Page 100 of These Monstrous Ties

“It’s yours. All of it. Order of Rain is yours. The men are yours. The staff is yours. And there’s plenty of money in the bank account to pay for it for decades to come. You don’t have to do anymore dirty work. The cops won’t come for you because it’s all halted now, unless you want to continue it.” He sighs, his chest heaving. “It’s yours, Sid.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lucifer asks him. I’m glad someone does. I can’t get the words out.

Jeremiah’s eyes narrow on Lucifer. “Fuck you and the Unsaints. This is all hers. I changed the title, the money, the accounts. All of this,” he gestures vaguely with one hand, “it belongs to Sid Rain. She’ll have more than all of you. She won’t need you. And don’t you dare think of taking any of it for yourself or I will fucking cut you into tiny pieces—”

Lucifer laughs, cutting off my brother’s words. “Go fuck yourself.”

I swipe a hand over my face. “Why?”

Jeremiah offers me a small, pained smile. “You deserve it. I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I need to leave, Sid. I have to get away from here. From…from you. Because he—” he darts a glance at Lucifer, “—is going to take you from me. The Unsaints will own you. They own everyone they catch. And I can’t watch that happen.”

I want to scream at him some more. I want to tell him that he took himself away from me. That all this, all this hell, he had set it ablaze.

But I don’t say anything at all.

Jeremiah just stares at me.

“Let me hold you. One last time, Sid?”

Lucifer’s grip on me tightens. He’s no longer pointing the gun at my brother, but it’s by his side.

“No,” Lucifer answers for me.

I look up at Lucifer, pleading with him. I see his indecision. His confusion. I feel it, too. Why I want this monster’s hands on me again, I don’t know. But this is a night of lasts. For me, for Jeremiah. For Lucifer.

Lucifer’s lip curls. “Why, Sid?”

“Please,” I breathe.

He sighs.

“Okay,” he forces himself to say, wincing as if the word physically hurts him. He takes his arm out from around me. “Okay,” he whispers again.

I touch my fingers to his lips, his skeleton paint smeared, and then I turn to my brother.

But before we can cross the balcony floor to one another, glass and a small river of vodka from what Jeremiah had been drinking beneath us, Lucifer shoves me aside and lunges for my brother, balling Jeremiah’s shirt in his fist.

“She might not know better. She might be wrecked. But I’m not. I’ve seen you for what you are. You are a piece of fucking filth. You do not deserve to live.” And he aims the gun in my brother’s gut. “This isn’t just her vengeance, you know. You betrayed us. No one gets to do that and live.”

I freeze.

Lucifer glances back at me, Jeremiah is crumpled over, getting ready for Lucifer to pull the trigger.

“No,” I manage to say, shaking my head. “No…please, Lucifer.” I swallow, my throat dry. My mouth dry. “No.”

Lucifer’s eyes close, as if he’s wrestling with himself. Wrestling with Lucifer. Wrestling with Lilith. With me. With Jeremiah.

He wants to kill him. I know he does. I understand why. Jeremiah fucked with the Unsaints. He was one of them, and he betrayed them.

But I can’t let him do this.

If I do, I’ll never forgive myself.

Never forgivehim.

Lucifer drops the gun. I breathe a sigh of relief.

But then he cocks his fist back, and I hear it connect with Jeremiah’s nose. Jeremiah stumbles backward, against the wall of the balcony.