Page 39 of Forbidden Sins

He says nothing, and after a long moment, I pose another question. “What would you do,” I ask finally, looking up at him again, “if you were me?”

Sebastian’s expression turns guarded, and he takes so long to answer that for a moment I think he won’t. “It’s not my place to discuss that,” he says finally, and I grit my teeth in frustration.

“Sebastian,please.” I stand up suddenly, pacing toward him, and he takes a step back, as if he’s afraid for me to get too close. “Just talk to me. I feel like I’m losing my mind in all of this, and I just want to know?—”

His gaze meets mine, searching. Out here in the darkness of the gardens, their soft green has turned into something deeper. “You want to know what I would do if I were being forced into an arranged marriage?” he asks finally, and I nod.

Sebastian pauses, running a hand through his hair. “It’s hard for me to say, Estella.” He paces toward a lattice hanging with climbing roses, turning finally to look back at me. “I think that I wouldn’t appreciate being traded like a commodity. But I don’t know how I’d feel if I had an empire and a family’s wealth in my hands, responsible for it all. Maybe I would feel differently. I do understand the world you live in, and I know the rules aren’t the same.”

I glare at him. “So you think I should just accept it? Marry Vito or Mateo or Nico or Aleksi and do my duty as the Gallo heiress?” I take a step closer to Sebastian, and I see his jaw twitch in the darkness. He takes another step back, closer to the roses, and I follow, almost as if it’s a challenge to see which of us stops first.

“I didn’t say that.” Sebastian looks at me, and that aching pain is in his eyes again. “I mean—yes, Estella. Yes, you should marry one of them. It’s your duty, it’s what your father wants. It’s the right thing to do. It’s—” He swallows hard, and I take another step closer, until we’re both shrouded in the shadows ofthe rose lattice, the scent of them overwhelming around us as Seastian looks down at me. “But the thought of you with any of them?—”

He stops, and my heart pounds. It’s the closest he’s come to an admission. “The thought of me with them—” I prompt, and Sebastian shakes his head.

“Estella. We shouldn’t be having this conversation?—”

“Stop,” I hiss. “Stop talking to me like you’re my bodyguard, for once in your fucking life, and talk to me like I’m a person. Just?—”

“I did that,” Sebastian counters, his gaze intense as he looks down into my eyes. “The night your brother died. I crossed a line, princess, and I’ve been crossing them ever since, haven’t I? Ever since I walked into your fucking bedroom?—”

“I wish you had stayed.” I look up at him, my throat tightening. “I wish you’d stayed in that bed with me. I wish you’d crossed every single line, Sebastian,allof them?—”

“Fine,” he bites out, cutting me off before I can say another word, as if he can’t bear to hear what I might have said next. “You want to know what I think? I think that the thought of any one of them touching you makes me fucking sick to my stomach, princess. Vito looks at you like you’re a meal being served up to him on a gold fucking platter. Nico looks at you like you’re a trophy he’s already won. Mateo treats you like you’re his golden ticket to making something of himself. And Aleksi looks at you like he’s imagining filthy things every time you set foot in a room, things that make me wonder if I’m going to have to kill him myself to keep you safe.” Sebastian’s chest heaves as he speaks, breathless, his gaze fixed on mine. “That’s what I think of them, princess. And it fucking kills me every goddamn time I have to stand in a room and watch them fighting over you like dogs fighting over meat.”

I stare at him, stunned by the vehemence in his voice. “You’ve really thought about this,” I whisper, and Sebastian looks at me bitterly.

“It’s hard to think about anything else lately.”

I bite my lip, moving an inch closer. “Marilee said you look at me, too,” I whisper. “She said you look at me like you’d burn the world for me, Sebastian.”

He sucks in a sharp breath. “If I burn your world, Estella, you go down in flames with it.” He shakes his head, taking a step back, but there’s only so far he can go, with the roses behind him. “Don’t push this, princess. Just…”

There’s a plea in his eyes, and it almost stops me. But I press on, unable to stop, with him so close to confessing everything that I want to hear.

“I want to know how you feel,” I whisper. “I want to know what it feels like to choose something for myself, Sebastian. I want to know how it would feel to choose you.”

Sebastian’s jaw ticks. “You deserve choices, Estella,” he says quietly. “But I can’t be one of those choices.”

“Why?” I demand. “Why can’t you be? Because you’re my bodyguard? Because you don’t have a last name that my father can exploit, or money, or?—”

Sebastian chuckles, a dark, bitter sound. “I have plenty of money, actually, princess,” he says roughly. “Your father pays me well, and I don’t spend frivolously. But it’s not the kind of money your father respects. And it’s not what he wants for you.I’mnot what he wants for you?—”

“What if you’re what I want?”

I stare up at him, and I can see something raw and hungry in his face, a need that I feel too, pulsing through me like a second heartbeat.

“I promised to protect you,” Sebastian murmurs. “But I can’t protect you from your father, Estella, or this world, or theconsequences that come from defying it. I can protect you from things that come with knives and bullets and fists, but I can’t protect you from everything.” There’s something defeated in his voice, and it tears at my heart to hear it.

“You can,” I whisper, desperate. “I believe you can.”

“You don’t know enough about this world to say that.” Sebastian reaches out, his hands brushing over my arms, and I feel the hairs there rise in the wake of his touch. “Princess?—”

“Then what if I just want to feel something real, just once?” I whisper. “Before I have to make a choice I hate?”

Sebastian shakes his head sharply, and I see his breath hitch, hear it turn ragged in his throat. “Estella, you don’t understand what you’re doing to me. What could happen if you don’tstop?—”

“None of these men know me,” I bite out, my voice trembling. “None of them know anything about me except that I’m beautiful and rich and my father is a mafia don. They weren’t there when I cried myself to sleep over Luis, or when I wouldn’t eat, or when I shut myself away in rooms of the house and didn’t want to go outside. They weren’t there when I graduated from college, or when I finished my first painting on my own, or when I beat a record time running a mile. They haven’t been there for my best or my worst, my strongest or my weakest, Sebastian—youhave. And you’ve always made me feel like I was perfect.”

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