Melody's POV
I dug and dug until my hands went numb while Marcus knelt beside me the whole time. He bled from a wound on his head and swore at my parents’ graves that he would protect me with his life. That night, he even carved my name into his chest with a dagger.
“Melody is in my heart. From now on, where I am, you will be. You're my life.”
I ground a cigarette butt into the back of Judy’s ear, grinning with a savage curl to my lips. Then I slowly loosened my hold on her.
“You were right,” I said. “They wouldn’t have wanted me to become like this.”
Judy collapsed into Marcus’s arms, sobbing. “She’s a lunatic!”
Marcus stared at me without blinking.
As my hand slipped into my pocket, he tensed. But upon seeing I’d pulled out a man’s ring and not a weapon, he relaxed a touch.
“This is a gift I prepared for you,” I told him. “Let me put it on you, okay?”
As obedient as a dog, he let go of Judy and held out his hand like someone ready to be led. But in the next instant, I sliced off his ring finger, and it dropped to the floor.
I laughed, loud and unashamed. “Marcus, this is the debt you owe me. I’ll take it back, piece by piece.”
Playing with the dagger, I leaned in close to Judy.
Marcus, who hadn’t cried out even when fingers were cut off before, suddenly panicked and lunged to shield her.
“Don’t touch her!” he shouted. “Melody, don’t make me fight you for real!”
That familiar expression, that familiar tone, it threw me back to the bloody night five years earlier.
When our enemies came for us then, fires raged everywhere, and ten bodyguards in the villa were slaughtered. Only Marcus and I were left. He stood between me and the attackers, red-eyed, then turned and gently covered my eyes.
“Don’t open them. I’m going to take them on. Don’t worry. I’ve got you new IDs. If I die, leave and start over.”
Blood dripped from our fingertips, each drop sounding like a tick against my nerves. He tore a corner from his shirt and bound the wound with practiced hands.
“Melody, don’t force me to hate you.”
That memory overlapped with eight years ago when he’d sliced my fiancé’s legs. He’d told me then, smiling, “Melody, hate me if you must. If you can’t love me, at least let hatred keep me in your heart. I want to remain there, whatever it takes.”
Maybe that was when what we had started to twist and go wrong, a bad beginning destined for a worse end.
Judy fumbled for the gun at Marcus’s waist with trembling hands. “If you hurt Marcus, I swear I’ll never forgive you!”
Pathetic. She couldn’t even pull the trigger.
I stepped forward as she screamed and flailed. In a flash, I struck her wrist, wrested the gun free, and held it to her forehead.
In a snap, she collapsed, shrieking, clutching her head like spoiled flesh.
I smiled with cold mockery. “If you want revenge, know your place.”
Turning to Marcus, I disappointingly commented, “Marcus, your taste is terrible.”
That night, I took the three items home. But Marcus didn’t return to the house, and likely never would.
By morning, the rumor mill had already spun the story saying, I’d fallen from favor, and the bloodthirsty devil had a new lover. It was because he tried to remake himself for Judy by apologizing in prison to those he’d hurt, restructuring the company, and cutting ties with the past.
I understood what he was trying to distance himself from. There was only one person he wanted to disown.
Me.
He also bought Judy jewelry worth millions without blinking, funded the construction of a church at her command, and promised to recast the God statue in gold.
When I heard the news, I laughed until I cried. “Samuel, do you think God would accept a gilded statue from someone like him?”
Samuel said nothing, but I already knew the answer. We had long since fallen out of God’s protection. Our lives were meant to be lived in shadow and blood.
He did so much for Judy, but I pretended not to see it.
Then one day, she sent a taunting message from Marcus’s phone.
[So what if you can kill? You still can’t keep a man. Melody, you lost. Completely.]
I showed the message to Samuel. “Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “Once this is over, I’ll get myself a dog too.”
He handed me wedding invitations. “You haven’t divorced yet, and he's already planning a wedding with that— that tramp. Miss, you’re too patient.”
“No.” I waved a finger. “I’ve been waiting for their wedding.”
The ceremony was packed. The same faces who’d sat through my wedding with Marcus were there tonight. On the screen, they played his montage about how he and Judy met, how they fell in love, and at the end, three ultrasound reports. His face glowed with the joy of a first-time father.
“I thought heaven was punishing me,” he said into the microphone, “but Judy gave me a second chance to be a father. I swear I won’t let her down.”
Just then, the main doors opened slowly, then a bride in white walked down the aisle like an angel. Marcus couldn’t wait. He hurried forward to embrace the redemption he believed belonged to him.
“Judy, thank you—”
But his words were cut short as blood sprayed. My grin showed itself.
