Follow Me Back (Fight for Me 2)

Melody.

My Melody.

“Tell me why, you piece of shit. Tell me.”

I cocked my fist back, and he flinched, confession grit from his mouth. “My mother.”

Just Dane mentioning Melody’s mother threatened to knock me back on my ass, but I kept hold. “Why?”

He roared and struggled to break free.

I curled both my hands around his neck. “Don’t assume I wouldn’t think twice about ending you. Right now. I’ve already lost everything. I’d take pleasure in taking you down while I go.”

He thrashed, and I tightened my hold, teeth grinding. “Tell me.”

His eyes bulged with air loss, his own teeth clenched as he forced out the words. “My grandfather . . . he couldn’t know it ran in my mother’s family. She had a sister . . . a sister who died from the same thing.”

Hope howled.

Dropped to her knees.

The space echoed with her anguished, jutting cries. Horror after horror. “The money. Oh God, the money.”

Hope clutched her chest. “It was all about the money, wasn’t it? You bastard . . . you bastard, you were gonna let your own son—your own flesh and blood—die over money? That goddamned inheritance? All that talk about your father’s prestigious bloodline? It had to remain that way, didn’t it? Prestigious and perfect. Without blemish? That’s what your grandfather meant? You need a healthy son so you could get your fucking inheritance.”

Dane’s voice turned almost pleading, the bastard a believer in his own fucked-up, twisted way. “I told you, we could try again.”

Hate blistered through my senses.

“You changed his name on his records. You tried to hide his medical records from me.” Disgust lined Dane’s voice.

Her head shook, lips trembling with the words. “You think I regret that? I’d do it again . . . over and over again . . . no matter what it cost me, so long as it protected him from you.”

A sound left Hope.

One of sickened realization.

“Oh, God, you wanted me back because you needed me to have another child. So you could pin the genetic defect on me if you had another child with it?”

Dane’s lips pursed.

So goddamned guilty.

But the bastard wouldn’t admit it, he only grated, “You’ll regret this, Harley,” when I jerked him up by the shirt and slammed him down again.

Footsteps pounded around us. It wasn’t until then that I realized we were ringed by nurses and bystanders.

Gaping, horrified eyes watched us from the perimeter.

Three security guards and a police officer had busted through the circle and were descending on us.

“Release him,” the officer shouted at me, his gun drawn.

I was ripped up from behind.

Arms locked behind my back.

“Let me go,” I raged, fighting as the cuffs were locked in place. I needed to get to him. To make sure he could never keep that promise.

End the threat for Hope and Evan once and for all.

Give them something when I could never be enough.

Dane was being hauled up, his knees buckling beneath him when his arms were twisted behind his back. “Twenty-million dollars, Hope. You’re willing to let twenty-million dollars go?”

A roar blew from my lungs at his statement.

He said it as if she were the deranged one.

Because the piece of shit couldn’t see through his black soul.

Melody.

I gasped over a breath when I realized what it all meant. What they’d been trying to hide.

Hope’s face was twisted in the most shocking kind of grief as she climbed to her feet. Her milky flesh illuminated in the lights, glistening with tears.

She took a step toward him.

Red hair flying all around her.

So goddamned strong in her vulnerability.

Her chin trembled, and the words flooded from her mouth. “There was a day I believed in you, Dane. A day when I loved you. A day when I looked at you and I saw the future I wanted.”

Her face pinched. “And all you saw was money?”

She blinked, trying to process the blow, before she swallowed hard, gathering herself. “I swear to you, if you so much as think about my son, I will make sure every last person in this world knows who you are and what you did. I will expose you and your disgusting family. I will ruin you, the way you have tried to ruin us.”

She took another step toward him.

The girl always standing for what she believed in.

Faith radiating from her.

So damned bright.

“But we are not ruined. Not even close. When my son comes out of surgery, because he will—I know he will—I will have documents from your attorney relinquishing your parental rights. You will never have a say in his life, or in my life, ever again. Do you understand me?”

His voice was a growl. “You’re a fool, Harley.”

Mouth trembling, she shook her head. “No, Dane. You are the fool. You were so blinded by greed that you never saw the treasure you already held. The abundant life you could have been given. You are destitute, and I am the one who is rich.”