Page 16 of Wicked Believer (Original Sinner #2)

Chapter Thirteen

Charlotte

I head back to the penthouse a short while later, Evie’s words still ringing in my ears, but it isn’t until I’m halfway to the glass staircase, my heels stripped off and my dress partially unzipped, that I realize I’m not alone.

I turn and face the woman before me. “Who the hell are you?”

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 she is supposed 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. She is nothing to me.

That dark thing Lucifer unleashed inside me writhes.

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

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

“I manage all Lucifer’s household affairs .” 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 word affairs a 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 only affairs that 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.

Until it isn’t, I guess?

Until I’m being confronted by what could possibly be one of his exes in our living room.

His living room, that familiar voice of doubt whispers to me.

I squash that thought like the pesky bug it is, not stopping until I close the door to one of the guest bedrooms behind me. I sink against it.

I have half a mind to crash in mine and Lucifer’s master suite, thanks to Mia and her perfect, stupid face, but I won’t let the deluded fantasies of one of his employees get to me, potential ex or not.

You used to be one of his employees, that awful thing inside me hisses.

The thing that’s been prowling around inside my chest since that night in the forest.

My anger, my powers unleashed.

I let out a frustrated growl, my hands suddenly clenching.

Without warning, I strip off my heels and toss one of them across the room, its spike hitting the wall with a loud thud and taking an unexpected chunk out of the drywall. My eyes go wide.

Oh shit.

I blink, staring at the hole I created in disbelief, before I start to pace back and forth, my chest heaving in and out as I remember the porcelain sink handle and how I crushed it in my hand so easily.

What in God’s name is happening to me?

I continue to pace, my fists clenching and unclenching as the lights at the edges of the room start to flicker, until I stop and let out a fierce shriek.

The electricity inside the penthouse surges, and the sound of shattering glass follows, dying alongside my scream.

Immediately, I go still.

The lights come back on a moment later, a few shouts from the staff downstairs alerting me to the fact that it wasn’t just me. It was real .

It wasn’t inside my head.

None of it has been.

Slowly, I lift my hand to my mouth, my fingers shaking as I cover my lips and stumble toward the en suite. I grip the doorframe, needing its support as I flick on the bathroom light.

A large, newly formed crack runs down the bathroom mirror, distorting my reflection.

And the haunted woman staring back at me.

Oh God.

I reach out my shaking fingers and touch her, horrified by what I see.

Not because of the damage I’ve caused, but because I ... did it because I wanted to hurt another human being.