Page 65 of Drawn Together

I hurriedly got dressed, more out of embarrassment than anything else. Sebastian faced the opposite direction, giving me privacy, and started petting Marengo.

“Why are you treating me like this?” I asked, wiping my tears with my arm.

He turned back to me. “I’m not treating you like anything,” he said with feigned calm. “You blackmailed me, so I gave you what you wanted.”

The way he said it sounded so dirty, so horrible, so disgustingly wrong…

“You’d never do anything you don’t want to do,” I answered. All warmth had left my body, leaving me trembling and vulnerable before the man with whom I’d shared something so special and intoxicatingly wonderful.

“You’re right about that… I let you blackmail me once. Next time, I’ll be the one who speaks to your father, and I’ll do it to inform him that I quit.” His tone told me he was being totally serious.

I needed to get out of there. I couldn’t stand to look at his face, his blank, impersonal stare.

I mounted my horse without another word. I didn’t stop to see if he was behind me. I simply urged Philippe to run like we were being chased by the devil himself.

I pressed my lips together and blinked back the tears that were clouding my vision.

When I got off the horse and left him in his stall, I ran to the house without looking back. I didn’t want to see the satisfaction on Sebastian’s face when he saw that I was crying, that I had let him get back at me with such a low, painful blow.

I climbed into my bed and cried myself to sleep.

CHAPTER 18MARFIL

The morning after the “incident” in the barn, I refused to let Sebastian see how much I’d been affected by the way he’d treated me the night before. So I covered my red eyes, pink cheeks, and swollen lips in a magical layer of makeup that left me looking like new. The Dior foundation I’d bought a while back and had hardly ever used worked miracles on my skin.

I went down to the kitchen at noon, radiant, at least on the outside. Inside, all I could think about was how humiliated I was. I had never imagined Sebastian capable of doing something like that to me. Yes, it was true that I had blackmailed him, but it was obvious I wasn’t going to actually go through with it. Can you imagine me telling my father that I’d hooked up with my bodyguard? Not a chance. Sebastian knew I wasn’t being serious, and although it was wrong to threaten him, I didn’t plan on just accepting the way he’d treated me. There was no excuse for it.

We spent the day avoiding each other. The house was large enough that we didn’t have to cross paths, but if I left, he’d go wherever I went, so I spent several hours in my bedroom. Everything would be much easier when my sister arrived. She would be a good distraction for me, and if they let us, we might even be able to go into town.

As I was waiting for Gabriella to arrive, I saw Sebastian walking out of my father’s office with Logan. They both lookedmore serious than ever, and I wondered what they’d been discussing that made them avoid my gaze and turn away from me so abruptly.

But I didn’t have time to ask, because just then, the front door opened and Gabi appeared with a big smile on her pretty pink lips.

“I’m home!” she shouted, dropping her backpack and running over to me.

I hugged her tightly, genuinely happy to see her, and realized she’d had a major growth spurt in the past few months.

“You’re as tall as me!” I said, taking a closer look at her.

My sister was beautiful, a fifteen-year-old young woman who looked closer to being eighteen. She had light brown hair that brushed her shoulders and our father’s eyes: light brown framed by thick eyelashes. She had the body of a model—tall and thin, with gentle curves that deepened a little more with each year that passed—her twiggy legs on full display in those shorts she had on. Although that had more to do with her age than anything else. I was so happy to have her there, even though we were only going to be together a few days.

Wilson came up behind her, carrying her luggage, effectively putting an end to our embrace. Then our father emerged from his office to welcome my sister, who had always been closer to our father than I was. Living with her mother half the time had helped reduce the tense moments.

My father hugged Gabriella, looked at me over his shoulder, and then asked us to sit with him in the living room.

“Well, girls, now that you’re both here, there are some things we need to make clear,” he said as he brought a glass of brandy to his lips.

Gabriella looked at me, and her smile faded. Our father always knew how to spoil our good time.

“Gabriella, your sister was kidnapped and left at the hospital,”my father said. Gabriella already knew that, but I guess he wanted to remind us of everything that had happened. “For some reason that I still don’t fully understand, someone wants to harm her, and they could easily try the same with you. So I’m going to ask you both to keep your eyes open, and most of all, to listen to your bodyguards. Gabriella, you’re safe when you’re at school, but you, Marfil, need to continue to do everything Sebastian says. Do you hear me?”

Everything Sebastian says…

My gaze drifted to Sebastian, who had just appeared in the doorway. Wilson was standing beside Gabi, looking at us with a serious expression on his face. We both agreed, and Gabriella tried to lighten the mood by talking to us about boarding school. Then my father sent her to bed, and I took the opportunity to ask him if there were any new developments.

“There’s not much I can tell you, Marfil,” he said impatiently. He’d always hated spending more time with me than strictly necessary. “I don’t know who’s behind this, although I have a vague idea… Listen, the world I move in, when a deal goes sour or someone loses money, things can get very ugly. People will do anything for even just a few thousand dollars, and I move in the millions, do you understand?”

Of course I understood, but why the hell did I have to suffer for his sins?