He did what?!I opened my mouth to ask him what he said to her when my eyes bugged out of my face as I choked on the last piece of sausage I’d thrown into my mouth.
He shifted in his seat, lifted his hand that wasn’t holding the contract, and whacked my back a couple times, which dislodged the piece in my throat. It flew out of my mouth and onto the table. I stared at the little piece for a second, wishing it would burn in the worst part of Hell for making me look so stupid.
Before I even had a moment to look up at him in embarrassment, he used his napkin to scoop up the chewed-up piece of sausage and put it on the empty platter in front of him, all without looking away from the papers in his hand.
I looked up at him, a savior complex worming its way into my brain as he set his page down and looked at me with genuine concern.
“Are you okay, princess?”
My heart started to go in overdrive, pounding in my chest, wanting to lay itself at his feet in appreciation. My brain, on the other hand, was kind of a bitch and smacked my heart back to its spot and told it to calm its thirsty ass down before I made a fool of myself in front of this man.
I gulped, taking in a breath of sweet, sweet air before I responded. “I’m fine. Thank you for that.”
He nodded, opening his mouth to say something, but I lifted my hand to stop him.
“But I do need to know what you told Cass. How did you explain who you were? She wouldn't have just let some rando tell her what's what.”
His eyes darkened at the rando comment, but he cooled his irritation as he turned around in his chair to fully face me, giving me all his attention. I appreciated how serious he was taking this, but as his piercing gaze fell on my face, I started to get flustered.
Having this man's full attention on me, watching my every move, every twitch, was oddly erotic, and I was tempted to ask him to grab me roughly and fuck me over the table. I didn’t even mind adding in aDaddyorSirin the mix if it got him to handle me roughly.
No, Lillian! You need to get your head in the game!
I copied him, turning my whole body to mimic him as a power move, then I stared right back at him, waiting for his response.
I could tell by the twitch of his lips that he was trying hard not to smirk at me.
“Well, Lillian, since Miss. Mendoza is your personal assistant and very close to you, I felt it was best to tell her the truth. You have found your four mates and are now bound to Hell as its queen while your father is away fixing larger problems. She knew some of it,” his eyebrow quirked at me, “but still had a lot of questions after I told her that, and we talked through most of the ones I could answer. I didn’t want to overstep my bounds, so for any questions that were along the lines of ‘girl talk’, I said to ask you about it when you called her back.”
Technically, nothing he’d said was wrong and everything he’d done was right, but my emotions and brain were not communicating well with each other at the moment, and I was going into full freakout mode. Oh my god. He’d told her everything. What was she going to think about me having the Four Horsemen as my mates? Also, I didn’t know how temporary this ruling Hell would be. Did he mention that I had no real date? What if Cass can’t handle the demons and because I’m not there all the time they think they can walk all over her? What if clients left because they didn't see me? What if everything fell apart top side? All that hard work, blood, sweat, and tears for nothing.
I clutched my head, digging my fingers into my scalp, threatening to tear my hair out from its roots as I started to hyperventilate. The reality of my situation and everything I’d left behind started to crash into me like a freight train. I kept trying to make the best out of the situation with each decision, but in this moment, my emotions had decided to kick my brain out to have a meltdown.
Was I ever going to go back to the human realm? Cass was more than proficient enough to run the company, but it was my baby. I’d enjoyed building it, and I wanted to watch it thrive. Would I ever get to do that? I knew my dad said this was temporary, but what if he didn't succeed? What if Pop Pop was gone? What did that mean for everything? What if my father didn’t want the reins back? I was spiraling and I knew it, but I couldn't stop the train from running off the rails.
Con chose that moment to come bursting into the room.
“Man, oh, man!” He saw me next to Fame, smiled wide, and kept going. “Oh good, you're up! How in the fuck do you deal with those snake charmers, Hellcat? Those princes are on another level of fucked up. You would never know they were brothers! I just—” He stopped in his tracks, saw me clutching my head and rushed to my side. “Lils? Lillian, what's the matter?”
I felt Fame’s hand lightly touch my back, trying to soothe me, but I think this was his first time ever doing it, because he didn't apply any pressure, and seemed like he really didn’t know what he was doing. A for effort, though.
I started to sink further into myself, not wanting them to see this side of me. The side that had both angel and demon fighting for control to the point where I freaked out and became comatose until I could find something to bring me out of it. Something else to focus on.
The doors slammed open again, and this time, two male voices came in.
“Man, we taught those demons who’s in the house now!” War’s voice thundered out, his joy at smashing skulls and taking names evident.
“Guys, you should’ve seen D! He was using his power left and right, making demons drop!” War whooped, and I heard him slap hands with, I assumed, Death.
“Yeah, well, we still don't know what happens to the demons when I technically terminate their bodies…” His hesitation about a topic I knew the answer to snapped me out of my head and I answered the question while still looking down at the table in front of me.
“When you kill a demon in Hell, they don't technically die, they just get repurposed and distributed into a circle according to which sin they aligned most closely with. So if a Lust demon was killed because they’d slaughtered a whole bunch of souls, they might be transferred over to the Wrath circle if it out-weighed their Lust sins,” I called out to distract my brain. I took a deep breath in as I focused on Con’s hand on my knee, rubbing comforting circles. It felt nice.
“No one really ‘dies’ in Hell. You just get recycled and redistributed. That’s why uprisings are so frequent, and issues are never ending. It's the same souls, just different days.”
I looked up to see War and Death quickly approaching me. Concern for me swam in their eyes, and my heart did a somersault. Awe, they looked like they cared.
“What’s wrong, little goddess?”
