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My veins turned to ice.
Faith shook me. "Sebastian?"
I couldn't even look at her. I pinched my eyes closed to stop myself from seeing what I knew would be in her eyes. Disgust. Hatred. Disappointment.
The rest of the table quieted, lowering their volume to a worried whisper.
"Give me that." Faith grabbed the phone and began to read it, a deep groove forming between her brows. "What the actual fuck is this bullshit?" She slammed the phone on the table. It didn't matter if she broke it. I'd buy a new one and frankly I was this close to wanting to chuck it into the river myself.
"Let me see." That was Dominic. He was no doubt reading the article himself. A series of expletives left his mouth.
I didn't need my sense of sight to know how things were going down. Like dominos, one by one everyone knew.
Everyone saw.
It was a long time ago. I was young. Twelve. Maybe thirteen. When some jackass came up to my mom in the parking lot of the laundromat. It was dark out, winter, after a long day of school and working at the hotel. Mom was tired, exhausted, really, and I was busy complaining about how I didn't have a Gameboy like all the other kids in my class.
One minute it was just the two of us and the next minute a man in all black had a knife at my mom's back and a hand bruising her wrist. Threatening her unless she gave him her purse. He must not have seen me, because even though I was young, I was tall. Lanky, but tall.
The second I saw the silver from the knife I jumped into action, distracting the man enough to startle him away from my mom. Lucky. We were damn lucky it didn't have the opposite effect.
The knife clattered to the ground, and I took that moment to run at him as fast as I could. Launching into him and sending us both onto the hard asphalt.
I landed with a thud, and it only took a millisecond to continue my attack. I hit the man hard while my mom cried and scrambled to call the cops.
They arrived minutes later, but I hadn't let up. I wouldn't let this man take away the one person in my life, and that drive kept me punching until my mom pulled me off of him. The man groaned on the ground as we waited for the sirens to reach us.
The whole thing had been caught on the grainy surveillance camera from the bank next door. It played on the local news station for multiple nights after that.
I was lauded as a local hero, and the laundromat even gave us fifty bucks in credits, which we used because we had to, but never at night. Only during broad daylight, even though it made my mom visibly nervous, always looking over her shoulder as if waiting for the assailant to return.
And it propelled me to my career in a subtle way I didn't want to acknowledge. That little nudge to make sure Mom would always be protected, physically and financially.
It was that event that changed my life. One of those pivotal moments that you remember in such acute detail. Every breath, every scent, every bodily reaction.
I felt it now. That heightened sense of awareness. Although this time it wasn't to protect my mom; it was my desire to protect the woman sitting next to me.
"Well obviously this is a complete crock of shit. You would never hurt me. We both know that. Hell, we all know that." Faith placed a hand on my cheek. "Don't you dare hide from me, Sebastian Steele. I know this isn't you."
I sucked in a breath and found her dazzling green eyes inches from mine.
"Don't worry, we can fight this," Dominic said authoritatively. "I'll call my lawyer right now."
"Don't."
The resulting silence was deafening.
"Sebastian, he can handle it," my brother insisted.
I turned to face Faith, willing everyone else in the room to leave but they stayed anyway.
"I hurt someone once."
Faith tilted her head. The gesture so innocent. Like she couldn't even imagine a world in which I might hit someone. "If you've hit someone, then I'm sure you had a good reason too."
