Chapter 21: Twenty-One

Melina just wanted some water before going to bed. She was on her way into the kitchen when her cell phone pinged and vibrated, calling their attention. She was on a house call, and it could be any of her patients. It was an incoming message, and her already pale semblance worsened as she recognized the number. The same one that sent her those filthy pictures and videos.

“What kind of soulless perv are you to be humping on the man who pulled the trigger on your parents?” It read. Melina was already with her nerves in full bloom and couldn’t control the fresh tears coming to her eyes. Her hands trembled so much she dropped the phone. Henry was faster than her and snatched it from the floor before she could do anything.

“Give me back.” She charged against him like a wildcat. “It’s personal, you have no right!” Henry grabbed her wrists and in a swift move turned her back to him, then holding her by the waist, locking her arm in place. While he read the message.

“I’ve been in the business for a long time, Melina, to know that face of yours. I know when someone is being threatened.” He held her tight to him. Melina got hysterical in his arms. Now he understood a lot of things.

“Why? Have you done it yourself?” she hissed at him. “Let go of me!” she screamed full lungs.

Before the neighbors came to see what was happening, he freed her. Melina let go of her body, falling on her butt. Her curly hair flew all over her face, as he couldn’t see what was taking place inside her. She dragged her knees to her chest and hid her head in them. Henry turned his back to her, squeezing his eyes shut. What now? Someone was messing with his chance of a future, and he wouldn’t allow that.

He turned back to Melina, still on the floor, and scooped her up in his arms, taking her to the living room and sitting on the couch with her in his lap. She hid herself in the crook of his neck and wept. Henry embraced Melina to him, bringing her closer. His fingertips in soothing movements, brushing on her hair, trying to calm her down a little.

“Since day one, you’ve hurt me, and now you’ve taken my baby from me, just to punish me more. Why Henry? What did I do to deserve such a fate?” She whined between sobs. “I feel so dirty. My parents didn’t deserve me as a daughter. I betrayed them and I’m still doing it, even though they are not here anymore.” Melina didn’t understand how she could feel so warm and protected there in his arms, as if nothing could get to her. Nothing would ever happen to her or Eve. That was the right place to be, but guilt was tearing her apart.

“That’s not true, Melina! You know that!” Henry sounded too angry to his own ears, tightening his hold on her. He wished he could make her take back what she said about him. He didn’t have the hope of one day she loved him, but he knew she had a place for him in her heart. The way her body reacted to him, her response to his assaults on her, and she was ashamed of it, because she thought him a cruel mobster.

“Do I? I’m here with my kidnapper and the person who hurt my parents, and I can’t think straight when I’m closer to you. I’m betraying them. Everything started because I didn’t obey them, Henry! I was such a worthless daughter.”

Her words definitely hurt him. He waited too damn long to have her right there, but she didn’t give herself to him because she had mixed feelings towards what happened in the past. He wanted to tell her every single thing, but he also wanted her to see him as a good person before he tells her the whole truth. Maybe he didn’t start on the right path. He was so pissed at her for running away that he behaved like an asshole and attacked her in her weaker spot. Their daughter.

“Look at me, Melina.” She shook her head, not daring to look at those pools of warm honey and fall for them. But when he said please, her heart melted and she could do nothing but obey. “I get it. You don’t know me as much as I know you. But answer me, do you really think I’d hurt your parents? That I’m a cold-hearted murderer who goes on killing good people on a spree, Melina? Do you think this low of me?” The thin wall she had built around her crumbled when he kissed away her tears.

She licked her lips, staring at him, then she averted her gaze. “I don’t know what to think. It was you in the video, I recognized the bracelet.” Her eyes were once again tearful when he gently turned her to him, and she set her eyes on the jewelry on his wrist.

“And you never gave the thought that I could be there to prevent it, that maybe when I got there it was too late, and the person who sent you the video could be the one who pulled the trigger on them.” Melina shook her head and closed her eyes. So she wouldn’t be able to see the hurt in those honeyed ones. No, she had never thought of that. She just assumed the worst of him. “You don’t know half of the things involved in this kind of business.”

“What did you expect from me? I didn’t know you or what you were capable of. You kidnapped me for Christ’s sake and worked for a drug lord. Put yourself in my place, Henry.” Melina opened her eyes. Confusion and sorrow shone at him. “After you sent me home safely to my parents, I missed my Charming so much, and the guilt of missing you corroded me inside, but I prayed every night you’d come back, tell me you were sorry and make me understand, but you never did.” She finished in a whisper.

“Melina… there are so many things you don’t know about me.” It was getting hard for him to contain himself. If she kept so sorrowful, he would have to do something about it. “When did these messages come to you, Mel?” He needed to divert the situation.

“I got the first one right after my parents’ death, then another when I discovered I was pregnant, and that was the last one until a month ago when you crashed back into my life. They started again and became more frequent.”

His breath hitched in his throat when he felt Melina’s fingers reaching for his wrist where his bracelet was. She got it in her hand and feeling her soft palm on his skin set his heart in a wild frenzy. His pupils darkened when she started playing with it, inspecting and reading the names on it.

“Who are all these names?”

“Family and friends.” Maybe showing to her he was just a regular person would help her see he wasn’t the unfeeling monster she conjured up in her mind. “Helen and Nelly, my cousins. Nelly died in a car accident about twelve years ago. Also Tom, my brother, got killed in a hit-and-run accident a few years back.” He didn’t take his eyes from her, paying attention to all the emotions going through her face. And there was a lot.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Sorrow filled her voice. She knew what it meant to lose someone you love. Then she reached for Ella’s tag. “The tea friend?” He nodded and she couldn’t hide the jealous tone in which the question came out, so she moved to the next, her tag.

“Melina and Evangeline.” She breathed out. “That night, you were familiar to me, the way you talked and gave me orders as if you knew who I was, and your eyes… but I was so drunk I couldn’t place you in the right memory, only the next day, when I saw this.” She pointed to the bracelet. “And my name was hanging with the others. I freaked out and left. Since when is my name here?”

“I put it there right after the kidnapping, when I took you back home, Melina.” His voice was raspy, full of desire.

“And Eve’s?”

“As soon as I got to know I was a father, about six months ago.”

She looked at him with those enormous chocolaty eyes, putting her soft hand on his right cheek, caressing his face, resting her forehead on his own. He didn’t restrain himself anymore. He had to taste her, to touch her body, to feel Melina under his skin. It was beyond himself. So he did the only thing he could. Henry brought her closer and took her mouth in a sweet, chaste kiss in the beginning, testing his grounds, and once she didn’t reject his onslaught he intensified the kiss, pouring all his longing in it.