Page 243 of Like Grim Death: Part One
My stomach turns.
“I was clothed,” she whispers, like it’s a consolation. “But men were all around me and I was being…filmed.”
A Death at Shadow Villa.
Slowly, I turn to look at Ella.
Her face has gone completely white, her lips parted as she stares at my sister.
“I was choking. I was dying, but Edith came in.” She squeezes her eyes shut tight. “Everything is a blur after that, but I remember being sick on the rowboat. Coming to the house. There were children there and they were so happy.” Her eyes flick open, landing on mine. “Happier than we were. Than Malachi, even.” A strangled sob comes from her mouth.
I stagger a step back, my mind reeling as the entire world seems to spin around me.
“When Dad kicked me out…” She straightens, her shoulders tense and none of the trembling words come from her now. “Edith tried to take me back there, but Dad threatened Ezra and… Jeremiah ended up being a decent place to land.” She lets her eyes close again, but her mouth is set in a line.
“This clip.” It’s Ella who speaks, her voice a hushed, fast whisper. “This clip… can someone look at it?” I turn to her, seeing her hold up her cell phone, a paused video across her screen. “It’s the movie we watched, Mavy,” she says, turning her bright green eyes to me. “But you didn’t finish it. And… what Brooklin said, there’s something similar.”
Brooklin coughs, clearing her throat, but it’s Lucifer who crosses the circle, pulling the phone from Ella’s outstretched hand. His face is expressionless, but maybe he wants to save Brooklin the pain of watching anything that could trigger her. And Iknowhe wants to do the same for his wife.
He presses play as haunting music floods from the speakers.
A chill laces its way around my neck, seeming to choke me.
Lucifer’s gaze flicks up to Brooklin, that same stoic expression on his face. “It’s exactly what you described,” he says, emotionless. He drops his gaze back to the screen.
The music rises and rises, and we all huddle closer, Sid tucked away behind Lucifer, staring at the car, at her son. Ella’s shoulder brushes my arm, and Brooklin keeps her eyes closed.
Only Lucifer can see the screen, his pale face lit blue by it.
His eyes dilate, and that’s the sole sign he’s affected by anything he’s watching.
Until his nostrils flare, just once, and he slowly lifts his eyes to mine, the music fading away to nothing.
“The woman dying…” He glances at Ella, and I know Ella saw this scene and I didn’t, because I had to leave to meet up with the 6. “It’s my mother.”
“Lamia.”He whispers her name, his back to me as he stares out into Queen View, his fingertips pressed to the windowsill of our temporary bedroom. Rain is sleeping in a gilded crib beside our bed, only feet behind me.
Sevryn, Atlas, Cain, Ezra, Mav, Ella—they’re elsewhere in this penthouse, enough to host an entire criminal family. Like us. Seven rooms, an enormous living room and open plan dining room separating them, a study, more bathrooms than we could ever hope to use. A fucking foyer with a chandelier, the first thing I noticed when we came in.
Everything is lined in silver or gold, including in our room, even the floor-to-ceiling drapes pushed to the side of the large bay window of the penthouse. Flickering city lights and traffic trails down below. Like us, not everyone is sleeping tonight.
But the only person I care about in this moment, aside from my son, is my husband.
Lucifer bows his head, his shoulders tense beneath his black T-shirt.
My heart clenches inside my chest. I don’t recall my own mother, my real one. I remember the same of Jeremiah’s mother. I didn’t grow up with a woman on my side. I didn’t grow up withanyoneon my side.
Neither did my husband, and now he knows what he’s suspected all along.
Lamia didn’t die in a car wreck.
They killed her.
And he watched it, unwittingly, on film.
The 6—or someone—authorized that tape. Lamia Malikova wasn’t an actress. Her death made a profit, and it was lauded as spectacular acting, despite the fact her name was never listed in the credits, and if it had been, no one would have ever heard from her again.
There’s something creepy happening at Shadow Villa, but I know we can’t go there right now. Not tonight, when we’re cooped up to hide from Mikhail fucking Malikov. It is incredible to me how you can hate the name of the blood that runs through someone you love most veins.
