MELISSA.
“Hey, Melissa… Did you just seduce my brother?” Caleb’s voice sliced through the silence like a blade, low and taunting, yet dripping with false innocence.
His eyes dragged slowly over my face, locking on my lips, swollen, split, smeared with a faint trace of blood. The sight told a thousand stories, none of them in my favor.
Heat flooded my cheeks, shame spreading through me like poison.
“I…” My throat tightened. The word scraped painfully out of me, barely a whisper. “I…”
I choked on the sentence, tongue thick and uncooperative.
What could I possibly say?
Explain?
They wouldn’t believe me.
Defend myself?
They’d twist it.
I opened my mouth again, desperate to speak, but the sound died as footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Cain strode in, Amelia nestled in his arms as
