Page 129 of Wicked Believer

For wearing something so “promiscuous.”

Never mind that it hadn’t been anything more than a standard V-neck “Jesus Loves Me” tee from the previous year’s mission trip. This was the first moment I learned that there were boys, men, who believed they were entitled to my body.

No matter how many times I said no.

“Stop it,” I say to Greed, staggering to my feet and refusing to look toward the crowd of boys now surrounding the younger version of me, heckling and grabbing at her until I wince at the all-too-real memory. I inspect Greed’s face, and for the first time I knowexactlyhow she came to be the woman I know her to be.

A bitch. A bully. The “selfish” greedy monster.

Because she was once a little girl just like me who craved her Father’s love so desperately, she’d doanythingto get it. Hoard any crumb she was given.

And a sister. A little sister whose softness was tortured from her by her more powerful angelic brothers, unempathetic to the sound of her screams, until she was no longer weak.

Until she became hard like them.

Exactly like she’s doing to me.

“Mimi, please.” I close my eyes and wince at the sound of my younger self’s sobbing. “Whatever this is, please stop it.”

“You want me to stop, Charlotte?” I open my eyes again, and she tilts her chin as she steps toward me, her heels clicking against the summer pavement. “Now that the apocalypse has begun, do you think any of my brothers or my angelic siblings will stop should they or the Righteous or any of Lucifer’s enemies ever get their hands on you? Do you thinktheywill stop?”

She shakes her head at me, her shoulders dropping, and in that moment I can tell that she doesn’t take any pleasure in the task Lucifer has given her.

Torturing someone the way she’s torturing me.

It’s nothing personal, but that won’t stop her from fulfilling her duty either.

To break me. Toughen me until I become hard like she is.

“I will show mercy today and today only.” She snaps her fingers, and we’re back in the penthouse’s sitting room as if we never even left in the first place.

As if it was all an illusion or a dream.

A nightmare of my own creation.

I feel the cold wind from last night whip past me. Feel the burn of it on my face.

“Our enemies will do more to you than your father or any playground bullies ever could, Charlotte. Don’t forget that.” She looks me over from head to toe almost regretfully before she turns away. “That’s the end of your lesson for today.”

Chapter Forty-One

Lucifer

The Dead Sea Scrolls and other various family memorabilia, on loan from the Rockefeller Museum along with several more of my many museum contacts, have now taken over the space inside my study. I’m poring over one of the desecrated scrolls in a desperate, fevered search when Azrael enters the room.

“How are you feeling?”

I scowl. “Like Death warmed over.”

He frowns at the joke, his eyes tracking to where my hand nurses my rib cage. “I never envisioned you a scholar.”

“Clearly, you don’t remember any of my early obsessions between the fourth and twelfth centuries.” I take a step toward another artifact and wince slightly.

Healing at a mortal pace is bloody inconvenient, it seems.

Azrael nods thoughtfully, looking pensive. “I’m still convinced Arius and Constantine were secretly fucking.”

I smirk for the first time since last night. “Their chemistrywasoff the charts, wasn’t it?” I set down the sliver of ancient scroll I was holding as I look toward him. “How did she do?”