Page 93 of The Cruelest Chaos

She rolls her eyes. I know she doesn’t care. She was never close to Lucifer’s stepmother. She was never close to anyone. Not even her own children. Not after Malachi.

“Go on,” I prod her, gesturing toward her with one hand. “Please do continue.”

She looks like she might get up and walk out instead which would be fine with me, but then she keeps talking. “I know that you’ve been seeing someone.”

I’ve got one arm slung around the back of the chair beside me, one on the table, and I tighten that hand into a fist. “What does that have to do with anything? Am I not allowed to have a fucking girlfriend, Mom? I’m twenty-fucking-four.”

“You know what it has to do with.” She leans forward, leveling me with her gaze. “Rianeeds to be taken care of, Maverick.”

“Did Dad send you here?”

“No.” I’m surprised to find it seems like she’s telling the truth. “He didn’t. I took it upon myself to come here. To warn you, since you seem to have forgotten.”

I bite my tongue. Don’t speak.I haven’t forgotten shit, bitch.

“You seem to have forgotten that peoplediein your father’s organization. Theydiein his work.Yourwork. I know you’ve gotten time off, since Sacrificium went sowrong, and Noctem is coming, but if you get entangled with this girl, Maverick,she will die, too.”

“Is that what you came here for, Mom? To remind me that wherever an Astor goes, people end up buried? To remind me that my life isn’t really mine? That Dad is a piece of shit and hisorganizationis a goddamn cult?” I stand to my feet, the chair scraping the floor behind me. I slam my fist on the table. “I already fucking know that,Mother.So if that’s all you came to say, you wasted your fucking time and you can get the fuck out of my house.”

She’s still sitting, her gaze piercing, arms folded. I’m over six feet tall, and she’s sitting in a fucking chair, but somehow, she still seems to be looking down her nose at me. “You saved Jeremiah Rain.”

My stomach burns. I know where she’s going with this. I know, and I can’t find the words to stop it. I can’t say a fucking thing.

“You saved him for a whore that you barely knew.”

My nostrils flare, and I dig my short nails into my palm, fisted on the table to keep from upturning it on top of her.

“You saved him, and now he’s coming back to interfere, once more. Lucifer made a mess with what he did in that warehouse. A mess that the 6 had to pay good money to clean up, but he did one thing right. He left Jeremiah Rain to burn. And you,” she points at me, “you screwed that up.”

She stands up, her nails tapping on the table. “You couldn’t let him die because you felt sorry for Sid fucking Rain—”

“That’s not her name,” I say through gritted teeth.

She smirks at me, shaking her head. “Oh, Mavy. That girl was born into nothing. She grew up with nothing. She will always be nothing, and eventually, she’ll find her way back into Jeremiah’s hands so he can remind her that she’s nothing.”

I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache.

“You saved him for nothing. You have Lucifer losing his mind. He’s going to drive that girl away, and it’s going to be your fault. And yet you couldn’t save your own brother, Mavy.” Her voice takes on a tone of false innocence as she looks at me with pitying eyes. “You couldn’t saveMalachi.”His name from her lips drives a knife into my gut. “You couldn’t save him, but Jeremiah Rain? You’d walk into a burning building for him?” She scoffs, rolls her eyes. As if she isn’t affected at all by her youngest son’s death. As if he means nothing to her. As if he never meant anything at all.

She hangs her head a second, presses her palms flat to the table. And then she looks back up and glares at me. “Stay away from that girl. Deal with Ria before Noctem, Maverick, or you’re going to hate that you didn’t.”

Chapter Nineteen

The next day,it doesn’t take me long to find Ella at The Ark, and it doesn’t take me long after that to realize she’s with Connor again. They’re back in the Guinea pig shed, even as night falls at the farm, less cars in the parking lot than there was the first time I came here.

It’s quiet in the dark, and I see no one as I stand outside of the shed, listening.

“Mom is home,” Ella is saying absentmindedly as the animals squeak in there, and I hear something that sounds like a piece of celery or carrot snapping. “She’s been home the past two days.”

Connor says nothing.

I press my forehead against the peeling paint of the shed, closing my eyes in the cold night. I want to hold her. I want to pull her into my arms, shove her into my car and drive us both far, far away.

Noctem is coming.

My sins won’t be forgiven until I’ve bled them all out there. But I still can’t stay away. God, I wish I could.

“How have you been?” Ella asks, as if she expects an answer.