Page 4 of Wicked Believer

“Why did you bring me here, Lucifer?” She looks toward me then, an uncertainty in her expression that I’ve seen more times than I care for as of late.

If I were less confident, it’d almost cause me to think she regrets the choice she made. To stay with me. For eternity.

Though she can’t possibly begin to understand what giving her my Father’s prize cost me.

I place my hands in my pockets, not bothering to leave the foyer. This empty human home is no place for me, even if it was once a part of her life, before she belonged to me. “I thought you might want to retrieve some of your things.”

She swallows. “Before the vultures descend?”

I give a curt nod.

It’s the truth, though not entirely.

Paltry though many of these items may be, the bulk of them will go to auction within a matter of days and fetch a small fortune, thanks to Charlotte’s newfound celebrity. The house and most of its contents belong to her father’s church. The pathetic congregation he loved so dearly. But if I thought for even a moment that she wanted any of it, I’d make it hers in a heartbeat.

I may not be a gentle lover, but I am trying to be gentle with her heart, it seems.

When it suits me.

She turns back to the photo, a sad sort of smile pulling at her lips as I struggle not to tug uncomfortably at the collar of my suit. There are tears in her eyes, and these days I find I can hardly stand the way she softens me.

It makes me keen to destroy anything and anyone who’s ever hurt her.

Slowly.

“Is that your mother?” I incline my head toward the photo.

She nods, smiling affectionately at the woman pictured as she finally allows herself to pick the photo up. “She died when I was nine. Crohn’s disease.” She sighs, and the weight in the sound says everything. “When the doctors didn’t believe her about how bad it was, my father and our congregation told her to pray instead, but by the time she was sick enough someone was willing to listen, it’d ... become cancerous.”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, and it surprises me to find that I mean it.

Human life is insignificant really, but somehow, this matters to me.

Because it matters to her.

I frown. On occasion, I find I resent the way she makes me feel.

The subtle ways she’s changed me.

She releases another long sigh, placing the photo back upon the table. “In their eyes, she became more of a good Christian woman after she got sick, because of her suffering. Like ... like she was a martyr or something.”

I give a curt nod, already anticipating where this is heading. My fiancée knows more than a thing or two about martyrs as of late, thanks to her upbringing and the zealous, self-righteous legacy her bloody excuse of a father left in his wake.

“Did you kill him, Lucifer?” she whispers softly.

I straighten. We’ve danced around this topic several times over the last few weeks, but this is the first occasion where she’s deigned to actually ask me.

She glances away from the photo to a section of the floor near my feet. Like she does when she kneels in submission for me. As if she can’t possibly bring herself to look at me.

For fear of what she’ll no doubt find there.

These days she’s better at reading me than I ever intended her to be.

“Don’t ask questions you’re not prepared to hear the answer to, darling.”

She sucks in a harsh breath, closing her eyes, and one of the tears escapes, sliding down her cheek. “Please be honest with me. Just this once.”

This time, I don’t hesitate.