“It’s Stella,” she pants. “Please, you have to come right now!”
Without hesitation, I follow her out of the building, and she ushers me toward the entrance. “What’s going on?” I demand. “Where’s Stella?”
“It’s her dad.” She points to the street as she tries to explain. “She met him outside to talk, but then he took off. Now the cops are after them, and there’s a huge barricade…”
My legs break into a run before she can finish, and Sybil tries to keep up the pace beside me. Between breaths, she yells something about a crash, and I feel like I can’t fucking breathe. Every word she utters is another crushing blow.Standoff. Weapons. Hostage.The worst-case scenario echoes through my mind to the tune of a broken record.
It’s happening again. I’m going to lose her.
Adrenaline drives me straight into the heart of the chaos. Leaping over a cop car, I scream for Stella as two officers come at me. Diving to the left, I narrowly avoid their grasp and bulldoze my way onto the scene. That’s when I find the silver Kia at the center of the commotion. The driver’s rear side is smashed in, and glass litters the asphalt beneath it.Stella is in that car.The car that at least a dozen agents are aiming their weapons at while they bark out their orders.
“Stella!” I bellow.
Vaguely, I hear them ordering me to stop, along with their threats to shoot, but the only thing I can think about is getting to her.
“Sebastian!” She peeks out the shattered window with wide, terrified eyes. That fear on her face punches me in the gut, but it’s the blood-soaked hair that sucks the life from me. I’m not thinking clearly when I yank the door open to get to her.
“Get back!” her father yells over the ruckus. “I’ll shoot you if I have to!”
“Sebastian, please!” Stella begs. “It will be okay, just go.”
“I’m not leaving you.” I turn my gaze on her father. “Your daughter is coming with me.”
“She isn’t going anywhere with you.” He squeezes Stella’s arm in his grasp, and when she winces in pain, I fucking lose it. I lunge across the seat and pop him in the face, momentarily stunning him long enough for me to unbuckle Stella. But before I can drag her from the car, he’s jamming a pistol into my jaw.
“Get out!” he roars. “Now.”
“Dad!” Stella screeches as I wrap my hand around the barrel and meet his gaze dead on. It’s obvious he isn’t thinking about his daughter as he attempts to wrestle the weapon from my grip, and I’m running out of fucking options. Stella’s trapped between us, and he’s likely to discharge the firearm any second.
“Get out, Stella.” I wedge my body into the open door, shoving against it as I struggle to maintain my hold on the gun. “Run, baby.”
Her horrified eyes meet mine for a split second, and in that second, I wish I could convey all the things I should have said to her. But there isn’t time now, and I need her to understand that more than I’ve ever needed anything else in my life.
“Go!” I demand. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She doesn’t believe me, and if I’m being honest, I don’t either. But if it comes down to my life or Stella’s, it will always be hers. A sob rips from her throat as she slides her body out of the narrow gap I’ve created for her, and when her father tries to pull her back, I leverage the weight of the gun to jam his fingers back with a satisfying crunch.
“Motherfuck!” he hisses as his hand falls limp in my grasp.
I can’t pry the weapon from his broken fingers, but regardless, he won’t be firing it anytime soon. With that disaster narrowly avoided, I turn my attention back to Stella and untangle myself from the car. To my horror, she’s surrounded by agents who still have their weapons drawn as they shout orders at her.
“Lay down on the ground!”
“She’s pregnant!” I yell. “She can’t lay on the goddamned ground!”
But they can’t hear me over the noise, and when I move to shield her body with mine, someone tackles me from behind. The air deflates from my lungs as I hit the pavement, and Stella screams at the same time a piercing shot rings out. Terror claws at me as I attempt to fight off whoever’s on top of me.I need to get to Stella.I need to make sure it isn’t Stella. But the weight on my back triples as I frantically seek her out. Time seems to slow down, and I can’t tell the difference between minutes or hours as I repeat the same mantra.
“Please,” I beg. “She’s pregnant!”
“Sebastian!” Stella cries out. “I’m okay. It isn’t me. I’m okay.”
I don’t trust her assurances. Not until the agents drag me to my feet and I see her. Somewhere during the chaos, my pitiful pleas must have registered because Stella is sitting in the back of an ambulance with her cardigan off while the EMTs examine her. And against all odds, she’s still breathing. My body sags into itself as I focus on that one simple fact.Stella is alive.
In a separate ambulance, her father is strapped to a stretcher with a bullet wound in his arm. And apart from appearing stunned and disoriented, it looks like he’ll be enjoying a long stay in prison after a brief hospital visit.
After the adrenaline crash, the uniformed officer releases me from his hold as an agent appears and begins to question me. But nothing else registers. My only focus is on Stella as they strap her in and prepare to take her away from me.
“I can’t do this right now,” I argue. “If you want to question me, you’ll have to do it at the hospital. I’m not leaving her.”