Page 146 of Boy of Ruin
Three days, and he’ll be back. We’ll make this work.
I fall asleep.
And I don’t dream, for the first time in a long time.
But when I wake up, I swear I’ve stepped into a fucking nightmare. I swear this must be what he sees when he closes his beautiful eyes.
Ella is bound and gagged, men all in black with masks over their faces—skeleton masks, but not bandanas, obscuring everything but their eyes—are in my house.
They’re in my fucking house.
I start to move, anger flashing through me as two men drag Ella down the hall.
She isn’t moving. I don’t think she’s…conscious.
The man closest to me has familiar eyes.
He reaches for me, but I scramble back on the couch, shuffling out of his way.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Sid Rain,” he snarls, and I recognize that voice.
I recognize the voice, and the eyes, and my skin crawls as the recognition renders me motionless.
Still.
Letting him touch me.
And not just my arms.
His hands, his body, he’s…all over me.
All over me, and he’s…
“M-Maddox.” The word comes out strangled as he climbs over me. I smell the warm scent of his cologne, and I marvel over the fact that he’s Maverick’s father.
That he’s…my father.
He leans down close, clamping his gloved hand over my mouth. “I’m not going to hurt you, baby.” He laughs against my skin, and despite his words, his free hand goes to my throat, curling around me, stealing the breath from my lungs. “But we both know you can’t live. Lucifer would be better off without you, and I can’t let this secret out.” He laughs again, fear coiling my muscles tight as his hand trails down from my throat, over my chest, to my stomach. “It’s a shame.” His words are distinct, even with the plastic of the mask against my cheek. “I think I was really ready to be a grandfather. But there are other things this baby will be good for. A sacrifice.”
His hand shifts from my mouth, to his pocket, then a cloth is pressed over my nose, rough and putrid.
I start to fight back, inhaling beneath his hand to take air while I still can.
But he starts to laugh as he lifts up, staring down at me.
That was the wrong thing to do—the inhale. Because everything seems fuzzy, my tongue thick in my mouth. My limbs are heavy, and I can’t think…
Nothing.
There’s nothing but a voice in my head that tells me as soon as I open my eyes, I have to do it. I have to do what my husband fears most.
I have to run.
“Did she not tell you?” I ask Lucifer, his silence unnerving. The only way I knew he was listening is his fingers digging deeper into my skin, his body brushing against mine. “Did Ella not—”
“She didn’t remember anything,” he finally says through gritted teeth. “She said she fell asleep on the couch, woke up underground. With Maddox.”
“I shot him,” I whisper, closing my eyes, relaxing into my husband’s touch for the first time in a long, long time. “I fucking shot him, but is he—”
