18. Scarlett #2
“If you wanna meet these people with splotchy cheeks and swollen eyes, then that’s your call.
” He leans closer, so close, my mind catalogs each individual pore lining the bridge of his nose.
“But I’m not leaving you out here, I’m not letting you walk anywhere, and your tears don’t mean a damn thing to me.
This is my home,” he grits out. “These people are my family. I don’t give a single fuck what a spoiled princess thinks about us: I will protect this location, and you don’t get to become the exception to a thirty-year rule. ”
He releases my wrists with a shove and swings his door open. Starburst candy falls to the floor. To his seat. To the ground, probably. Dropping to his boots outside, he turns back and burns me with a violent glare. “Climb this way. Right now.”
“I don’t—”
“Remember that reputation I send ahead of me? The one that says I go about my business with machine-like efficiency whether my target likes it or not?” He grabs my arm and tears me halfway across the cab. “That reputation exists for a reason.”
“You’re hurting me!” I scramble to get my hands and knees beneath me. To simply stop falling. But all I manage is to slam my shoulder against the ceiling and bite my tongue until the taste of blood floods my mouth. “Sebastion!”
“Work with me, Princess. Then you won’t get hurt.” He yanks me out and sets me on my feet. The bite of the cold air takes my breath away, because sitting inside the cab of our truck, sharing that space with a man as large as him, made for a warm environment.
Sometimes, a little too warm.
But out here where snow drifts from the sky and harsh spotlights expose me on every side, goosebumps race along my skin and leave my jaw trembling.
He maintains his grip on my arm, his palm wrapped around my bicep until his fingers overlap, then he leans back into the truck and snatches my cross-body bag from the passenger-side floor.
He drapes it over my head and slams the hoodie I loathed moments ago against my chest. “Put this on if you’re cold. ”
No thanks.
Snagging his phone and slipping it into his pocket, he pulls away again, closes the door, and brings me around to face not just one masked dude with a gun. But five of them.
No, wait. Six.
“Adelita,” Sebastion announces to the half-dozen bristling men. “La Bruja?”
In silence, the six men split and create a three-on-each-side tunnel for us to walk through. Sebastion tugs me across a snow-covered yard and, I swear, I try not to notice the security towers spearing high into the sky.
Two of those, boasting two of the spotlights that sizzle my retinas.
I try not to notice the square-shaped building directly ahead, two stories high, with more men patrolling the flat roof as they hug their weapons and stroke the cold metal.
“You saw,” Sebastion murmurs quietly. Secretively. “I know you did. You’re here now, and despite what you think, you’re not a prisoner.”
“Can I leave?” I stumble over my own feet and count on his firm grip to keep me upright. “If I decide I’m done, can I get in a car and drive away?”
He drags me through a wide doorway and inside the massive sand-colored building. “No. Because driving away would mean knowing where we are.”
“So then I’m a prisoner.” I cling to his hoodie the way I clung to a special blanket until I was ten. Maybe even twelve. I borrow its waning warmth, despite the coldness it represents.
Powerlessness. Control. Coercion. Abuse.
He leads me through a room barren of furniture or any semblance of homely comfort, but not of men with guns, and moving through another doorway, he nods as we pass someone he obviously knows. Then another.
Half of them are masked. Half are not. He seems to recognize even those whose faces are obscured.
“Sebastion!” A woman’s voice cuts through the building, booming and vicious, so the soldiers who scared me a moment ago shrink back.
Sebastion pulls me to a stop as a whole friggin’ army descends upon us.
Soldiers stand in a kind of flying-duck formation, fronted by a beautiful, olive-skinned, raven-haired woman with enough anger in her eyes to make grown men tremble.
She looks me up and down with palpable contemptuousness so even Sebastion’s hatefulness seems… gentle.
“Get. Her. Out.” The woman, so obviously Arabella Aster, points a stabbing finger straight over my shoulder. “Now.”
Sebastion’s fierce grip on my arm relaxes. He doesn’t release me completely, but he allows for blood circulation again and tugs me forward another dozen steps until we come to a stop just three feet from the woman and her sizzling eyes.
“Scarlett Castro.” Not all that enthused, he tilts his head to the side and cracks his neck with an audible pop. Then he gestures to the woman. “Arabella Jameson. Mom,” he grits out. Almost like he’s warning her to be nice. “This is Scarlett.”
Arabella’s viciousness doesn’t soften once names are exchanged. If anything, I feel like she dislikes me even more now than she did a minute ago.
“Twenty-five years old.” She settles her weight on one leg and pops her hip to the side. “House cleaner for the wealthy. Based out of Denver, Colorado. One sibling; male. Two parents, still alive.” She meets Sebastion’s eyes. “Murdered her lover in cold blood.”
Oh God. My breath comes out on a choking gasp. “H-how did you—”
“My son has been neglecting his duties for more than three months, Ms. Castro. Choosing instead to dedicate his time to your brother and a woman named Nova Nichols.”
“I was protecting the family!” Sebastion snarls.
“And then Lincoln’s murderous sister comes to town, all perky and beautiful and oh-so-needy, and suddenly, protecting the family is no longer a priority.” Furious, her nostrils flare as she brings fiery eyes back to her son. “A little cliché, don’t you think, baby?”
“I think we would benefit from a private conversation, considering the delicacy of our current circumstances,” he growls.
“Scarlett is staying with us until I decide otherwise. I’ll show her to her room, then I’ll be available to continue this discussion.
” His eyes flash with anger. “We don’t do this with an audience, Mother. ”
“You wish for privacy?” Arabella’s rising voice forces dozens of her soldiers to shrink back.
Are they all her sons? All terrified of Mom?
“I, too, wish for privacy, Sebastion. For three decades, we’ve maintained that privacy.
But now you bring…” Disgusted, she finishes her sentence with nothing more than a look of disdain.
“She is my guest,” he snarls. “I expect her to be treated as such.”
“She is a threat to everything we’ve built! A threat to everything we are!”
“She needs protection!” he barks back, while beside her, a guard Arabella keeps close reveals stunned surprise with his widening eyes.
Perhaps shouting at Arabella Aster is not a common occurrence around here.
“I will reiterate: she is my guest. This means she will be treated as a guest, and not a fucking detainee. She will be spoken to with respect, and if you cannot manage that, I suggest you don’t speak to her at all. ”
“Sebastion.” A man steps forward on Arabella’s left. He’s older than Sebastion. Older than basically all of the guards. “Retreat. Reassess.” He clicks his fingers and brings two other men closer. “Take Ms. Castro to the guest quarters. Put her in the end room—”
“No.” I stumble back on a cry and wrench my arm from their grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
“She’s staying in the house.” Sebastion warns his men back with just a look, then he brings his furious eyes up to his equally furious matriarch.
“She did not drive herself here. She does not know our location. And she was blind all the way to our gates.” He wraps his hand around the strap of my bag.
“She is not a threat, she’s not a liability, and she will not become the scapegoat you’ve desperately been searching for. ”
He stares down each of the guards for a long, loaded beat. Ten seconds. Twenty. Maybe even thirty. He shows no fear, despite the fact we’re outgunned, thirty to one. Then he turns from his mother with a shake of his head and leads me away. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“Thirty years, Sebastion!” Her fury makes way for vulnerability. Her hard words make way for a tremor, subtle as it may be. “This is your family, this is our safety, and you trade it for a woman?”
“You mistake this for a trade,” he bites out, his marching steps dragging us forward.
“Our safety remains intact, my family is secure, and our location will forever be protected. Let’s go.
” He pulls me back the way we came, through a long line of armed guards and a heavily insulated doorway, but before trudging into the darkness outside like I thought we would, he tugs me left and leads me along a different hallway.
“You can basically look anywhere now. It doesn’t matter.” His iron grip on my bag keeps us moving at a brisk pace. His jaw flexes and grinds, because his entire mission, he already told me, revolved around that woman back there.
And he’s just openly, loudly, defied her.
“I’ll show you to your room. It has an attached bathroom, so you don’t have to worry about sneaking out to pee. I’ll set a guard on the door—”
“To keep me in?”
His eyes flicker down to mine. Considering.
Thoughtful. Then he shakes his head. “To make you feel safe. If you wish to leave the room, you can. Any time. If you wish to walk around the property, you may. Pretty much anywhere. The places you can’t go are signposted, so as long as you obey those signs, you’ll be fine.
If anyone gives you trouble, tell them to speak to me.
We’ll pass through the kitchen on the way to your room, so you know where to come when you’re hungry.
Meals are served at six, twelve, six, twelve.
If you’re hungry outside of those hours, you’re free to forage in the pantry. ”