Page 44 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

I do so cautiously. The bastard guessed my size. Vinny’s personal tailor couldn’t have done much better. The shoes, however, are a little big. They clatter against the floor when I finally ease the stall door open and join Lucifer at the sink.

He found a coat as well: a black one that hangs down over his waist, hiding the shape of the gun tucked into his pocket. My clothes don’t do much to dispel the hollow creature staring back at me. I’m the demon to Lucifer’s imposing devil.

“Wash up,” he snarls, wrenching the faucet on and cupping his hands beneath the spray.

I watch as he splashes a handful onto his face, scrubbing at the grit hidden within his stubble.

Stepping up to the next sink over, I turn the water to the hottest setting and just let it run, watching my section of the mirror fog beneath the heat.

My hands sting and burn when I finally wet them, marred with a million tiny scrapes and cuts.

There’s one on my forehead, dripping blood down my jawline.

My bruised eye looks worse in the fluorescent lighting.

Splotches of green and yellow mingle with the darker purple.

My split lip is scabbed over, and my ear. ..

I grimace when I peel the duct tape off and toss it into the trash.

The wound is no longer bleeding, but the surrounding skin is red and hot to the touch.

It hurts, I realize when I prod the flesh an inch away and still wince.

For all I know, the wound could be infected.

I dab at it anyway with clean water and cover the worst of the injury with my hair—which is a disaster I simply don’t have the time to manage.

I do what I can with my fingers, smoothing the strands down around my shoulders.

Satisfied, Lucifer meets my gaze over the mirror’s surface. “Come on.”

I follow him out into the hallway and then out of the station itself. It’s raining. My jacket doesn’t have a hood, but Lucifer draws his low over his face and then steers me along by my forearm. We walk for what feels like blocks before he finally stops and pulls me toward a small café.

I dig my heels in. “N-no.”

We may have escaped Vinny once, but there is no way in hell I’ll sit and wait for him to find me.

“Come on.” Lucifer yanks me forward so hard that I nearly stagger into his chest. Before I can, he shifts, steering me sideways. “They expect us to run,” he says .

I can’t argue with that. We were nothing more than mice let loose for the cat’s amusement.

“They won’t expect to find us here. It’s safe.”

Safe. I scoff at his use of the word, but I don’t resist when he opens the door to the café and drags me inside.

Our struggle out front must have caused a scene.

What few patrons there are have paused—some mid-sips of their coffee—to watch as we creep over the threshold.

So much for Lucifer’s plan of going unnoticed.

He grits his teeth, but he still muscles me into a booth near the back of the small dining room.

It doesn’t look like a place Vinny would frequent, at least. The walls are an inviting shade of lime green, and the floors are linoleum. A smiling waitress approaches us, her notepad at the ready, but I don’t miss the way her warm expression falters when she sees my face.

“H-hi,” she stammers, licking her lips. “W-what can I—”

“Eggs,” Lucifer says curtly. He doesn’t even glance at the menu. “Scramble them. And coffee—make it black.”

“Okay.” The waitress jots his order down, and then both she and Lucifer turn expectantly to me.

Seconds pass. Oh.

Vinny isn’t here to plan my meal down to the very last calorie.

My fingers flutter over my placemat, and I reach for the menu Lucifer ignored. I find the very first option and read it out loud. “The breakfast special, please.”

Smiling her strained grin, our waitress nods and takes off.

Left alone, Lucifer and I don’t waste time on small talk.

He watches the door while I stare down at my hands.

They shake, though I don’t know if it’s from adrenaline or shock, as my eyes drift over the devil seated across from me.

It may have been my idea that kept us from being pinned like rats in a trap, but he was the one who listened to me.

He didn’t question the paranoid delusions of a madwoman but staked his life on them instead.

I can’t understand why. Answers don’t present themselves when our waitress returns with his coffee and gives me a glass of ice water. I sip at it, careful of my sore lip, and merely watch.

There is something about my devil that makes the women gathered at the table across the room turn to stare. They draw their gazes down from his face to the rest of his body, stripping him naked in their minds to see the man hidden underneath. A man I’ve met more than once.

It feels so strange to acknowledge that without the threat of Vinny’s video hanging over my head.

I know what Lucifer looks like with his pants off.

I know what he feels like inside me. I know the sounds he makes when he climaxes.

I know the hue of blue on which his eyes can touch right before he throws his head back and bellows his release out.

“Let me know if it’s too hot for you, darling.”

I jump when the waitress sets a plate of steaming food down in front of me.

She scrambles back while I sniff at two sunny-side eggs and two links of sausage.

I poke at the meat with a fork fished from the table, but I can’t bring myself to eat until Lucifer piles a mound of scrambled eggs onto his own fork and shovels the lot into his mouth.

He chews. I nibble. In silence, we both clear our plates and head out after he’s paid the bill.

Through the rain, we trudge up two more blocks to a bus stop, and then we spend hours riding the same three routes.

He doesn’t explain why, but I suspect that it’s to confuse anyone who might be following our trail.

My head is spinning by the time he finally steers us toward a new direction.

We’re in a more distant part of the city now, closer to the outskirts.

In the storm, there are only a few people out on the streets, but I feel eyes on us wherever we go.

With every step, my feet chafe within their new boots. By the time Lucifer pulls me to a stop, pain is a constant throb shooting through my calves.

“Wait here.”

For the first time, I glance around and take serious stock of our surroundings.

We’re on a partially deserted lane in a neighborhood that has definitely seen better days.

Dogs bark in the distance, and up ahead looms a shadowy dwelling with a long driveway reaching back into a section of woods.

The whole property is cordoned off by a chain-link fence with a security panel affixed to the front of it, like the kind you might find outside of a high-rise.

Leaving me at the curb, Lucifer starts forward, his shoulders tensed and head bowed low.

So, this is their rendezvous point. It’s far enough from Vinny’s kingdom to avoid notice—that is if the red-haired man was half as cautious as Lucifer in making sure he wasn’t followed.

When he reaches the security panel, Lucifer grumbles something into the speaker.

A minute later, I hear a door open somewhere on the property, and a shadowed figure breaks away from the main structure to approach the gate.

I try to observe them carefully, but Lucifer takes precedence when his gaze seeks mine out.

He jerks his head for me to come closer, and I do, every step cautious.

For the very first time, I consider running. He has to have expected it by now. I wonder if that’s why he’s kept such a close watch on the gun. He’s willing to use it if he has to. On Vinny’s men. On me.

When I approach him, I look up, ignoring the drops of rain that dribble down my forehead. “When we go in there, I’m not his captive anymore.” I don’t have to mention the red-haired man by name.

Lucifer clenches his jaw in understanding.

“I enter this place of my own free will,” I tell him. “I’ll help you take down Vinny, but only on my terms.”

Lucifer frowns. He doesn’t like being commanded, least of all by me. “And if I refuse?” he wonders, his voice deep enough to rival the thunder echoing over the horizon.

I shrug. “You trusted me already.” I inhale sharply and play the only card I have in my arsenal. “I saved your life— ”

“You saved your own ass.”

“ Exactl y,” I agree. “If I wanted to go back to him, I would already be begging for mercy while your head adorns the wall of his study. I won’t run.”

Lucifer doesn’t seem so sure of that. He’s suspicious, my devil. I suppose that’s why he’s still alive. Stupid , evil men didn’t tend to live too long. Vinny’s brutality taught me that.

“He’s taken everything from me.” My voice tastes bitter with the five years of pain I’ve had to suppress. Memories threaten to spill out from the dark corners of my mind, and I fight to swallow them back. “I want to take something from him.”

Lucifer still doesn’t give me an answer. I’m a slave to the scrutiny of those blue eyes, frozen in place until he finally nods—just once, so quickly that I may have missed it.

“You coming in?” A figure wearing a gray sweatshirt with the hood drawn low stands at the gate, holding it open.

I don’t answer, but Lucifer speaks for the both of us by stepping forward through the gap presented by the gate-opener.

I follow him, my gaze on the dwelling up ahead.

Apart from being secluded and well-guarded—which I sense from the human-shaped shadows lurking on the edges of the property—it doesn’t look like anything that would attract the interest of either Vinny or the red-haired man.

Dogs bark somewhere nearby, and with every step we take, the stench of cigarettes and stale cologne gets stronger.