Page 4 of Vengeful Melodies

I should’ve asked her name. Or at least her number.

We’re leaving Remington after the show on the 25th, and something tells me I just missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

I glance up at my best friend, about to ask if he got her name or number, but he just lifts his hand before I can speak.

“She literally just caught her piece-of-shit fiancé cheating on her, man,” Grey says quietly, stepping forward and clicking the lock on the half-door that separates the tattoo shop’s lobby from the back rooms. “She’s not your next conquest. That woman’sin pain. You should know what that feels like… after the Vickie thing last year.”

The door swings open.

His words hit, and I spiral—right back into the mess I’ve tried to bury.

Being in the spotlight doesn’t stop you from getting cheated on.

I didn’t hear it from her. I heard it on the news. Headlines and flashing images of Vickie, caught in someone else’s arms while I was halfway across the country.

By the time I got home, the apartment was empty. She took everything. Even things that weren’t hers.

Even my grandmother’s wedding ring.

Even her ashes.

Who steals ashes?

I chased her down every lead I could find. All dead ends.

Eventually, I found the ashes online—on some auction site that sold celebrity trash.

Trash. That’s what she turned them into.

I sent Takoa and Bash to recover them. I couldn’t risk facing her if it was Vivian selling them—afraid she’d do something worse, and I’d lose what little I had left of my grandmother.

But it wasn’t her. Just some greasy middle-aged dude who bought them for thirty bucks. “Some bimbo sold ’em,” he’d said. “Didn’t catch her name.”

Yeah. I know who it was.

And apparently, thirty dollars was what my grandmother’s ashes were worth to her.

I hired PIs. Burned through cash. But every trail ran cold.

Eventually, my manager forced me to stop. Said I was spending my fortune before I could even enjoy it. Before I could live the dream, we’d built.

A jab to my shoulder brings me back to the present.

“Let’s go,” Grey mutters. “You’ve gotta wrangle the guys before they start lighting fires again. Especially Bash. You know he can find trouble at the bottom of a shot glass.”

There’s still tension between them—leftover from that fight where Grey stopped him from chasing a high he didn’t need.

“I can’t argue with that,” I mumble, rubbing the back of my neck. “Seems like all I’m good for now is keeping this band from self-destructing.”

Grey opens the back door, letting the fluorescent light spill through.

“If we could just find something—some lifeline—maybe we could go back to who we were before.”

Before the fame.

Before we were gods to broken people.

Before we got broken, too.