Lucifer grit his teeth and sighed as if he were trying to reel it all in and fall back into a sort of composure he’d had eons to master.
“It was not my intention to dump my past onto your lap, Dany. I only meant to say that I have found myself at a cliff's edge before, drawn closer by pride and ambition.”
“What did you do?”
He turned those mismatched eyes in my direction, the slit of his pupil dilating against the emerald green of one and milky white of the other.
“Made history, dearest Dany. I jumped.”
It didn’t land like a boast. He said it the way you talk to someone standing on the same ledge, caught between fear of what’s behind them and terror for what’s at the bottom if they fall.
It’s not that the acts of finding and killing Callen scared me. I have done that in my sleep years ago. It hadn’t taken me long at all to gut Damien and Andrew.What froze me was the after: when I had to live with whatever I am without the hunt and…
Without him.
That unknown was the ledge he was talking about.
“I don’t want you to be afraid to take the leap, dearest Dany. And so I thought perhaps you’d like to see what lies at the bottom.”
Lucifer handed me back the binoculars and nodded toward the windshield.
The fuck?
They were cold where they touched my face, but not nearly as cold as my skin when I saw what was happening through them.
A group of men had opened the latch of a shipping container and was ushering out a group of cold, shaking women. Their hair was greasy, clothes ripped, and most had bloody gashes on their lips–
“Mother fucker!” I screamed, blood boiling beneath my skin.
Fire-red hair dulled by neglect was the last to exit the shipping container. She was naked, and her tell-tale figure was the first to catch my eye.
“Sapphire,” I whined.
My eyes searched the rest of the group, and I found them.
Trinity, Lola, Nova, and…
“Carm!” I cried out.
He’d lined them up like trophies—my girls, shaking and bare—while he grinned and patted his men on the backs like he would a pack of dumbass flea ridden mutts.
I counted them once, then again. Caramel’s chin trembled, Nova sobbed, Sapphire tried to square her shoulders and couldn’t quite get there…
That was on me.
I’d let him breathe this long. I’d told myself I was practicing. Perfecting.
What I’d been was coward enough to give him time to run a master sex-trafficking ring under everyone’s noses.
“I could’ve stopped this,” I growled, angry tears pricking at my eyes.
“You still can, Dany.” My hand landed on the door handle, but before I could yank, another vehicle rolled up. “Patience,” he whispered.
My eyes narrowed in concentration when blinding LED lights swungaround the corner. A sleek black truck rolled up and cut the engine. I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of whoever it was, the remnant flashes from his stupid headlights still dancing across my vision.
“It’s a dangerous thing, free will.“ Lucifer said, and his tone almost sounded sad.
Every head swiveled toward the newcomer. The door to the truck opened and all of the sudden, I could hear every fine detail like I was standing right beside them.
