Page 39 of Vengeful Melodies (Heaven’s Guilt Revenge Tour Duet #1)

Chapter Thirty Six

Bradley

David’s left eye socket is as hollow as his goddamn soul.

He doesn’t cover it anymore—wears it like a badge of honor. Just a raw, sunken crater of skin where Dreya buried a corkscrew and twisted. No patch. No prosthetic. Just flesh and that black pit of nothingness staring back at the world like a warning.

“She didn’t even flinch,” he mutters around a mouthful of whiskey, lips curling catching my eyes on the empty abyss. “Locked eyes with me. Like she wanted to watch it happen. That girl knew exactly how to hurt me.”

I know the look he’s talking about.

I’ve seen it too.

“She was a teenager,” I say, but it feels like a lie coming out of my mouth. A pathetic attempt at justifying how we all got here.

David just shrugs, like her age didn’t matter then and sure as hell doesn’t matter now. “She was mine first,” he says, like it’s something sacred. “She learned to survive from me. You were just the soft place she landed after.”

I clench my jaw so hard it hurts. “You abused her.”

“And you betrayed her,” David fires back with a smile that doesn’t reach the gaping void in his skull. “Don’t pretend you’re the better man, Bradley. We both broke her. I just didn’t lie about it.”

It hits. It hits hard .

Because I did betray her.

And she never saw it coming.

She walked into my office a week before our wedding, glowing from head to toe. Hair still windblown from her walk, smiling like she had a secret she couldn’t wait to share.

She did.

She’d just won tickets to Heaven’s Guilt— my favorite fucking band. Said she was going to surprise me.

Instead, she found Amber on her knees.

I didn’t even get the chance to pull my pants up before shit hit the fan and Dreya snapped .

She screamed. Cussed . Sobbed like she’d been shot. Her voice cracked, shattering every piece of me I didn’t know was breakable.

I stumbled after her, begging— pleading —like the pathetic coward I am. But she wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t listen. She hurled my ring at my chest like it burned her fingers.

“I hope she was fucking worth it.” she spat.

Then she was gone. And the next time I saw her?

Sinners Playground Tattoo parlor. She kissed him . Alix motherfucking Sanderson.

Didn’t even know he was in the band yet. Just thought he was another pretty face with too much ink and a smug smile. Until I saw his hands on her. Her mouth on his. The small sound she made when he kissed her deeper.

It broke something in me.

I tried to move. To speak. But Wren got there first. That son of a bitch—he saw the look in my eyes, and he knew.

He clocked me across the face so hard I hit the sidewalk.

All I could do was bleed and watch as the girl I was supposed to marry kiss another man like I never existed. Before Wren swept her up, and took her away.

Now I sit across from David —the monster she escaped. The monster I never thought I’d stoop low enough to work with. But here we are. Sharing whiskey and plans and poison.

Because if I can’t have her…

No one can.

David slides a manila folder across the table. Inside: photos, schedules, tour bus logs. Vivian’s doing. She’s feeding dirt to the press, slowly tightening the noose.

“She’s soft now,” David sneers. “They made her weak. All this love and safety shit? It’s a fantasy. The girl I knew— the real Dreya —is still down there. Angry. Broken. That’s the version that survives. It's about time for her to stop living this ridiculous lie, she's buried away. ”

He taps his phone, shows me the texts.

Wren’s been getting them.

Anonymous. Paranoid. Twisted.

You can’t save her.

She’s not who you think she is.

He’ll get her killed.

They’re working. I know they are. Dreya’s unraveling. You can only pretend to be okay for so long before the cracks show.

David chuckles. “One wrong move and she bolts. Just like always. And when she does?”

He leans in, that empty socket glinting with grotesque glee.

“She’s ours.”

I say nothing. Because part of me wants that. Wants her terrified, shaken, desperate . I want her to run into my arms again because it’s safer than the fire behind her.

But another part?

I want to burn it all down.

The band. The safety. The lies they’ve wrapped her in.

Alix. Bash. Takoa. Kaiser. That smiling fucker Wren, too, if he gets in the way.

I’ll kill every one of them if it means she looks at me like she used to.

David thinks he’s pulling the strings. Vivian thinks she’s doing this to get back at Alix.

But they’re both loose strings.

And if I have to cut them, I will.

I flip through the folder again and see her face in a blurry photo. She’s smiling at someone off-camera, unaware of the demons closing in around her.

She looks happy.

She doesn’t get to be happy without me.

She was supposed to be mine.

She still is. She just doesn’t know it yet. But she will. Even if I have to carve the truth into her bones.