I cared so much about her and triple checked that she was safe and out of harm’s way before I got sentenced.
See, I’m in love with my brother’s ex-wife, and there is no chance in hell we can ever be together. He will kill her, and I’ll never forgive myself. So I’ve always stayed a hundred steps away from her to stop myself from bringing her to where she belongs.
Safe in my arms.
“He told me to come here. To send you a message.” She covers her mouth with her hand and lays the phone on her shoulder to take a moment to get herself together.
Her dark hair has lost its luster and shine. Her nails are short, and I can see where she’s been picking at the cuticle from the stress she’s been under. When she slides her eyes to mine, she places her hand on the glass, and I don’t hesitate to do the same.
Damn it.
I hate the one thing keeping us apart is something my brother put between us.
“He said if you try to keep me from him again, the next thing he will send you—instead of me alive—will be my head. Then, he said he will kill you, Sebastian.”
“No.” I shake my head, in complete denial. “No. He won’t. He won’t ever be able to touch me. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“You have to let me go,” she admits, but she doesn’t mean the words.
“Gabriella, no. We can do this. In a year, I’m out. I’ll keep you safe. I can do that. I can keep you safe.”
“I won’t be alive in a year, Sebastian. You and I both know that.”
“You have to keep fighting. You must keep running. I’ll find you, Gabriella. I always do. Don’t give up.” I want to tell her not to give up on us, but there never was an us, and there never will be.
My brother will never allow it.
“It isn’t about giving up, Sebastian,” she says, wiping her cheek. “It’s realizing that I’ll never get out of the situation I’m in. And it’s about you. Your life doesn’t need to revolve around keeping me safe.”
“What life?” I ground through the emotion in my chest. “You’re my best friend—”
“I’m nothing to you now, Sebastian. I can’t be. We can’t communicate. I will not write you back. Save yourself from him. Okay? I can’t, but you can. You still have time.”
“No!” I slam my fist down on the table.
“Keep it down!” Andrews shouts at me, hitting the wall with the baton to make his point.
I take a deep breath and claw my fingers into the old worn wood of the counter. My body shakes with anger. I want to bust through the glass and hold her, to tell her everything is going to be okay, but I can’t lie to her anymore. I have no idea if things will ever be okay again.
If she goes back to my brother, Gabriella will be nothing but a ghost to me. I’m haunted in many ways, and losing her will put me in purgatory, where the doomed, broken, and dangerous are meant to be.
“Goodbye, Sebastian,” she sobs my name and hangs up the phone with a soft click as I stare at her.
There’s no doubt she can see my pain. “No, Gabriella! Gabriella!” I shout for her through the glass. She presses her palms against the counter as she stands. I notice the light pink handprint around her throat when she moves her hair off her shoulder. The bastard tried to choke her. “Don’t do this,” I beg. I hit the phone on the receiver and bang my fist against the glass. “Gabriella. Please!” She gives me her back as she walks away, no doubt hearing my muted cries behind the glass. I bang my fist until the glass cracks. “Gabriella,” her name breaks in half as my throat turns raw from the amount of force I use to stop her from walking away from me.
Something hard hits against my head and spittle flies against the glass. “Shut the hell up!” Andrews says, hitting me with his baton to subdue me. I struggle against him, still shouting for Gabriella to stop, but she walks out the door, leaving me wondering if she’ll survive the madness that is my brother.
Andrews let lose all his pent-up aggression with every abusive swing. I don’t feel it.
All I feel is the pain of knowing I’ll never see her again. The moment Gabriella walked out this prison and ended out agreement, she signed her death warrant.
One more year, and then, revenge is mine.
Chapter One
SEBASTIAN
Present Day
“Yeah, I have the blueprints right here,” I say into the microphone in an annoyed huff as I stare at the layout of the building. “Yes, Owen. The vault is to your left.” He turns right, and I want to yank the earpiece from my ear and be done with this fucking job. “You idiot. Your other left!” Owen stresses me out. I cross my arms and pinch the bridge of my nose to breathe in and out. It takes all I have not to get out of the van and run into the building to knock sense into him.
Owen is brute force, but he’s so aloof. I often wonder if common sense missed him completely or what.
“Why didn’t you just say that?” he replies, and I want to ball up the blueprint and say the hell with it and let the guys figure it out on their own, since they think they’re so damn smart.
It isn’t all the time I get to join in on the action. I’m great with computers. I can hack into any security camera and make the security guards see what I want them to see most days. If I can follow where the guys are going and switch cameras from point A to point B, we get jobs done without a hitch.
Jaxon had to out a few of the guards, spill some blood, which isn’t new, but it has never been my thing. I like to stay behind the computer, work my magic, get my brothers in and out safely. That is my job, and I’m good at it.
“Richard Fuerez is going to be pissed,” Owen snickers. That bastard gets off on ticking people off. He is weird like that. Owen is more bloodthirsty than Jaxon, Grayson, and Heaven. Sometimes when he gets on a roll and needs to let out some of his built-up anger, he’ll disappear for days, then come back soaked in blood.
We never ask.
He’s never told us what it is about.
We leave it alone.
If he doesn’t get caught, Jaxon doesn’t really care what Owen does. Jaxon is the man in charge, the guy who created this misfit group of innocent criminals; only we aren’t so innocent now. I guess we are more like vigilantes these days and take the law into our own hands. That is fine by me. I never really liked how the criminal justice system worked anyway. They fuck up too much.
We never fuck up.
“Owen, you have a guy coming up on your right.” I peer into my monitor and then take a swig of whiskey out of my flask. Ever since I got out of prison, there are two things I never go without.
My flask.
My whiskey.
It’s only the expensive shit that I have imported. I never knew how much I loved a good bourbon until I had to go five years without it. Now, there is only one thing I wanted more than anything when I got out of prison, and that was to finally feel a woman again, but after Gabriella left, finding someone to sleep with wasn’t important anymore. Gabriella is the priority.
I’ve looked for her. I’ve searched the dark web. I get notifications of every death in the world on my computer, filter the women within her age range, hair, and hope like hell she doesn’t appear. I have facial recognition software that alerts me if any cameras found her.