Amor fati. A favorite of the 6; love of fate. Another way to say that no matter how bad life fucks you, it’s all for the greater good.
My father took that one to the extreme after we buried Malachi. He never spoke of him again. Neither did my mother, even though I know it tore her up. I know, because for years, she spent nearly every waking moment locked away in her study, doing God knows what. If I tried to talk about Malachi, or what happened after I pushed him, or the nanny, my father would fly into a rage.
Malachi doesn’t exist, he’d say. Malachi is gone.
Factum fieri infectum non potest. It is impossible for a deed to be undone.
And I’d made it that way. I’d killed him.
Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck all of this shit.
The doorbell rings, startling me.
I rub my eyes, glance at the clock on the microwave in the kitchen. It’s nine at night, and I don’t want to move. I’m still wearing the t-shirt and shorts I was when I came downstairs to find Ella had fucked up my whole life.
Who am I kidding? My life has been fucked since the moment I was a born an Astor.
I force myself up as the doorbell rings again, and I hope it isn’t someone I want to kill: Lucifer, Jeremiah, maybe even Ella herself.
Please don’t be them.
But it isn’t. I see a slight figure through the etched glass as I flick on the light and I know who it is, and my stomach coils tighter.
What does she fucking want?
I open the door before I can think too much about it. Maybe she brought dinner because she remembered she has two sons and one is still alive.
But she’s got nothing in her hands as she forces a smile, then holds out her arms for a hug as she steps inside.
I let her hold me, smelling her overly sweet perfume, her hairspray.
“Hello, Mavy,” Elizabeth Astor says softly against my shoulder. “I’ve missed you.”
I offer her wine from the wine rack in the hall, and we split a bottle at the dining room table, sitting across from one another like we’re at a formal dinner even though I don’t have anything made. There’re sugar cookies Ella made for me last night, before everything went to hell, but I feel strangely protective over those fucking cookies and I don’t offer my mother one.
“Why are you really here?” I ask her as I tip back my wine glass, swallowing it all, her hazel eyes watching me carefully.
She plays with the stem of her own half-full glass, her red, manicured nails clicking against the side of the glass. She has on red lipstick, her shoulder-length blonde hair swept away from her face.
My mom has always been thin, but her face reminds me of Sid’s in the way that it’s so gaunt. She’s still dressed like a senator’s wife, with a red sweater that has gold buttons. A thin gold necklace with a rose on it. Her skin is bright, face unwrinkled, as is tradition with the 6: Botox, filler and implants should really be part of the 6’s virtues.
“Things haven’t been going well for your father, you know.”
I almost choke on my wine as I set my glass back down. “Excuse me?”
She sighs, swirls her wine around but doesn’t drink it. Her eyes linger on it before they finally meet mine. “There was a…mistake, involving a client.” She doesn’t stumble over the words, but she chooses them very, very carefully. Because I’m not supposed to know about this. She licks her lips, leans back in her chair. “People were killed that weren’t supposed to be.”
I actually laugh out loud at that, running my hand over my mouth. Of course they were. And of course the 6 would refer to wrongful murders as mistakes.
Her eyes narrow on me. “Don’t act so self-righteous, Maverick,” she snaps. “You bludgeoned Pammie Malikov to death with a hammer.”
I smile at that and she looks disgusted. “She had it coming.”
She rolls her eyes. I know she doesn’t care. She was never close to Lucifer’s stepmother. She was never close to anyone. Not even her own children. Not after Malachi.
“Go on,” I prod her, gesturing toward her with one hand. “Please do continue.”
She looks like she might get up and walk out instead which would be fine with me, but then she keeps talking. “I know that you’ve been seeing someone.”
I’ve got one arm slung around the back of the chair beside me, one on the table, and I tighten that hand into a fist. “What does that have to do with anything? Am I not allowed to have a fucking girlfriend, Mom? I’m twenty-fucking-four.”
“You know what it has to do with.” She leans forward, leveling me with her gaze. “Ria needs to be taken care of, Maverick.”
“Did Dad send you here?”
“No.” I’m surprised to find it seems like she’s telling the truth. “He didn’t. I took it upon myself to come here. To warn you, since you seem to have forgotten.”
I bite my tongue. Don’t speak. I haven’t forgotten shit, bitch.
“You seem to have forgotten that people die in your father’s organization. They die in his work. Your work. I know you’ve gotten time off, since Sacrificium went so wrong, and Noctem is coming, but if you get entangled with this girl, Maverick, she will die, too.”
“Is that what you came here for, Mom? To remind me that wherever an Astor goes, people end up buried? To remind me that my life isn’t really mine? That Dad is a piece of shit and his organization is a goddamn cult?” I stand to my feet, the chair scraping the floor behind me. I slam my fist on the table. “I already fucking know that, Mother. So if that’s all you came to say, you wasted your fucking time and you can get the fuck out of my house.”
She’s still sitting, her gaze piercing, arms folded. I’m over six feet tall, and she’s sitting in a fucking chair, but somehow, she still seems to be looking down her nose at me. “You saved Jeremiah Rain.”
My stomach burns. I know where she’s going with this. I know, and I can’t find the words to stop it. I can’t say a fucking thing.
“You saved him for a whore that you barely knew.”
My nostrils flare, and I dig my short nails into my palm, fisted on the table to keep from upturning it on top of her.
“You saved him, and now he’s coming back to interfere, once more. Lucifer made a mess with what he did in that warehouse. A mess that the 6 had to pay good money to clean up, but he did one thing right. He left Jeremiah Rain to burn. And you,” she points at me, “you screwed that up.”
She stands up, her nails tapping on the table. “You couldn’t let him die because you felt sorry for Sid fucking Rain—”
“That’s not her name,” I say through gritted teeth.
She smirks at me, shaking her head. “Oh, Mavy. That girl was born into nothing. She grew up with nothing. She will always be nothing, and eventually, she’ll find her way back into Jeremiah’s hands so he can remind her that she’s nothing.”
I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache.
“You saved him for nothing. You have Lucifer losing his mind. He’s going to drive that girl away, and it’s going to be your fault. And yet you couldn’t save your own brother, Mavy.” Her voice takes on a tone of false innocence as she looks at me with pitying eyes. “You couldn’t save Malachi.” His name from her lips drives a knife into my gut. “You couldn’t save him, but Jeremiah Rain? You’d walk into a burning building for him?” She scoffs, rolls her eyes. As if she isn’t affected at all by her youngest son’s death. As if he means nothing to her. As if he never meant anything at all.