**

December 23rd, 10:23 PM

SEBASTIAN

It amazes me, how I continuously seem to fuck up the moment I think I'm doing something right.

Leslie just left me. Well, not in that sense—we weren't' together in that way, even though we were only one step away from getting to that point. No, she left me, here in Salvador's library because I lied to her. Well, I lied to her, then yelled at her and told her that Alejandro was playing her in a room of her colleagues; her own assistant (who was fucking Claude behind our backs. I should have known—that bastard, him). I shouldn't have yelled, but the moment my mouth opened, the words wouldn't stop. They just kept flowing out of me; she's such a pain in the ass, the way she interrogates me. I couldn't help myself.

I stand, looking at the door that she walked out of. My chest hurts; the look in her eyes is still engraved in my mind—those big brown eyes, filled with hurt and betrayal. I made myself believe I was doing her a favor by keeping secrets and compromising her privacy. What the fuck was I thinking?

I turn around and look at the three of them staring at me—Claude, Penny and Darcy. Darcy has more contempt in her look than anyone else. Maybe she can't stand to look at Claude (where the stare is deserved) so she looks at me instead. Or maybe she hates me for hurting Leslie. Either one is justifiable.

The anger rises in me as the moment that I screamed in Leslie's face plays over again and again in my mind, and once it rises to the very top, I grab one of the stain-glass lamps on the small table with an eager hand and throw it against the bookshelf, yelling profanities as the glass shards disperse and shatter into millions of pieces. Breaking shit and cursing isn't going to fix any of this—I know that. Claude and Penny know that. Hell, even Darcy knows this. She stares wide-eyed at me and the mess, both literal and figurative, that I have made.

"Sebastian—"

"Don't." I hold a finger up in between Claude and me. I'm fuming. "Don't say a fucking word."

"I know you're upset—"

"That's an understatement, Claude." The more I look at him, the more I want to scream at him. "It's bad enough that the woman I love hates my existence, but now I have to deal with the fact that you slept with her assistant to what? Make your job a little easier?"

Claude scratches his beard, avoiding my eyes. "That was poor judgment on my end."

"Poor judgment?" Darcy stands up, doe eyes in Claude's direction. "So, what we did was 'poor judgment'?"

"No, that's...I-I mean, yes." Claude tries to near her, only making Darcy take a step back. "The motive was poor judgment. But everything else...I meant that."

"How can you mean anything? You...you slept with me so you could spy on my boss. You took my virginity, Claude. You knew this!"

Claude is silent now. I've never seen him so unsure of himself. When we were on our way here with Marcella, we were filled with so much optimism. Marcella was a bargaining chip—a ghost from the Quintanilla's past that would surely grant me my freedom. Salvador agreed to cut ties with Harrison Incorporated and all other affiliates once he knew how much of a threat Marcella was. But he wasn't the only one who knew the threat she posed—Alejandro shit bricks when she came into the house. He was supposed to kill her over a decade ago; Salvador ordered him to. But he didn't. Because he loved her.

Look where love gets us?

Penny acts as the mediator and reminds us of more "pressing" matters—the fact that Leslie knows, and that she is most likely going to press Alejandro about the issue. Now all heads are turned towards me, since I'm the one who couldn't keep my mouth shut.

"I'll go find her," I propose, although I'm certain that I'm the last person she wants to talk to. I don't want to entertain the thought that maybe I'm the one who ends up breaking her heart in the end. This epiphany hurts more when I realize that everything I've done to try and protect her has only hurt her.

Penny puts a hand on my shoulder. "No. You stay here."

"Penny—"

"Just stay here." Her eyes are grave, like she knows the consequence if I were to leave. "I'll go find her. Just...stay here."

Her hand waves between all of us as if we're a mess that can't be shown to the outside world; waving, telling us to stay put. She leaves, and the room becomes quiet. I sit on a chair and hold my head in my hands.

What have I done?

Darcy walks to a corner, wanting nothing to do with us. Claude and I have a lot of shit we need to talk about; a lot of shit we need to ask each other. But Darcy's presence makes that impossible for more than the obvious reason of secrecy: Claude is thinking about her too heavily. And so am I; I think of her. How I fucked up and let her down. I try to remember that Alejandro is the asshole that's to blame for this, but that doesn't mean I'm innocent.

After a few moments, Darcy walks up to me. It's hard to take her seriously when her expression is always innocent, like she wouldn't even hurt a fly. I'm surprised after sticking his dick in her that Claude actually developed feelings for the girl. His type is more along the lines of "femme fatale" or at least a tattooed felon. Not a bright eyed early-twenty-something who lives with her cat and, apparently, has never had sex before.

"When Leslie comes back up here, you are going to apologize," she tells me sternly. I look up at her, trying to find the right words to say; after the heated conversation Leslie and I had, she thinks I wouldn't have the decency to fucking apologize?

"Darcy," I rub my eyes. "Darcy, now isn't a good time for this shit."

"Now is the best time." Tears well up in her eyes now, catching Claude's attention. "Leslie is a good woman. A great woman. She works hard, looks out for others and doesn't hurt anybody. She didn't deserve having cameras put in her office and she didn't deserve being humiliated by you, regardless if what Alejandro did was true or not. The least you could do is sincerely apologize and vow to never bother her again."

Not only is Darcy dead serious, but it's clear that it required a lot of effort for her to say that to me. Everything she said was true—hell, it was an understatement about Leslie. But I never saw what I was doing as a "bother" until now.

I nod once, which is the easy part. The hard part is when Leslie comes into the library again, and that's even if she even agrees to go with Penny. I don't know what kind of apology would suffice; there's still truth I haven't told her. Everything about the Quintanillas is still unknown to her. If she knew, maybe she would understand more.

I hear footsteps nearing the library and stand. I go over what I'm going to say; I'm going to tell her the entire truth. The moment she walks through the door, I'm going to tell her everything and beg her to forgive me. But frantic speech in Spanish outside the door completely changes my mind, because in that second, I know that it isn't Leslie on the other side.

I only have a few seconds to react when the door is busted open, Alejandro standing on the other side with Paisa next to him. A few seconds—I see the gun in Alejandro's hand, and in the three seconds I have to react, I look to Claude, who unsheathes his weapon and without hesitation pulls Darcy behind him, but once he sees the gun aimed at me, he lunges forward in front of me, but it's too late.

A few seconds. That's all it takes before Alejandro fires the first shot.

The anger on Alejandro's face is unmatched. He pulls the trigger; the sound is deafening. I'm thrown to the ground by the couch right before the bullet can enter my brain, where Alejandro is aiming. The bullet tears through a portrait hanging on the wall, almost destroying the canvas. As I'm on the ground, I hear the deafening sound again, only it comes from Claude firing back. Alejandro is relentless. He keeps shooting until Paisa and another comrade of his tackle Alejandro to the ground. But the last bullet escapes Alejandro's gun before he's tackled. There's a wail, then whimpering. Alejandro is dragged up and hauled out of the room as the screams amplify from the rest of the house. I look up and stare in horror.

Darcy.

The bullet entered the slender flesh of her thigh. Everything seems to freeze in place as we see it—all the blood. The fucking blood coming out of her leg. Her laments of pain are piercing. I can't move; I don't know what to do or how to react. I just watch her there until my senses kick in again and I am able to react.

Claude jolts up and races to her side. She tries to apply pressure and stop the blood; she tries desperately not to panic. Claude snakes his arms underneath her and almost picks her up, but I stop him. Alejandro is gone—he's loose. My first thought after Darcy is to get Leslie out of the house.

"No." I hold Darcy close, examining the wound. "Go get Leslie."

Claude's nearly speechless. "I...I can't—"

"Go!" I scream at him. "Get Leslie out and come back with help! I'll stay with her!"

We both know that our roles make the most sense—we wouldn't be able to think clearly, logically, if the spots were switched; if I went after Leslie and he stayed with Darcy. We let our emotions get in the way of making smart decisions when it comes to them, Claude more than I would have ever fucking guessed.

Reluctant, Claude stumbles up, gun in his hand and blood on his shirt, and runs out of the library. Darcy is crying and panting, scared to continue touching her saturated leg. I ease her with words as I take off my jacket and tie it around the wound, applying pressure. If I'm being honest, I don't know what to do. My hands are shaking out of fear and fury, but I focus in on the issue in front of me and continue applying pressure.

"Stay calm, sweetheart," I tell her. "It's going to be alright."

She can't speak, afraid that words will rob her of the ability to breathe. The blood coming out of her leg has seeped through my jacket, so I take off my top button up and use it to apply more pressure to the wound. I hold her close to me, her body stiff and in shock. Fuck, I don't know what to do.

Darcy begins sweating as she tries to breathe smoothly to calm herself down. I keep apologizing and telling her that everything is going to be alright, but even I know that it's bullshit—this is all my fault. I'm the reason this happened to her. Fuck, this is all my fault.

Claude finally rushes back into the library with Penny at her side. Darcy is quieter now, in Claude's arms as he carefully carries her out of the library. We rush to the hospital, everything a complete blur as she's admitted, as we're questioned on what happened. We're forced to lie—we can't lie about the gunshot, but we can lie about who shot her and why.

Claude is restless in the waiting room. Penny suggests we should call Darcy's family, but Claude then informs us that she has none. So, we wait.

I want to call Leslie, but it isn't the smartest thing to do, especially in this moment. Claude told me that she's alright and on her way to my house, where she'll be safe.

"You should go," Penny tells me.

I look up at her from my chair. "Why?"

"Because it's only a matter of time before someone recognizes you if they haven't already."

Penny's right. But my moral compass is pointing me in another direction. I don't want to leave Darcy, knowing I'm the reason she was shot. I don't want to neglect messes I've made, and I tell Penny this. She replies, honestly, that with the type of person I am, I have people who clean the messes up for me. I don't know if this was supposed to console me in any way, or just Penny's frequent spurts of brutal honesty.

Promising him that she'll come back, Penny leaves Claude in the waiting room as she and I discretely slip out of the hospital and back into the car. The place that we parked in the garage is empty; we picked an isolated spot. But clearly, this spot wasn't isolated enough.

Salvador found us.

He stands by our car, hands in his pockets, face riddled with anxiety and menace. Penny and I don't move when we see him. Slowly, he nears us.

"How is she?" he asks. His voice is sincere, but my pride won't let me answer. His affiliation with Alejandro is enough for me to hold him accountable.

"This wasn't supposed to happen, son," he says to me, as if his term of endearment was warranted in the first place, "but we lost control of him."

I roll my eyes, refusing to look at him. "You talk about him like he's some wild animal."

"He is," Salvador answers. He's serious.

The men that have accompanied him start to disperse and keep watch as Salvador intends to dive deeper into the conversation.

"Something in Lobo snapped tonight," he explains. "Could have been Marcella."

That's likely. But what's also likely is Leslie having told him that I ratted him out; him watching Leslie walk out on him. I promised I wouldn't tell. Now it seems I'm the bad guy for breaking a promise.

"I don't care about what hurt his feelings," I say. "The fucker shot Darcy, trying to kill me. The asshole tried to kill me."

"I understand you're upset, son. You have every right to be. Not only has he tried to hurt one of my own business partners, but he has been working behind my back this entire time. He's been plotting my downfall; his escape. He hasn't paid off his debt, yet is trying to fuck us all over."

I look at Salvador. I can't find his intentions.

"What does that mean?" I ask. It's a loaded question.

Salvador sighs, and when he does, Penny and I exchange one look before he says:

"Alejandro needs to die."

**