Page 70 of These Monstrous Ties
“That’s for damn sure,” one of the guys says. Atlas, I think. I keep forgetting they’re here. I wish they weren’t. I wish they weren’t watching all of this.
“Then what?” I ask, shrugging my shoulders. I want this shit to end. I want to forget Lucifer ever existed. I don’t even care if I don’t get to kill him. If he would just let me go, let us live separate lives. Stop fucking with my brother. “Why did you burn down Brooklin’s house? And the club? Kill the runner? What do you want from us?”
“Us?”he hisses. “You let him fuck around with other women, and you still align yourself with him?”
I flash him a deadly smile. He doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know the truth. It’s more fun this way. “You only got my first name, earlier,” I point out. He watches me carefully, as if I’m a bomb that might detonate at any moment. I swear everyone in this house is holding their breath, even Mayhem beside us. “But my last name…” I trail off and lick my lips, enjoying his angst. “My last name is Rain.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and then he pounds his fist against the wall, beside my head, and tears his hand from under my shirt. I think I know what he’s thinking. I want him to think it. He thinks I took Jeremiah’s last name.
He turns around, running his hands through his dark hair. I watch his back muscles flex beneath his shirt, how his hips narrow, how his jeans fit him so well.
Satan.
Lucifer.
The goddamn devil.
I stay against the wall, enjoying this moment. The moment I have something on him. For some reason, even if he hates me, he still wants me to be his. He wants to claim me. Own me. Before he destroys me completely.
The boys have stood up in the living room. They take steps toward us.
Lucifer whirls around to face me. “How could you?” he asks, shaking his head. “How could you?” His hands are still on his head, and I see the line beneath his bicep.
I force myself to look at his face. “I could ask the same of you. You left me in that forest. You fucking left me and you—”
Lights flash through the glass pane of the door at my side. I stop talking, my mouth snapping closed. More lights. Multiple vehicles.
Lucifer acts first, taking the gun from the table by the door. The rest of the Unsaints crowd around us, and Mayhem shoves me behind them. They peer through the glass pane, and Lucifer’s hand cups above his eyes to see better. I wait with bated breath. There’s no way Nicolas got to Jeremiah and back so fast. That would be impossible.
I stand off to the side, and Lucifer’s expression is unreadable as I stare at his side profile. His straight nose. Full lips. I want to bash his head against the glass and break that beautiful fucking face.
“It seems your owners came back early,” Cain mutters, smoothing down his dress shirt, muscles bulging beneath it.
I ignore the quip and shake my head. “Alexandria is too far.”
Lucifer glances at me. “Jeremiah didn’t want you to get too far away from him though, did he?”
It hits me. My brother had followed us here. Given the circumstances, I can’t exactly blame him for that.
“It’s okay, though,” Lucifer continues in his gravelly voice. I feel a chill slide down my spine. “I’d like you to be here for this.”
I frown at him. I see all five of the Unsaints, guns in hand, expressions tense, muscles flexing beneath their clothes. They’re not going to let my brother walk out of here alive. He left them. After they let an outsider into their little cult for his wicked crimes, he betrayed them. They probably took worse than a Death Oath to one another.
Not that the Death Oath meant anything. At least not to Lucifer.
As one, they all step back from the door. It’s eerie, how they move together. Lucifer yanks my arm until I’m in front of him. Mayhem reaches out and slides the lock free of the door, yanks it open, then rejoins the ranks.
Lucifer is in the middle with me, two boys flanking either side of us.
I see Nicolas first, rounding the sidewalk, and then my brother at his back, and fucking Kristof and Trey behind him. They all have guns. All of them except my brother.
I roll my eyes, but my heart leaps at the sight of them. Even fucking Kristof.
I want to get out of here. I want to get way from this shit. From my past. From what happened. I’m ready for it to end.
The four of them walk through the door one at a time, and Trey kicks the door closed behind him.
We’re thrown into darkness, muted only by the lamp on in the living room at our backs.
