Page 221 of Like Grim Death: Part One
“Baby girl, you’re drunk.” Lucifer pulls the bottle of vodka from Sid’s hand, but she doesn’t release it. Instead, she grips it with both hands, frowning at him.
“Give. It. Back.” Sheisdrunk, and I have to bite back my smile as Lucifer’s eyes narrow. They were all ganging up on me, but now she’s pissed him off.
He only has one hand on the bottle, the other by his side, his veins strain against his forearms as he refuses to give in to his wife. “I want to do what I want.” Her words are slurred, and she sounds petulant. She sounds…kind of like me.
I glance at Maverick, and he’s still staring at me. Behind us, the girl Cain is between moans.
My blood warms, but I think I need to tell Maverick about Atlas. About the words on my arm.I tried.Where is Atlas? Is Rain safe?Where’s Sevryn?
Confessions risk vomiting up my secrets though, and if Rain is endangered because of it, Maverick would never forgive me.
Lucifer uses Sid’s grip on the bottle to haul her closer, her bare feet slipping on the tiles. “You’re going to do what I say, baby girl, because right now, you’re acting like an idiot.”
Sid snatches the bottle back with a strength I didn’t think her capable of, and before Lucifer can get it back from her, she spins to face me, hurling the bottle right at me.
Duck.
I hear Atlas’s word in my head, and I squat down, the bottle sailing over me and crashing onto the floor, bursting into pieces.
I start to stand again as silence rings out in the kitchen, music still thudding from the pool beyond the gym, but between us all, there’s an eerie quiet.
Then Maverick drops my hand.
He turns to Sid, and without warning, he wraps his fingers around her throat and shoves her against the black fridge in the kitchen, not gently.
“What the fuck was that?”he snarls.
There’s silence in the room. Even Cain’s partner for the night has the decency to be quiet, and Cain himself doesn’t say a word as I see him out of the corner of my eye, looking from me, to Maverick, then to…
“Wow.”
Lucifer. That’s all he says. Then he’s moving toward Mav, his fingers still wrapped tight on Sid’s throat. But she doesn’t need her husband’s help. She brings her hand to her mesh bikini top, and pretty fast for a drunk girl, she’s got a tiny knife between her fingers, the blade springing free.
It’s a switchblade.
She licks her lips as her eyes lock on Mav’s and even Lucifer slows down. I’m holding my breath and I realize I don’t know what I want to happen. Sid is dangling the black and purple hilt of the dark blade between her fingers dangerously, swinging it toward Mav, but it swings back too, to her chest.
She laughs, then hiccups, and I hate the look she has in her eyes right now. She hasn’t looked at her husband once. Instead, her pupils are wide and she looks like she wants to fuck Mav.
But maybe she’s just tired of being saved.
Maybe she’s known all along what I just now realized.
This life is a prison.
But the next words out of her mouth don’t sound like she’s trying to save herself or assert her independence.
“Do you like your fingers wrapped around my throat, Maverick?” Her eyes are hooded as she peers up at him through long lashes, and I wonder if they smoked together.
My teeth hurt, I’m clenching my jaw so hard. My mind is still numb from whatever Atlas gave me. Something is wrong with him, and I don’t know if I can speak about it, but I need help, and I need to talk to Maverick, alone, and he wasn’t even looking for me at first. He was with her.
Them.
And…what? She just threw a glass bottle at my head and he’s still touching her.
“Shut up, Sid,” I snarl, unable to stop myself.
“Baby girl,” Lucifer adds, but he doesn’t move, two feet from the both of them.
