Page 87 of Sebastian

“Cap. Get downstairs. Emma’s hurt. It’s bad.” The phone immediately disconnected.

What the fuck? She was supposed to be with Natalie last night. What could have fucking happened? Why hadn’t they gotten a notification anything was wrong from Natalie’s security system?

Jumping up, Seb grabbed a pair of sweatpants and the first t-shirt he could find and dressed as he ran out of his apartment. As soon as he came down the stairs, he could see Gage, kneeling on the sidewalk next to a crumpled figure. Wetness surrounded the spot on the sidewalk where they were, and nothing added up in his mind.

“What’s going on?” He raced towards them. “What the FUCK happened? She was supposed to be with Natalie!” His heart slammed violently in his chest as he took in the scene before him.

Emma was covered in blood, Gage holding his shirt over what he could only assume was a wound in her belly. She looked so small and broken. As his eyes swept over her body, Seb fought the nausea rising into his throat as he saw hundreds of cuts all over her beautiful skin.

“What the fuck happened, Gage?” His voice trembled, thick with tears.

“I-I don’t know, Cap. I just found her like this.” Seb watched Gage’s panicked eyes searching up and down the street. “Where is that fucking ambulance? She’s going to bleed out.”

Sebastian fell to his knees next to her, gently placing his hand on her arm, terrified that touching her anywhere else might cause her pain. He felt for the pulse in her wrist and her neck, but couldn’t feel anything.

“I can’t find her pulse. Fuck! Keep pressure on that wound. I’m going to start CPR.”

“Oh fuck,” Gage whispered, his head whipping wildly back and forth between Emma and the sound of sirens.

“Don’t you dare leave me, Sprinkles. Not now. Not like this. You fight. You don’t let him win.” His arms ached from the force he was having to exert to pump Emma’s heart, but he wouldn’t stop. Not ever. Not until she came back to him. There was still so much to say, so much to do. “I love you, you hear me? I love you so much, Emma, and I need to be able to say it to you with your beautiful hazel eyes staring at me. I need you to fight, Em. Fight, damn it!”

He felt her rib crack, and wanted to cry. Tears burned at his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. If they did, they would overwhelm him, and Sebastian needed every fiber of his being to be focused on saving Emma.

He pushed, and pushed, not relenting on the chest compressions. Not even when an arm touched his shoulder. Not even when he heard Gage’s voice off in the distance yelling at him.

“You have to let the EMTs do their job, Cap. You have to move.” Gage hauled Sebastian away from Emma, his attention finally breaking free from the tunnel he’d been trapped in.

“She has a pulse.”

He’d never heard more beautiful words in his whole life.

In a flash, Emma had been moved into the ambulance, and the doors closed around her.

“We have to go, Gage. I need to be there with her.”

He nodded. Seb reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, handing them to Gage without a second thought. There was no way he could drive without wrecking. All he wanted was to be with her. To hold her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her. The thought that he may not ever be able to was too much to bear.

Twenty-Eight

“I fucking failed her, Gage. She was in danger and I just trusted she would be safe with that fucking security system. We need to figure out what happened.” Sebastian ran his fingers through his hair as he sat down in the hospital’s waiting room, pulling at the roots with all the pent up frustration raging inside of him.

“It’s not just on you. We all let her down. The guys and I should have been there. She begged me to leave her alone at Natalie’s so I could talk you into letting her help with getting Marco. I checked over the security system myself and told her to let me know when she wanted to leave. I don’t know how he could have gotten her without us knowing.”

“Has anyone checked on Natalie? Her daughter…”

“I called Hank a minute ago when I was getting a hold of the rest of the team. He’s got a deputy going out to check on them now, and he’s bringing Daisy here. Apparently last year, Emma legally assigned Daisy as the person to carry out her wishes for medical care in the case something happened that left her incapacitated.”

Sebastian nodded.

“The asshole fucking stabbed her. He sliced into her skin so many times I couldn’t count all the wounds. He tortured her, Gage. Fuck! I need to…I don’t fucking know. I need to beat the shit out of something.”

“We’re going to find him, Cap, and when we do, we’ll make him wish he’d never touched a single hair on her head.”

Stone, Hawk, and Nash walked off the elevator, eyes all landing immediately on Sebastian and Gage.

“Why the nine-one-one, Tracker? What’s going on?” Hawk’s gaze darted around the waiting room before landing on Seb.

He couldn’t get the words out. This was all his fault, and he didn’t know how to fix it. How was he supposed to face his team and tell them the woman that he loved suffered such extreme abuse because he hadn’t kept her safe.

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