Page 38 of Wicked Believer

She’s wearing a tailored Ralph Lauren blazer dress that’s unbuttoned low enough to show off a generous amount of braless cleavage. She glances up from the tablet she’s holding. “Oh, I’m Mia. Lucifer’s house manager.” She shrugs dismissively.

“House manager?”

I’ve been practically living here for over a month, and I’ve never once laid eyes on this woman.

Ramesh passes through and gives me a courteous nod in greeting, utterly nonplussed by her presence. Which I guess means that sheissupposed to be here. She wouldn’t have made it past the security team otherwise. After the anthrax situation, everyone and everything that comes in or out of the penthouse is thoroughly screened.

“Oh,” I mumble, trying my best not to look as embarrassed as I feel as I extend a now friendly hand toward her. I can’t be too careful lately. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she says curtly, giving me all of a two-second glance before she turns back to her tablet. “It’s part of my job, obviously.”

I frown. Amid the marble floors and custom-art furniture, she’s statuesque. Like a sculpture in a gallery, more poised than I am currently.

A knot forms in my belly, my jaw set.

“And why haven’t I seen you before?” I ask, my pitch going a bit high at the end.

“It’s a big penthouse.” She doesn’t bother to glance up from her tablet.

Like that’s all the explanation I need.

I tilt my head, studying her as I mentally weigh her response. “Lucifer’s never mentioned you.” A detail that now seems suspect on several levels. Especially when he’s not here.

Finally, she sighs, giving me a glassy, blank-eyed stare. “It’s my job to be discreet.” Her eyes flick over me. “Unlike some people.”

I jerk back, my mouth falling open. “Excuse me?”

But Evie’s warning pulses through me.

Be vicious, Charlotte.

Abruptly, my body language changes from shock to brutal indifference. Like she’s nothing to me. Sheisnothing to me.

That dark thing Lucifer unleashed inside me writhes.

I stare down the bridge of my nose. “And whatexactlyis it that you do here?”

My tone sounds like Lucifer’s. Like she couldn’t be further beneath me.

“I manage all Lucifer’s householdaffairs.” The fake, cheeky smile she gives me radiates superiority as she eyes me up and down. “Long before you got here.”

I don’t miss the way her cruel, red-lipped smile seems to linger on the wordaffairsa little too long. Like she’s trying to sow a seed of doubt in me.

A seed of doubt I’d never even bothered to entertain until now.

Lucifer is loyal to me.

Isn’t he?

I cock my head to the side and force a smile. “Of course. It makes so much sense that he wouldn’t mention you then.” I climb all of two steps before she takes my bait.

“What do you mean?”

I allow myself a triumphant grin before I toss my hair over my shoulder, the cruel glance I give her reminiscent of Greed. “It means that the onlyaffairsthat are going on here are between Lucifer and me, when we’re alone in his playroom.” I sneer. “But I suppose you’d know that since it’s your job to get on your hands and knees and clean up after us.” I turn on my heel and stalk out of the room, not pausing to let her get another word in edgewise.

As soon as I’m a safe distance away, I let out a sharp breath I didn’t realize I was holding, swiping a rough hand through my hair. I’m legitimately used to other women falling all over Lucifer. His fans and the media can be especially pushy at times, but I never expected to be confronted by it in my own living room. The reality that I know next to nothing about what Lucifer’s sex life was like before me makes me suddenly feel naive.

It never occurred to me that I should care until now. The past is the past.