Page 205 of Boy of Ruin
He’s unarmed, scanning the room with a broken expression on his face. I know it well. Probably exactly how I looked when he left me in that goddamn cage.
The only person I give a fuck about is Sid Rain. And I might have let her have a goodbye. Might have let him fuck her against me, because otherwise, she’d never get over his skinny ass. But now I know for sure that when I walk out of this room, Lucifer Malikov won’t still be breathing.
I step close to him, into the dim lights of this disgusting room, Maddox’s dead body slumped against the wall, half his head fucking missing. It doesn’t bother me. Death has been a companion since I was a child.
Sid is calling my name softly, and I wonder if she’s torn between running to him, running to me.
I’ll have to fix that problem for her. From now on, she’ll only have one place to fucking run to.
Lucifer snaps his head up, his gaze on mine. For a second, there’s no recognition, and I realize just how horrible he looks for the first time. I have no idea what the fuck she sees in him.
There are circles beneath his eyes, his skin is so fucking pale, and he looks…gaunt. A shell of a man. I guess that happens when you lose your soul as a teenage boy.
It happened to me, too, but it made me stronger.
Lucifer let it turn him into a fucking pussy.
I smile at him and step close through the foyer, empty save for us, and the dead fucking body. But even though it’s empty, this entire house is a shrine to debauchery. I know what they did here. It smells like marijuana and alcohol as my nostrils flare, my heart pounding hard in my chest. That, and sex. And not just from me.
Who else fucked her?
But I block all of that out.
I block it all out because right now? It’s just me and him. And I’ve wanted to get my hands on him for a long, long time.
His jaw clenches as I approach him, and he lifts his chin, his eyes hard on mine, until they flick to the bandana around my throat.
He doesn’t have a weapon, Sid’s knife is lodged into Maddox’s chest, and the gun is on the other side of the room.
He could have something hidden in the pockets of his shorts, but considering he doesn’t have a shirt on, I can see a lot. A lot more than I care to see, really, but it’ll just make the ways I break him all the more satisfying.
“That’s cute, J,” he says, cocking his head as I stop a few feet from him, flexing my fingers around the knife. It’s in my steady hand, but I might have to switch it over. I don’t really mind if killing him is messy.
In fact, that’s what I’m counting on.
He gestures toward me with his index finger, pointing at the bandana. “Did my wife buy you that?”
I inhale. Exhale. Count to three. I’m not ready to kill him just yet. I want to play with him, first.
“She want you to feel included?” he taunts me, and this time, he steps closer.
Sid bites out his name, but she doesn’t move. Almost as if she knows we need this. As if she knows I need to fucking kill him.
Rage washes over me, making my jaw tick, my vision almost blurring, but I force myself to focus on him. Force myself to not let him get under my skin. Not until I’m ready to get the fuck under his.
“Or she just want you to look more like me? Like the brother who knocked her up?”
“Lucifer!” Sid hisses, her voice angry on my behalf.
Beautiful.
I ball my unsteady hand into a fist, but I still wait. Wait until he comes closer. Wait until I can go for his fucking jugular, just like he’s going for mine with every word he speaks.
I hate the fact that I share anything with him. I hate that he knocked my sister up. I hate that I share a father with him, even if Lazar is dead.
He let me rot in that cage, too.
And just like that, standing here in the midst of chaos when I should be killing him for her, Lucifer Malikov, my half-brother, inches from my face, I’m back there again.
