Page 19 of Sebastian

The second time I lied to him was right after our parents were killed. I insisted I was fine when we both knew I was having nightmares. Damien pretended to accept the lie, but he always remained nearby when I slept.

The third time I lied to him was just a few months ago, when I accepted the case I was currently working on. I knew Damien would turn down the case if asked. He’d claim it was too big for us to handle. So, I never told him about it.

Did omission still count as a lie?

Technically, I never said anything that was untrue, but keeping secrets from him felt like lying, so it was added to the list.

Now I’d just lied to him a fourth time. It still hurt, but I must have been getting better at it because Damien accepted the lie without question.

“Right, that nurse you told me about. The one with the lizard name.”

“Newts are amphibians,” I automatically corrected him even as I fought the nausea building in my gut.

“Yeah, that guy. Look, I hate to ruin your night, but I need you to get home as soon as possible. I just got a weird message.”

The rain started coming down harder and I turned up the windshield wipers. At night, water on the pavement made the road look like it had been encrusted with silver. It would have been beautiful, if not for the mix of guilt and dread cramping my stomach.

“Nothing is ruined. I was already on my way home. What do you mean you got a weird message?”

Damien started to say something, but I never heard him. My car suddenly lurched as it was struck from behind, causing the back wheels to spin over the wet asphalt.

“Fuck. What?”

I held tight to the wheel, struggling to get the car back under control. It swerved one way, then overcorrected and swerved the other. My heart pounded wildly in my chest, but there wasn’t even time to think. My hands acted on instinct, keeping the wheel pointed in the direction I needed to go.

The car settled back in the center of the road, and I breathed for the first time in what felt like years.

For a moment, I considered pulling over to inspect the car and see what happened, but years of experience hiding from the mafia told me to keep driving. I pressed my foot down on the gas and sped up.

In my rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of a car driving close behind me. I would have assumed they lost control in the rain and accidentally hit me, except their headlights were dark and they were tailing me too close to be an accident.

Whoever was sitting behind the wheel of the other car had hit me on purpose.

The other car—a black sedan that was almost invisible in the dark—lunged for my back bumper again.

“Fucking hell,” I shouted as I swerved, just barely avoiding another collision.

In the back of my mind, I realized I could hear Damien’s voice shouting at me through the still connected Bluetooth, but there was no time to answer him.

The black car sped up until it was right beside me, close enough for our wing mirrors to scrape against each other. Blackout windows blocked my view inside. The car may as well have been a ghost, emerging out of the darkness and driven by no one.

I slammed on the breaks, nearly hydroplaning on the wet road. The black car was taken by surprise and didn’t stop as quickly. I turned the wheel and sped off down a side street, trying to put as much distance between me and my pursuer as possible.

The black car followed, always just a few feet behind.

“Sebastian. What the hell is going on?”

My brother’s angry yelling finally registered in my brain, as he shouted frantically at me through the speaker.

“Someone just tried to run me off the road.”

The black car was gaining. I pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, but my car was old and was already pushing its top speed. It couldn’t go any faster.

There was less traffic at night, but Baton Rouge was a big city. Its streets were never empty. I swerved around a tan station wagon without slowing down. My rear bumper nearly clipped them. I flinched but kept my hands on the wheel.

Damien was still shouting, loud enough to drown out the thundering rain.

“What do you mean someone tried to run you off the road? What’re you doing? Get out of there.”

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