Page 168 of Boy of Ruin
5/5.
Of course these psychopaths do everything with numbers in mind.
I tap my pen against my journal, my knees to my chest in our king bed. Even in a cabin in the woods—decadent as it is—he’d have a fucking king-sized bed. If he only knew how alike him and Jeremiah really are.
I close my eyes and lean back against the headboard, thinking of J. Where he is. How he got out of a cage in the back of a truck and ran without anyone noticing.
Without coming back to...fight for me.
A lump forms in my throat and I toss my journal and pen aside, eyes still closed as I hear the thump of music from downstairs.
I grit my teeth, anger running through me that I’m here. That I feel like Lucifer’s child instead of the fucking mother of one. This place isn’t so different than the cabin in Virginia, just a little more creepy, and slightly bigger. We pulled up at night, a few hours ago, and it looks like something out of the Blair Witch Project with menacing trees too close to the big, dark house. Even this spacious room is dimly lit, only the lamp beside my bed on, because there’s no overhead light. There aren’t any curtains on the expansive window beside the bed, so I’ve got a great view of the scary forest, just outside of Alexandria.
The smell of incense reaches my nose and I’m surprised. Once, in the middle of a breakdown, Lucifer told me how much he hated it.
It reminds him of his stepmom.
A surge of rage mingled with empathy twists through me and I want to be with him.
But then the moment passes, and it’s replaced with dread.
I have no idea what happens tonight.
Is this like a gang initiation?
“Lilith!” Lucifer calls again, and he doesn’t sound so nice this time. His voice is a snarl when he commands me to, “Get the fuck down here, mama!”
Amazing, how he can pretend we can’t fucking stand each other.
Even still, my face heats with that last word and I splay my fingers against my belly, swollen beneath my tight, white tank. It’s not the first time he’s said something like that, but it is the first time since I…ran.
I ignore him again, keep my eyes closed. I need to get up and lock the door before he decides to yank me down those stairs.
Not even seconds later, I hear someone coming up them, and my eyes fly open as I leap off the bed, my bare feet skidding on the floor as I race to the door.
I don’t want to be here.
I can’t do any drugs and I don’t want to be around my husband. No one will tell me a thing about what goes down tonight even though I pestered Mav in the Audi from the backseat on the way here. He just kept saying, “You’ll see,” which are, coincidentally, my husband’s favorite words, too.
Just as I go to slam the door to our room, Ella appears in the doorway, her long red hair up in a high ponytail, not a stitch of makeup on her pale face.
She smiles shyly at me, her arms crossed over her chest. She’s wearing a cropped black top, stretchy pink shorts, and I see her thick thighs and think of what my husband said.
About Ophelia. The girl with Ezra. Julie.
My stomach churns and I grip the door tighter.
“Hi,” Ella finally says, and I nod toward her, gritting my teeth instead of answering her. She glances past me, and I think of the journal on my bed. Slowly, her green eyes shift back to mine. “I was going to make some cookies.” She shrugs, looking down at her pink, fuzzy socks. “Do you want to help?”
I bristle at her question because the last fucking thing I want to do is make food for the assholes in this house.
Fuck. Them.
But before I can say just that, the boys’ laughter echoing from down the stairs and pissing me off more, she says, “He really wants you down there.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why, when he’s got you?”
She averts her gaze, picking at the hem of her cut-off shirt. I see her belly, love handles over the side of her shorts, and those words from Lucifer that night after I killed Pammie for him come back to me.
