Page 38 of Wicked Believer (Original Sinner #2)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Lucifer

My wretched bitch of a sister makes her home in a refurbished carriage house on the Lower West Side in Greenwich Village, and when she finally returns from her hot yoga class for the evening, I’m there waiting.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She tosses her purple yoga mat down upon the sofa beside me, flopping into an armchair across from where I’m seated on the other side of her living room.

She levels a furious glare at me as she uses a wide plastic straw to stir some of the sediment at the bottom of the green juice she’s carrying.

My eyes track toward it, one brow lifting.

“I’m on a cleanse,” she grumbles defensively. “Or so my followers think.”

She takes a generous sip then frowns, scrunching her nose before she scoffs, depositing the clear cup upon the coffee table. “Haven’t you disturbed my peace enough this century?”

“Apparently not.” I toss the dossier I brought with me onto the Chippendale table, nearly knocking her juice over with it.

She scowls at me, staring at the dossier like she may refuse. Finally curiosity gets the better of her. She thumbs through it quickly. “What does this have to do with me?”

“I came to make a—”

“No,” she says before I can even get the word out.

She stands and heads toward the kitchen, forcing me to follow her.

“Mimi,” I growl.

“I said no, Lucifer,” she tosses over her shoulder.

Standing in the light of her fridge, looking through a multicolored array of cold-pressed juices her trainer or chef must have prepared for this week’s latest trend, she plucks a pink one from the top shelf and takes a sip, sighing contentedly.

“Better. Though still not enough.” She closes the fridge, her eyes narrowing at the sight of me on the other side. “Why are you still here?”

“Mimi—” I start, but she’s halfway across the carriage house.

“No. No, no, no, no. I’ve told you this, Lucifer. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Until I get my way, it seems.”

She rounds on me, clearly prepared to tear me in two, and that’s when I reach inside my suit-coat pocket and extend the one thing I know without a doubt will persuade her to listen.

The little gold Scottie dog sits on my palm, the luxury game piece gleaming.

A sharp intake of breath follows before my sister snatches it out of my hand greedily. “Where is it?”

I nod toward the sitting room.

She’s there and gone in a flash like an impatient child at Christmas.

When I find her perched on a stool by the sitting room table a few moments later, she’s already set up half the Monopoly board. “You know I always want to be the car,” she says to me, casting the Scottie dog back into the set’s wooden drawer.

I sit down at the table across from her, claiming the battleship for myself.

Mimi levels a warning look at me. “If you take Boardwalk and Park Place from me, I will end you. You know they’re my favorites.”

But I have every intention of letting her win like she wants.

“The red properties are more strategic,” I comment.

My sister ignores me.

She takes the first turn, rolling the dice before she rubs her hands together enthusiastically, and after several fevered rounds of purchasing, she lets out a victorious shriek as she plucks one of the red properties right out from under me.

My sister may have gotten her sinful title for choosing her own selfish desires over strategy, but when it suits her, she can be nearly as cutthroat as me.

“We need to discuss it, you know,” I finally mutter once we’re halfway through the game.

How she tried to undermine me. Hired Michael to kill Paris Starr.

Thus far, she’s bought up Boardwalk and Park Place, all the greens, and half of the bloody reds, but I have every railroad, all the oranges, and now she’s eyeing the tax money we place in the middle for if anyone lands on Free Parking.

“Do we?” She rolls again, getting doubles for the third time in a row, causing her to let out a furious scream as I’m forced to move her golden car into jail for her.

“Working with Michael serves my purposes currently, but considering he was working with you first ...” I flash the orange card from my pile at her that reads Get Out of Jail Free.

“You want to trade?” She lifts a brow.

I nod. “Naturally.”

“Technically you’re not allowed to trade when you’re in jail,” she says, her eyes narrowing suspiciously, “but since it’s just the two of us.

” She seizes the orange card from my hand and returns it to the discard pile, before moving her piece to Just Visiting.

“Michael wants to start the apocalypse. Thinks it will get Father’s attention and make Him come back, you see. ”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

She cradles the dice within her palm, glancing toward my properties. “It’ll cost you.”

I huff, slipping my one remaining red across the table toward her. Kentucky.

She claps her hands, grinning delightedly as she lines it up in the little row of cards in front of her. “He knows he can’t open the seals without you, but the others don’t.”

I smile. “Interesting.”

She rolls the dice and takes her turn, scowling when she doesn’t land on Free Parking and instead ends up on St. James Place.

Which currently belongs to me.

Begrudgingly, she shoves the fourteen dollars of fake money toward me.

“And his plan?”

She shrugs.

Clearly, if I expect her to be forthcoming, it’s going to cost me. I sigh, leaning back in my chair as I tip my chin toward the small pile of gold hundreds in the middle before I make a show of glancing over my shoulder pointedly. “Did you hear that?”

When I turn back toward the table, the stack of bills is mysteriously missing, and Mammon’s own pile of money is incrementally higher.

She makes a meal of thumbing through her five hundreds. “He thinks he can get Mother to open them without you.”

“Mother?”

“Or the Horsemen. All of us. Whichever comes easier, it seems.”

“Seems a bit—”

“Single-minded,” she finishes for me. “You know that was always Michael’s weakness.”

“Mmph,” I grumble in agreement, moving my piece.

This time, I land on Park Place, and I’m forced to pay her the exorbitant rent fee.

“And what does any of this have to do with your skinny little bitch?” she says after several more turns in silence. She nods toward the living room, where my dossier remains. “She’s all that’s ever on your mind these days.”

I shrug. “Someone needs to teach her what it means to be divine, to use her power, and who better than my one and only beloved sister?”

Mimi scoffs.

“Don’t play coy, sissy. You’ve wanted another woman on this side of the celestial divide ever since Father chose to cast us out.”

“I wanted attention , connection.” She bristles. “You don’t know what it’s like being the sole female among so many—”

“Prideful peacocks?” I finish for her, quirking a brow.

She smirks. “I was going to say douchebags, actually.”

I lean back in my seat, resting my arm over the adjacent chair. “Be that as it may, I’d be willing to lend her to you if you needed—”

“What? Companionship? A friend? Don’t insult me, Lucifer. If I wanted a sister, I could do so much better than your little former-human pocket pussy. That’s for certain.”

But even I recognize that it’s simply a matter of her own pride getting the better of her.

I lean forward. “If you took her under your wing, she’d adore you.”

Greed grumbles, refusing to look at me.

“Mimi,” I give her a look of mock sympathy. “Or should I say ‘big sister’?”

“And what do I get out of all this, humph? Nothing more than a gold-plated Monopoly piece?” She waves a dismissive hand as she scoffs. “Please.”

I lean forward onto my knees, pinning her with a hard stare.

“How about a seat at my side when humanity starts to fall, Michael’s little plan to get Father to return fails, and I am the lone celestial left standing in the ashes, with the one and only person who’s the key to opening the pearly gates begging at my feet? ”

Mammon sets down the dice, leaning back in her chair as she looks at me. “All right, now I’m listening.”