Page 29 of The Cruelest Chaos

For some reason, I think about Ella at that trailer, alone on a Sunday night. It’s not that serious, and I know it. Her parents could be working. Away with friends. Anywhere in the world. She’s nineteen, and she’s done a hell of a lot in her nineteen years if her sexual preferences are any indication.

Maybe that’s why I think about her. About her mom. Dad. Who made her who she is.

Then my thoughts drift to my own mother.

I wonder what she knows about all of this. I wonder if she cares. Her and I have never been close, exactly, but she enjoys burying herself in a good book, same as I do. I know she spends most of her time in her study; the one my father built for her because he knew she’d never do anything else with her life. He wouldn’tletherdo anything else; consequence of being a wife of the 6.

I think of Sid. Does she know how limited her life will become?

My father clears his throat and I don’t dare look at him. “I did,” he admits, and my stomach churns. “I did know mymistresswas pregnant. I urged her to get an abortion.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shrug. And for some reason, Lucifer’s eyes flicker to my father.

Interesting.

But I need to know something and I’m annoyed Lucifer hasn’t asked yet. “What happened to her?” I ask my father, unable to hide the bite in my words. “Sid’smother?”

My father looks uncomfortable when I say her name, but I don’t fucking care.

“I was told she passed away. Terminal illness.”

“You weretold?”

His jaw clenches as he stares at me. “When she didn’t do as I asked, in regard to the abortion, I let Lazar deal with the…situation. And I cut off contact with her. I saw Sid when she was transferred to her guardians, but I did not see her mother again.”

“Did you know these guardiansbought her?”I grind out.

“No,” my father snaps. “Lazar himself had taken care of his own bastard.” He trails off, looking at Lucifer. Then he sighs. “Forgive me,” he says with a nod in Luce’s direction. Lucifer is staring at my father as if he’s already dead. “I know this is hard for you to hear, and I regret that things went the way they did. I would never want my daughter to experience what…Sid…did,” his gaze turns back to Elijah, “but I had to reap the consequences of my actions. And now I’ve lost my best friend.”

I want to laugh out loud, but it’s Lucifer that acts first.

He sits up straighter and coughs, cutting off my father’s next words. “Excuse me?” he says in his gravelly voice, low and dangerous.

I shift in my seat, glancing between him and my father. This looks like fun. But it also looks like someone might lose their fucking head.

My father sighs, steeples his hands and presses them to his temple before he picks his head up and looks at Luce. “I know you think I didn’t suffer, or at least, not nearly enough, but if you think for one second I don’t regret what I did—”

Lucifer laughs, cutting him off, and my father frowns but lets Lucifer speak. This is my dad’s trial, after all. He’d do best to be agreeable.

“I don’t give a fuck about your regret,Maddox,”Lucifer snarls.

My dad flinches. Lucifer is a man who killed his own father, burned an entire building full of hanged men; my dadshouldflinch. And I can admit it, this is kind of fun. I press back against my chair, exhale against the pain from my wounds.

Feels good.

“What I care about is that you let your own child get sold into the hands of fucking monsters,” Lucifer continues. He brushes his thumb over his bottom lip, and I see the vein in his neck jump as he drops his hand to the table. “And you didn’t stop there, did you?” He glances at Atlas and I know what’s coming. “You kicked Brooklin out of your house for fucking around with one of us, and by doing so, you let her find her way into the arms of Jeremiah Rain.” It’s not my imagination that sees him look at me.

I press further against the leather chair, relishing in the way my flesh feels like it’s on fire. I don’t want to think about my sister. Either one of them, actually, but especially not Brooklin. I can keep an eye on Sid. But Brooklin…since I saved Jeremiah’s life, I can’t keep an eye on her at all.

My father sighs and shakes his head, as if Luce is a petulant child that doesn’t understand the way things work. I guess that’s a little true.

I stay quiet, as does everyone else, watching this exchange with greedy eyes.

“You don’t understand the honor the women among us need to possess in order to stay under our protection.” My father’s eyes narrow, and he looks like he’s ready to fight fire with fire. “Obviously, since you willingly started a relationship with a paid whore, you have no idea what that—”

Lucifer jumps up from his chair, but it isn’t him that gets to my father first.

It’s me.

I don’t even realize what I’ve done until my fist cracks against his face, his shirt in my hand as I hit him again, shove him back against the wall, the light from a sconce flickering over the surprise on his bleeding face.