Page 72 of Seducing Selena

The sound made me look. Stumbling and shuffling, one of his men brought someone forward and tossed him at our feet. He was so bloodied and bruised he was barely recognizable, and where he fell, he didn’t move.

“Steve,” Sebastian said. “Can you hear me?”

Steve. The man who had come into the dining room and told them about the shipment. He must have been in on everything. And told Delano. I cringed away from the sight. With how he looked, I didn’t blame him for telling them everything.

I broke after two minutes of torture. That would have taken hours.

Sebastian didn’t get a response.

“I should have listened to my gut when the three of you popped up out of nowhere,” Delano said. “But everything checked out. Everyone talked about how good you were, and none of your clients had anything bad to say about your business practices. However, I’m sure you know by now you can’t live long in this business without your instincts, and mine have been screaming about you ever since that bitch showed up.”

Derek’s hands tightened on me, but he said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say, and right now they had the upper hand. What could we do?

In the corner of my eye, Delano shook his head. “I do have to hand it to you. You played your roles well. And if you hadn’t been so fucking protective of some Omega cunt, you would have gotten away with it. Too many things didn’t add up, especially when you told me to fuck off. So I decided to ask some questions. And if you think my network will go down so easily, you don’t know me well.”

“I think we know you just fine,” Nick said.

“If you know me so well, you know I don’t leave anyone alive.”

A gunshot rang out, and I yelped, curling into Derek. The air was entirely still, and when I peeked out from my hiding place, Delano’s gun pointed at where Steve had lain. He wasn’t alive anymore. And part of me wondered if that was for the best, given the condition he was in. But the nurse in me grieved.

“Put her down,” Delano said.

“No.”

Another shot rang out, and Derek and I went down to the floor together. He grunted in pain, and I saw blood leaking from his shoulder. “Derek.”

“I’m all right,” he said quietly.

“Stand up, bitch.”

Derek tried to stop me, but he couldn’t with the bullet wound. I scrambled to my feet, incredibly conscious of the fact that I was only wearing Derek’s shirt and their cuffs.

“Come over here.”

Sebastian growled, the sound ripping through the air like a living thing. “I already told your man once. If you touch her, I will fucking kill you. That goes for you, and anyone who works for you.”

The smug smile on Delano’s face made my skin crawl. “Oh, I’m going to do a lot more than touch her. And the fact that you want her so fucking much is going to make this so much sweeter.”

Nick lunged for me, and all the guns came up. He wrapped himself around me protectively, but I recognized he wasn’t truly holding me.

“Don’t think I won’t kill her here,” Delano said. “Much as I want to play with her, watching you suffer would be just as fun. Take your hands off her.”

Looking down at me, Nick dropped his hand to my arm, sliding it down to the inside of my wrist. He pressed his thumb intentionally several times before stepping back, his eyes full of anguish.

What—

The tracker.

Nick was telling me they could find me. That they weren’t just letting Delano take me. And I already knew if there was any way for them to win this fight, they would. But anything they did would only end up with all four of us dead.

It wasn’t that they weren’t fighting for me. It was that they needed to wait until they could win. I already knew they would fight for me.Hadbeen fighting for me even when I hadn’t known it.

I love you.

He mouthed the words.

A retching sound came from behind me. “Take her before I have to see more of this disgusting sentimentality.”

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