My father clears his throat and I don’t dare look at him. “I did,” he admits, and my stomach churns. “I did know my mistress was pregnant. I urged her to get an abortion.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shrug. And for some reason, Lucifer’s eyes flicker to my father.
Interesting.
But I need to know something and I’m annoyed Lucifer hasn’t asked yet. “What happened to her?” I ask my father, unable to hide the bite in my words. “Sid’s mother?”
My father looks uncomfortable when I say her name, but I don’t fucking care.
“I was told she passed away. Terminal illness.”
“You were told?”
His jaw clenches as he stares at me. “When she didn’t do as I asked, in regard to the abortion, I let Lazar deal with the…situation. And I cut off contact with her. I saw Sid when she was transferred to her guardians, but I did not see her mother again.”
“Did you know these guardians bought her?” I grind out.
“No,” my father snaps. “Lazar himself had taken care of his own bastard.” He trails off, looking at Lucifer. Then he sighs. “Forgive me,” he says with a nod in Luce’s direction. Lucifer is staring at my father as if he’s already dead. “I know this is hard for you to hear, and I regret that things went the way they did. I would never want my daughter to experience what…Sid…did,” his gaze turns back to Elijah, “but I had to reap the consequences of my actions. And now I’ve lost my best friend.”
I want to laugh out loud, but it’s Lucifer that acts first.
He sits up straighter and coughs, cutting off my father’s next words. “Excuse me?” he says in his gravelly voice, low and dangerous.
I shift in my seat, glancing between him and my father. This looks like fun. But it also looks like someone might lose their fucking head.
My father sighs, steeples his hands and presses them to his temple before he picks his head up and looks at Luce. “I know you think I didn’t suffer, or at least, not nearly enough, but if you think for one second I don’t regret what I did—”
Lucifer laughs, cutting him off, and my father frowns but lets Lucifer speak. This is my dad’s trial, after all. He’d do best to be agreeable.
“I don’t give a fuck about your regret, Maddox,” Lucifer snarls.
My dad flinches. Lucifer is a man who killed his own father, burned an entire building full of hanged men; my dad should flinch. And I can admit it, this is kind of fun. I press back against my chair, exhale against the pain from my wounds.
Feels good.
“What I care about is that you let your own child get sold into the hands of fucking monsters,” Lucifer continues. He brushes his thumb over his bottom lip, and I see the vein in his neck jump as he drops his hand to the table. “And you didn’t stop there, did you?” He glances at Atlas and I know what’s coming. “You kicked Brooklin out of your house for fucking around with one of us, and by doing so, you let her find her way into the arms of Jeremiah Rain.” It’s not my imagination that sees him look at me.
I press further against the leather chair, relishing in the way my flesh feels like it’s on fire. I don’t want to think about my sister. Either one of them, actually, but especially not Brooklin. I can keep an eye on Sid. But Brooklin…since I saved Jeremiah’s life, I can’t keep an eye on her at all.
My father sighs and shakes his head, as if Luce is a petulant child that doesn’t understand the way things work. I guess that’s a little true.
I stay quiet, as does everyone else, watching this exchange with greedy eyes.
“You don’t understand the honor the women among us need to possess in order to stay under our protection.” My father’s eyes narrow, and he looks like he’s ready to fight fire with fire. “Obviously, since you willingly started a relationship with a paid whore, you have no idea what that—”
Lucifer jumps up from his chair, but it isn’t him that gets to my father first.
It’s me.
I don’t even realize what I’ve done until my fist cracks against his face, his shirt in my hand as I hit him again, shove him back against the wall, the light from a sconce flickering over the surprise on his bleeding face.
My heart is slamming in my chest with anger and I cock my fist back again, but someone tugs on my arm, wrenching me away from my father so hard I’m forced to let go of him. He stays standing, but he’s slumped against the wall, his mouth open, blood pouring from his nose, over his lips.
I realize two people are holding me and I see Lucifer, off to the side, staring at me with a smile on his face. As if he thought maybe we weren’t so close after all. As if he thought I’d let my dad disrespect his wife like that.
But it has nothing to do with Sid being his wife.
It has everything to do with her being my fucking sister.
I’m breathing hard and I glance back, realize Cain has one arm and Elijah has the other. Both of their fingers are digging into my skin, but it’s not until Elijah shifts his grip to my shoulder that it actually hurts, because he’s squeezing against several of my lacerations.
I tense, but don’t say a word as I lock eyes again with my father.
“That’s enough,” Elijah says. “Although I can’t say that wasn’t deserved, Maddox,” he adds quietly.
My father’s face contorts with rage. “You need to learn your place, Maverick.”
I jerk my arms, trying to get out of Elijah’s and Cain’s grip, but they don’t let go. “You need to watch your goddamn mouth.”
He brings his fingers to his nose, dabs at the blood. Glances at it under the light of the sconces around the room. I see the tips of his fingers, slick with blood, and again my mind goes to Ella.
Don’t think about her.
I jerk again, and again, I can’t get free. Cain and Elijah have me in a fucking vise grip.
“This is your father,” Elijah says under his breath, but we can all hear him. “Let him speak.”
I twist my head around to stare into Elijah’s eyes. “He doesn’t fucking deserve to speak.”
Elijah’s grip tightens painfully, and he claps one hand on my shoulder. I fight back a wince against the pain that lashes down my arm as his big hand presses against the wounds on my back. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he knows.
“We’ve given you and your brothers a lot of leeway, given the circumstances,” he says calmly, his eyes searching mine. “But this goes too far. You have Noctem in eight weeks. You want to be able to face yourself there, do you not?”
Get fucked.
I don’t say it, though. Let it go.
Let it fucking go.
I relax against his hold, and Cain’s. They release me and I turn back to my father, who’s staring at me with a smile on his bloody face.
“Sit down,” Elijah says sharply, commanding us all back to our seats. “We still have other matters to discuss.”
I don’t want to discuss shit. I want to drive back to that fucking trailer park and fuck Ella again, use her until she begs me to stop. I want to kill my father. I want to get out of this.
But even still, I do as Elijah says, as does everyone else. We’re all fucking cowards. Or maybe we’re just so brainwashed, we have no idea how to make our own choices.