Page 99 of Ice Cold Christmas

“I’ll escort him,” Hunter offered. He exited the boardroom and took up a position right near a red-faced Dario.

Victor waved to a watchful Calista and Luis. “Go with them. Detective Clinton is probably arriving any damn minute. Keep the cop busy until I come downstairs.”

But Calista angled around him to look back at Melody. “Are you sure this is what you want?” Calista shrugged. “Because I don’t give a shit who signs my paycheck. You want to leave, then we’ll walk out right now.”

“I want to stay with Victor.”

He grabbed the doorframe because those words burned through him. She was choosing him. She believed in him.

“For what it’s worth,” Hunter said as he wrapped a hard hand around Dario’s shoulder. “I think that’s a good choice. He never gave up on you.”

And I never would.

The fight seemed to go out of Dario. “The whole company…” He turned away, body hunching. “It’s all his.”

Victor shut the door. He saw the faint tremble in his fingers, and his hand flattened on the wood. “Where were we?”

“I…remember.” Halting.

He’d thought as much.

“This room. Being with you. You told me that you almost had everything you wanted.”

Now he turned toward her. She stood in front of the boardroom table. Last year, she’d said that she loved him. He’d lifted her onto the table. Wanted nothing more than to fuck her right then and there. He’d almost had his dream. Her. A future. A life with the woman he loved.

Then, that dream had been gone in a blink. “You’re what I want.”

She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “You hate the Mage family? Because of what happened to your dad?”

“I thought I did.” Slowly, carefully, he went back to her. Back to the woman he loved more than anything in the world. “Hate was my purpose. I was a dumbass kid who was drowning in rage. I had to channel it. Had to get out of the nightmare that kept pulling me under. After Colton Crane…hell, I had to be different. I could feel my own violence and rage, and I knew something had to give. So I made a goal. Get out. Get strong. Go after the company that had sent my life careening into a nightmare.”

She watched him with her deep, incredible eyes. Eyes that had stolen his soul long ago.

“I got my education. Became smarter. Sharper. Obtained a job at Mage Industries. Worked my ass off and…got close to Sebastian Mage. Only I realized something as I was working with him.”

Melody didn’t speak.

“He’s a tough bastard,” Victor said. “But he was fanatical about safety.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“He’d go out and inspect facilities himself. Every single time. Over and over again. Told me that we had to put employees first. People mattered. Lives mattered. It was only after he got sick that I understood the full truth.”

“What truth was that?”

“He blamed himself. Guilt has eaten him alive. Guilt for the accident at the factory. Guilt for your mother’s death.”

“My mother?”

He nodded. “Guilt for your disappearance. He blames himself for everything. The nurse with him? She’s there because he’s been on suicide watch.”

“What?”

“I didn’t understand why the gun was in his study,” Victor muttered. That still bothered him. Who the hell had put the gun in there? “I’d ordered all guns removed from the estate. His nurse keeps a close eye on him. And John Henry has directives to watch him like a hawk right now. Sebastian is not himself any longer. He—he makes mistakes. He says things that he doesn’t mean.”

“Like…killing my mother?”

Yes, like that. “Dario got it wrong. Your father didn’t kill her. But he told me once—before the sickness stole so much of him—that he’d been a shit husband. That he was never home. That he didn’t spend enough time with her or with you like he should have done. He felt like he drove her away, and if he’d just been there, been with her more, then the skiing accident would never have happened. You wouldn’t have lost your mom. He wouldn’t have lost the one woman who made him happy.”