lips would tempt him, and, just like that, he’d be wrapped around her little finger. Not that he could let her know. Not that he could say?—
“Oh, come on,” Dario scoffed. “Victor and Melody barely tolerated each other. The man doesn’t give a shit one way or the other, am I right? He’s got the business. He’s got plenty of money, and he has Melody out of his hair. Wins all around for him.” Bitterness underscored every word.
The bastard had been drinking way too much. His mouth was too damn loose.
Victor was highly conscious of the drumming of his heartbeat as it echoed in his ears. He turned his attention to Dario. Let that attention linger.
Dario yanked his arm away from the mantel. “What? No need for the ferocious glare. I’m just stating the obvious. We all know the cops even interviewed you several times over the last year. You and Melody hated each other.”
No, he had not hated her. But, yes, the cops had interviewed him. When they’d finally come around to the idea that Melody might not have vanished of her own accord, he’d been their chief suspect.
Even though he’d been the one trying to find her the hardest. He’d hired five different PIs over the last year. They’d turned up jack shit. A woman shouldn’t vanish into thin air.
Definitely not my woman. She shouldn’t have vanished. I should have kept her safe. Savagery beat beneath his surface. His control was far too thin these days. Probably because nothing mattered any longer. Nothing but finding the sonofabitch who’d taken Melody and putting the bastard in the ground.
“We have to face facts,” Dario continued with a sage nod. “Time to sell her house. Time to change the will. Look, I’ve investigated. It takes five years to declare a person dead without a body. Five years. We’re only on year one and I’m not so sure that…” A telling glance toward Sebastian’s hunched figure. “I’m not so sure that everyone in this room has four more years left.”
A sharp gasp from Olivia.
Dario had never been a tactful bastard. Mostly, he’d just been a whiny prick. One who’d always gotten on Victor’s last nerve.
