Page 223 of Like Grim Death: Part One
“You wanna say you’re sorry now?” I ask her quietly.
She doesn’t speak for a moment, and I wonder if she learned these silent pauses from her asshole of a husband.
I don’t let the exhaustion catch up to me. I don’t think about Atlas or Cain or all the other secrets I’ve been told to keep. Right now, it’s just me. And Sid Malikova.
After a long stretch of silence, her hands still wrapped around my arm at her throat, she says, “You think you’re better than me?” Her voice is low, and she doesn’t look away from me.
I push the blade a little deeper and she doesn’t make a sound, but I see the moment I make her bleed. It’s only enough to nick her, but her pupils go round, like she’s shocked I had the nerve.
“You think you have something over me because you never left him?” She keeps talking, and I press my thumb to the hollow of her throat, so her next words are hoarse. “Because you’ve catered to his every fucking whim, and you stood by his side even while his cock was in my mouth?”
My heart aches with those words. I was there. I watched it all. He kissed me afterward. He fucked me. Like… like it was nothing. Like I shouldn’t be mad. I followed his lead. I did everything he wanted me to when he briefly explained it to me in the kitchen before the ceremony. And he still doesn’t look at me like he looks at her. He still walked out on me to find her.
“You’re a fucking pawn just like I am.” Her voice breaks, eyeliner running in rivulets down her cheeks. “Just like… they are.” She doesn’t look at them, but I know who she’s talking about. Her throat moves beneath my hand as she swallows. “Just like Rain is.”
My own throat feels tight, thick with emotion. It catches me off guard, her love for her son in the midst of this fight. It’s not that I didn’t think she loved him, especially after the way she looked so haunted earlier with the papers, but Malikov and Rain love is so growly and threatening and punches to the face or knives to the chest. It isn’t ever soft and kind and, like in this moment, vulnerable.
I feel myself softening. And just as I start to move the blade from her abdomen, crimson streaming down into her bikini, something shatters behind me, hands fist in my hair, and I’m jerked to my feet as the knife in my fingers clatters to the floor. I slump over though, unable to stand on my own with the sudden change in position. It probably looks like Lucifer hit me, even though he didn’t.
“Lucifer!” Sid yells his name, and I know it’s him, but just as he yanks my hair to pull me back, my body forced upright, he releases me, and I spin around, spots popping in front of my eyes as Maverick tackles Lucifer to the ground, his head thudding on the tile floor.
After that, everything is a blur on the kitchen floor.
“You dumb motherfucker.” Maverick’s fist collides with Luce’s nose, and Sid is swiping up the knife from the ground as blood spurts down Luce’s face. But he really has been working out and just as Sid gets to Mav, knife in hand, Lucifer flips them, so he’s on top, holding Mav’s hands over his head, Maverick’s chest heaving beneath his white T and blood spills from Lucifer’s nose in patters, crimson dots exploding along the fabric.
Lucifer releases one of Mav’s wrist, and Maverick shoots for his throat. I turn to Cain, only to find Cain is gone.Jesus.
Diving toward Lucifer, I’m on his back for half a second before Sid drags me off, then she’s on top of me, brandishing the knife as blood trails from her own wound.
It doesn’t take much to wrap my legs around her skinny ass and flip too. When I do, I catch the knife just as it slices through the fabric of my hoodie. If it’s grazed me, I don’t even feel it. Instead, I’m raising it up, like I’m going to plunge it into her pretty face, match the scar she has over her brow from Lucifer’s knife.
But maybe that’s exactly what she’s imagining, because she shakes her head, muttering, “No, no, no,” so quietly beneath her breath I barely hear her. And before I can react, someone is pulling me off, my head collides with the tile, the knife is plucked from my fingers, and it’s Lucifer on top of me.
His hand is planted squarely against my chest, the knife held to my throat as his demon blue eyes seem black, the way his pupils swallow them whole. He isn’t high, I don’t think. He’s just horrifyingly angry. Maybe both.
“Do you have a fucking death wish?” His nose touches mine and I smell the gum on his breath. He hasn’t been smoking. Or drinking. He’s completely sober and willing to kill me, for hurting his girl. The lights recessed in the kitchen ceiling are bright, and I blink, gripping his shoulders. His blood drips onto my mouth, warm and coppery. I suck in a breath and the iron warmth spills down my throat.
He smiles and under normal circumstances, I find Lucifer stupidly hot, but right now, he just looks terrifying.
My temple is throbbing, and for some reason the backs of my thighs ache, and all I want is for this to end.
I am never coming back here. Fucking. Ever.
Lucifer forces my chin to lift with the flat side of the blade. I’m looking down my nose even as I stare up at him.
“If you ever touch my wife again…” With one deft movement, he flips the blade, the sharp side just on the underside of where my chin connects to my throat. “If you ever make Lilith bleed again…” He twitches his hand, a subtle movement, enough to slice into my skin, a sting causing me to gasp as his mouth curves into a wicked smile. His nose is still dripping blood, all over my lips, and I rub them together, the slick liquid coating my mouth like a balm. “If youevertalk about my fucking son again…”
He leans down closer, his mouth over my own. I feel his chest pressed to mine, the rise and fall of it, weight crushes down on me.
“I will—”
A loud, brash laugh cuts him off. Then a voice says, “You’re not gonna do shit.” Lucifer is jerked off of me by Mavy, and I don’t waste time as I sit up.
Maverick releases Lucifer, who finds his feet, but just when I think it’s all over, Sid slumped into a counter, clearly too fucking intoxicated to want to fight anymore, Maverick cocks his fist back, and launches it into Lucifer’s face.
Lucifer’s head spins as Sid cries out, and I see blood spray from Lucifer’s mouth.
“Stay the fuck away from Ella, and keep your goddamn wife far from her too.” He jerks Lucifer’s chin so he’s forced to face him. “I put up with a lot of fucking bullshit for thebothof you.You fucking owe me.”
