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“What truth?” Melanie’s voice was breaking, her body trembling. Her eyes started welling up with tears as if she saw something bad coming.
I searched for her gaze, breathing heavily. I felt like everything around me was spinning, like I was losing the ground under my feet. I couldn't bring myself to speak, no word would come out of my mouth, and Ledford didn’t waste any time.
“Your beloved fiancé showed up in your life only to take revenge on your father. They blame him for Rose Vergoossen’s death,” he blurted out, and my world collapsed.
I watched Melanie staring at me with disbelief, her lips parting and tears dripping down her face. “Tell me that’s not true,” she whimpered, her eyes imploring me.
“He can’t,” Ledford chimed in, and I snapped.
“Shut up!” I wanted to fucking punch him in his smirking face, taking off the shit-eating grin he wore, but I restrained myself. I knew that wouldn’t have made the situation any better. I turned to Melanie, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “Melanie, I wanted to tell you. I was waiting for the right time. I was about to tell you before…hecame.”
Melanie scoffed, shaking her head as she cried, “Tell me everything. Now.”
I turned to Ledford. “Get out. This is between Melanie and me.”
“No,” she objected. “He’s going to stay,” she said, crossing her arms as she watched me with hatred in her eyes, and it broke my heart.
I took a deep breath, fighting the storm of emotions within me. “Okay, if that’s what you want,” I said, looking at her, but she refused to look me in the eyes.
“Speak,” she insisted. “Or, you know what?” She looked at me for a short moment, her gaze full of contempt. “You had your chance, and I don’t want to listen to any more of your lies.” She turned to her ex. “Theo, you tell me.”
“Ah, with pleasure,” he mocked, and my fist clenched involuntarily with full force.
“Melanie, please. It’s between us,” I hissed, pleading, but she didn’t say anything. She kept staring at Ledford, tears streaming down her face, her body shaking.
Seeing her like this broke me, tearing my soul apart. I wanted to embrace her, hold her crumbling pieces between my arms, so I moved closer, reaching for her hand, but she snatched it. “Don’t! Don’t touch me,” she hissed, refusing to look me in the eyes, gritting her teeth.
Ledford rolled his eyes. He sure as fuck couldn’t wait to break my world into pieces. It was his retribution for losing Melanie. “Alright, lovebirds. Let’s cut to the chase,” he mocked, and my rage was growing with every single word coming out of his cynical mouth. “You see, Mel, you were just a pawn in his twisted game. Twenty years ago, Rose Vergoossen had an affair with your father.”
“What?” Melanie whispered, dumbfounded.
“That’s not true,” I rasped. “That’s Dedrick’s side of the story. He raped her!” I lashed out. I couldn’t listen to his lies anymore. I was shaking and out of control. All I saw was red. All the painful memories kept flashing in my head. The haunting images and sounds of my mother’s suffering before she couldn’t bear it any longer and took her own life.
“Of course, your father told you that,” Ledford taunted. “The almighty Karl Vergoossen couldn’t stand that his wife cheated on him. What’s more, she was carrying the child of another man.”
I lost it. I turned into the savage beast I was and punched him square in the face. The blood spilled all over the floor. Melanie gasped, covering her mouth with her shaking hands before she ran to her ex. Her fucking ex and not me. She helped him get up, looking at me like I was the bad guy. Maybe I was. Perhaps I had always been, and I forgot it for a while. She made me believe I could’ve been a better person. Start over. Leave my dreadful past behind. Apparently, I was wrong.
Ledford wiped the blood from under his nose, glaring at me angrily, his breath heavy and ragged. “You’re done, Vergoossen. You lost.”
“Get the fuck out of my house, or I’ll fucking kill you,” I shouted, the pain and rage tearing me apart from the inside.
“Not until Melanie hears the whole truth. And I want to see your face when she does,” he breathed out before he turned to Melanie, ending this. Ending everything. “He wanted your death, Melanie. His mother overdosed on sleeping pills, and he wanted you to do the same so that Dedrick would suffer the same way he did. They’re twisted. Sick.”
“Theo, take me out of here,” Melanie cried, running out of my apartment.
Ledford took one last look at me in triumph, savoring the taste of my failure. “We’re even now,” he sneered and followed after her.
My world had collapsed. My vision got blurry, turning everything around me to black. It felt like the thick walls I’d surrounded myself with to prevent me from ever being hurt, to numb myself from emotions so that I’d never suffer again after my mother chose to die, were crumbling down. Melanie was the only good thing that had happened to me. She was my only light, showing me the way out of the darkness that surrounded me. And now she was gone. I lost her, and I didn’t know if I could ever win her back. But the most painful part was the fact that I broke her. I broke the person who, for the past few weeks, I’d desperately been trying to fix. Maybe I was too broken myself to fix another human being. Maybe I was too damaged to love. Love was something pure, and fuck, I was far from being pure. I didn’t deserve her. We were always a losing game. From the first moment I laid eyes on her, we were doomed. You don’t build something as rare as this on a lie. Now I knew it, and I had to pay the highest price.
“Fuck!” I shook my head, trying to regain control over my body and start thinking clearly. This was not who I was. I did not give up. I was a Vergoossen, and the Vergoossens fight for what they love. And most definitely, I loved Melanie, and she was worth fighting for. Melanie was the kind of woman I swore didn’t exist, and that was why I couldn’t let her go.
I grabbed my car keys from the cabinet in the hallway and stormed out of the penthouse.
I’m not letting you go, Melanie. I’m not letting you go.
I WAS SPEEDING UP THE ROAD, following Ledford’s red Porsche. Yeah, I was a tad bit twisted and hella overprotective, but I put a tracker in Melanie’s phone so that if ever something happened, I’d have a way to track her. When raised in a Mafia family, things like this are essential. I spotted his car, stepped on the gas and sped past them, only to stop right in front of them, forcing Ledford to slam on the brakes.
“Are you fucking crazy?!” he shouted as he got out of the vehicle.
