Page 15 of Blackmailed to the Altar

I looked around and saw the melanin in the store, and I immediately relaxed. Sebastian seemed to know that I wouldn’t take too kindly to some run-of-the-mill franchise hair salon to take care of my curls.

I wanted my people.

I stared at my reflection in the salon mirror, trying to steady my breath as the stylist worked her hands through my hair, combing and stretching my curls out with mechanical precision.

“You’ve got that good hair, girl,” she murmured.

My teeth sat on edge, but I said nothing until she got to my crown. She tried to rake the comb from scalp to end, but it stuck not an inch down. “Oop, there it is.”

“There what is?” I grunted.

“Mother Africa, I was wondering where it was with the company you keep with you.” The stylist kept fixing my curls into a blowout, like she hadn’t insulted me, but I felt annoyed by everything she did after what she said.

It was always like this when I got my hair fixed, which was why I rarely went. I couldn’t stand stylists that went on and on about me having the good hair, or the good curls. The way she was talking made me highly uncomfortable.

“Stop,” Sebastian ordered.

The stylist didn’t heed. She kept combing, and grumbling about privilege, and I shrank in her chair. That uncomfortable feeling when a microaggression happened started filling mychest. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I’d rather finish my hair myself.

A gunshot rang out, and the other girls in the salon started screaming. The stylist who’d been working on my hair dropped dead to the floor. Sebastian stood in the middle of the salon, gun drawn toward them, and addressed the rest of the staff.

“Anyone else have a problem doing my mouse’s hair in silence?” he growled.

No one said anything, but one of the older women tsked. She brushed past Sebastian. “Put your gun away. I ain’t scared of it. My father was a part of the life.”

Sebastian snapped his fingers, and two of his men picked the dead stylist up, carrying her lifeless corpse out the back door of the salon.

The bright lights overhead were almost too much, their glare only adding to the surreal nightmare I was trapped in. I was here, sitting in a high-end salon chair, covered in blood. My body was stuck in fear from the entire situation.

Sebastian sat in the chair next to mine. “What’s wrong, little mouse?” His dark voice made me tremble in my chair.

I looked at the stylist in the mirror then back at him. “N-nothing,” I whispered.

“Leave us.” He motioned for the lady to leave, and she didn’t hesitate to put down her tools and leave us alone, along with everyone else in the salon. I didn’t know where they all went, but it was out the back door, and I sat with the Devil.

“Are you afraid of me?” He leaned back in the chair casually, like I wasn’t covered in a woman’s blood.

“You just killed someone in front of me. Don’t you have anything to say?” I muttered. I didn’t want to tick him off by raising my voice, but maybe I could use some of my techniques on him to get him to calm down.

He shrugged. “It was nothing.”

“Sebastian,” I mumbled. “It was not nothing. You need to talk about what just happened.”

His distant gaze flicked to mine in the mirrors. “Get used to it, little mouse. Something like this happens every day.”

I took a deep breath, focusing on grounding myself. “It wasn’t nothing. You killed her, and this isn’t the first time you’ve allowed anger to sway you. Your anger–”

“I said it was nothing,” he interrupted with a growl. “Drop it.”

“Sebastian,” I began again, more firmly this time. “This anger you carry; it’s destructive. You’re using it as a shield, but it’s only hurting you. This lifestyle, your role, it’s built on violence. It will eat you from the inside out. Tear you up inside.”

He scoffed. “My lifestyle? You mean what was chosen for me. I was raised like this, little mouse, and one brief therapy session will not change who I am.”

“Not overnight,” I admitted, my voice gentle but firm. “But change is possible if you want it. I’ve seen men like you before; men who think they’re trapped by their past, by their choices, by the lives they’ve been forced into. But you’re not just that, Sebastian. You’re more than this violence.”

His eyes narrowed, and I could see the flicker of something deeper behind them, something vulnerable. But then, just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by a mask of indifference.

“You know nothing,” he said, his voice flat. “You don’t know what it’s like to live in my world. The mafia isn’t a therapy case, little mouse. It’s survival. You can’t fix me, because there’s nothing to fix. This is who I am. A monster.”

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