Page 69 of Vance

“Melanie!” I pound on the door when I reach her apartment, my fist striking the wood hard enough to rouse her and her neighbors. The sound is thunderous in the quiet hallway, a violent percussion. “Open the fucking door!”

The lock clicks, and the door opens a crack. It opens wider, revealing Melanie in a silk robe, her hair mussed and face painted with a smug satisfaction that makes my stomach churn.

“I knew you miss—” she starts, her voice playful.

Storming inside, I slam the door behind me with a crack that makes the walls shudder. I have her against the wall before she can blink, my hands around her upper arms, pinning her to the cool surface with my face inches from hers.

The violence in me is a living thing, clawing its way from the cage I keep it locked in. It wants to do things that break Roman’s rules about violence. Never women. But she’s not just a woman; she’s the serpent hiding in my Eden.

“What the fuck did you do?” I growl.

Staring back with sly eyes, her coy expression falters, but she doesn’t reply.

“Answer me!” I slam her against the wall again, the impact rattling the drywall, causing the picture hanging beside her head to crash onto the floor as I wrap my hand around her slender throat. “What did you do?”

A smirk plays at the corner of her lips, and I see red. It washes over me so thoroughly that it’s a state of being. I pull back my fist and punch the wall, my knuckles splitting open with a roar, the pain a distant echo compared to the agony in my chest. I tighten my hold on her throat, squeezing just hard enough to constrict her breathing as I pull her onto her toes. She flinches, her eyes widening with real fear.

“Tell me!” I shout, my breath hot as I tremble with the effort of maintaining some semblance of restraint. “Tell me what you did, or I swear to God, Melanie, I will⁠—”

“I took your phone!” she manages to choke out through my firm grip, the words bursting out of her. “When you left it on the desk, I took it! She called, so I answered!” My grip loosens slightly, and she sags against the wall. I press her to it, my fingers digging into her flesh, as my mind races through the devastation she has caused with one simple, malicious act. “I told her you were with me. I made her think… I made her think you were fucking me.”

The rage that floods through me is blinding. I want to kill her. The thought is absolute. I want to wrap my hands around her throat and slowly squeeze until the light goes out of her soulless eyes. “You’re fucking pathetic,” I spit, shoving her away when I release her. She stumbles, catching herself against the wall.

“I did it for us,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears that I don’t believe. That I’ll never believe. “I needed to get her out of the picture. So we could be together. So you could see⁠—”

“There is no us,” I interrupt, my voice booming so loudly she shrinks back. “There never was. You didn’t mean fucking anything to me.”

I step toward her, and she presses herself against the wall, afraid when she sees the full depths of what she’s awakened. “You were convenient. That’s all. Don’t rewrite what happened between us into something it never was. You were never someone I wanted. You were someone I used.”

“Vance…”

“You have until dawn to be out of Chicago. If you’re still in the city when the sun comes up,” I continue, ignoring her, my voice dangerously quiet. “I will come back here and make you beg for mercy I don’t have. I am being gracious enough to let you live, but I will ruin your pathetic fucking life.”

She stares at me, her face crumpling, tears falling in earnest. “You already have,” she musters. “It should’ve been me, Vance. It should’ve been me in that penthouse, wearing your ring, as your wife.”

“It was never going to be you.” I turn on my heel, indifferent as she falls apart.

“Vance,” Melanie calls out, her voice broken and desperate. “But I love you…”

I pause at the door with my back to her and my hand on the knob. I look over my shoulder, meeting her eyes for the final time. “And I love my wife.”

The tears won’t stop. They stream down my face in an endless river, burning my eyes and blurring the city lights into smeared streaks through the taxi window. I press my hand against my stomach, and a harsh, trembling sob bursts from my chest, carrying all the grief I can no longer keep contained as I’m forced to mourn the life we were building.

The driver keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes wary and uncomfortable. As if the tangled hair, puffy face, and crying weren’t enough, I look like I’ve fled the scene of a fire—wearing a silk nightgown beneath Vance’s oversized coat I grabbed before stepping into the elevator. The inferno just happens to be burning down my marriage instead of my home.

“Ma’am,” he says finally, his voice strained with unease. “I can’t just keep driving. I’m going to need a destination.”

Meeting his eyes in the reflection, I stare blankly. I don’t have a destination. I can’t go to Kiki; it’s the first place Vance will look. I don’t really have friends to turn to. My entire life has been work and Kiki for years; everyone else has drifted away. I have no one. I don’t have anywhere to go that Vance won’t find me.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I croak through the soreness of my throat.

The driver’s eyes narrow as he weighs the risk. Hesitantly, he reaches across the front seat and passes his phone through the slot in the plexiglass divider.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” he grits, his eyes flicking to me in the mirror.

I nod, holding the phone in my trembling hands, my thumb brushing absently over the crack in the screen before I dial. My heart pounds harder with every ring, hope and dread twisting together in my chest. I nearly hang up when the call is finally answered. “Hello?” The voice on the other end is thick with sleep, groggy and confused.