Page 80 of Forbidden Sins

Vito is shouting orders, his face contorted with rage. A bullet whizzes past my ear, so close I feel thewhooshof it passing by. I dive behind a parked car, my heart threatening to burst from my chest.

Sebastian appears beside me a moment later, his face a mask of fury and fear.

"What the hell are you doing?" he hisses.

"Helping you," I gasp. "There are too many of them."

He looks like he wants to argue, but another volley of gunfire cuts him off. He peers around the car, then ducks back down.

"Stay low," he instructs. "When I move, you cover me. Understand?"

I nod, though I'm terrified. Sebastian squeezes my hand once, then rolls out from behind the car, firing as he moves to a new position. I lean out and fire blindly in the direction of Vito's men, praying I don't hit Sebastian.

Everything is a blur, the shouts of the men, and the screams of pain, and the crack of gunshots making my head swim as my ears ring. I try to cover Sebastian, although I have no idea what I’m doing. My gun clicks after the sixth shot, empty, and I keep pulling the trigger anyway, adrenaline coursing through me as I move without thinking.

I don't see the man who comes up behind me until it's almost too late. I turn just as he raises his gun, and swing my revolver out of pure fear, striking him across the face hard enough to send him to the side, his shot going wide as he fires. I hear another shot and see him crumple, blood pouring from his chest.

"Estella!" Sebastian's voice snaps me back to the present. He's pinned down behind a stack of wooden pallets, blood seeping through his shirt at the shoulder.

Fear crashes through me.He’s hurt. Tears burn at the corners of my eyes, but I run toward him, ducking as another bullet flies past me. I hear Vito screaming at his men to stop shooting, promising all kinds of pain if anyone accidentally harms me.

"We need to go," Sebastian gasps as I reach his face, pale with pain. "Now."

I nod, noticing for the first time a burning sensation in my side. Looking down, I see a tear in my shirt, blood staining the fabric. I've been hit too, though the adrenaline had masked the pain until now.

Sebastian’s face goes even whiter, pinched with fury as he sees it. He glances back toward the parking lot, and I know he wants to murder every single one of the men out there for so much as scratching me. But we need to get away.

“Can you run?” Sebastian bites out, and I nod.

“Yes.” I don’t know for sure, but I know there’s no choice. We have to go.

Together we make a break for the back of the motel, where a chain-link fence separates the property from a dense patch of woods. Gunfire follows us, bullets splintering the wood of the fence posts as we scramble over.

We run through the trees, the sounds of pursuit growing fainter behind us. I hear the growl of engines in the distance. My side is on fire now, each step sending a fresh wave of pain through my body. Sebastian isn't doing much better, his breathing labored, his grip on my hand weakening.

“We need a car,” Sebastian bites out. “Hurry.”

We veer down a road, keeping close to the trees until we see a gas station. Sebastian runs for the first empty car he sees next to a pump, a black pickup truck that looks fairly new. He motions for me to get in, and I run for the passenger’s side, the guilt that I feel over stealing someone’s car completely muted by my fear.

Sebastian yanks out the wires from beneath the steering column, hotwiring the car in a matter of seconds. I hear someone shout as he floors it, pulling away from the gas station, but he doesn’t so much as falter. He speeds away, pulling onto back roads as we try to put as much distance as we can between us and Vito’s men.

I have no idea how long we drive for. Hours until the afternoon has turned to nighttime, and Sebastian finds another out-of-the-way motel, many back roads and exits away from where we fled.

“We’ll get another car in the morning,” he murmurs, his voice hoarse as we stumble out of the truck. He grabs the hoodie I took from the apartment, throwing it over his shirt to hide the blood so that he can get us a room without anyone asking questions. The clerk isn’t paying much attention to either of us, and Sebastian gets a key for room twenty-four on the upper level. The stairs feel almost impossible, and by the time we stumble into the new room, we’re both barely standing.

He turns to me, his face a mask of fear and regret, and I shake my head quickly as I lock the door behind us.

“I don’t regret it,” I whisper softly, the room swimming around me as I sink down on the edge of the bed. “Not even a little bit.”

26

SEBASTIAN

The thought that Estella’s been hurt because of me makes me wish I’d killed every one of Vito’s fucking men before we ran. I wish I could have. But getting us both out of there was more important.

“Let me see,” I murmur, gesturing to her side.

Estella starts to move her shirt, but gasps with pain, her hands dropping as soon as she tries to raise her arm. I kneel down in front of her, gently peeling the fabric away from the wound as she lets out a whimper that cuts straight to my heart.

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