Page 78 of Overkill

“Melody, you’ll freeze out here.” I held the jacket, focusing on it like it was a lifeline and she was drowning in an angry sea. If I could get her to put on my jacket, then everything would be fine.

“I’m fine.” She halted, looking around when she realized she’d gone to the wrong side of the parking lot. She turned and blasted right past me.

“Melody.” I reached out, grabbing her forearm. “You’re gonna catch your death—”

“God damn it! I didn’t even drive here!” She whirled and stared at me. “Were you working with him the whole time?”

“What?” Her words hit me like a bucket of ice water in the Sahara.

“How long?” Her voice wobbled as tears and snot flooded her sinuses. “How long have you been working for the Grays?”

“Melody…Let me explain.”

“No!” She had tears streaming down her eyes, and that stabbed me in the heart. “I trusted you!”

The hurt, the betrayal, the anger. It all slapped me in the face.

“You can trust me!” I pleaded, feeling her slip through my fingers.

“You’ve been working for them all along!” She was shaking with rage. “I let you around my brother. My sister. I let you into my house. I let you in! I’m such a fucking idiot!”

My shoulders slumped, my hands fell to my sides. Helpless.

She wasn’t mad at me.

She was mad at herself, and that was so much worse.

“I haven’t betrayed you.” I wanted to touch her, but that was the last thing she would accept right now. So, I held back. It killed me to not touch her, but I kept my distance from the one thing in the world that I wanted. “Please, whatever it is, we can talk about it.”

“How much were they paying you?” The anguish in her eyes, the tears collecting on her lower lashes. It was worse than a bullet to the chest. “How much was Turner paying you?”

Chapter 26

Stay Away

Melody

He stared at me, confused, as though I hadn’t heard it all myself. He looked hurt, but that was all a lie. He had no right to feel hurt. I was the one betrayed. I was the one hurt. And he…he was just like everyone else.

“How much, VD?” The nickname was said to hurt him, and I was gratified—yes, fucking gratified—when the pain crossed his eyes. But it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough. “How much was he paying you to sleep with me?”

Because that was what it all was, wasn’t it? Get me to sleep with him, so I became everything everyone said I was. I’d let down my guard. Change my story. Incriminate myself, somehow. Then all that stuff—because that’s all it was! It was just stuff! It was money, and houses. It was just absolute junk!—all the things we were supposed to inherit would go back to them.

Why was I even fighting? Why was I bothering to keep Marc and Miriam?

I was twelve the first time it happened. The first time he touched me, and I did nothing. I knew I couldn’t stop it.

I didn’t fight then, so why was I bothering to fight now? I’d just lose in the end.

Looking at Greg, standing in the rain, acting like he was as broken as I was…I wanted to believe him, despite what I had seen and heard. Despite what had happened right in front of my face. I still wanted to believe him. He was just that good of an actor. Or maybe I was just that desperate…

“Let me explain,” His pleading green eyes, eyes I had loved, tore my heart in two.

The earnestness I’d misread, the desperation I’d thought matched my own, was just his need for a paycheck. Or maybe a desire to get into the good graces of the Grays.

He waited for a response I didn’t give. He could explain all he wanted. I would let him say whatever he needed so that I could walk away. I wouldn’t fall for the soft words of another handsome man.

Because in the end, it was over. The dream was over. The delusion of something between us evaporated like dust.