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And since I didn’t share that insight with Lucifer, he also had no way of knowing that I knew he’d been loyal to my father until he’d taken his last breath.
My father, Jack Callahan. Mobster. Adulterer. Rapist. Victim.
One of those was a misnomer.
But like Lucifer, the lies of lesser individuals had sealed his destiny. That was a generous statement, considering both men earned their living by killing people.
“How did your mother die?”
“Is that the question you really want to ask me?” I countered.
He didn’t hesitate. “Aye.”
“She was murdered by a monster.”
His jaw tensed beneath his dark scruff. “Do you know which monster?”
He wasn’t mocking me, and he couldn’t hide the vibration of charged emotion that seeped through his tone either.
But this wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer.
I folded my arms across my chest. “I believe you asked your one question. Game’s over, Satan.”
He rocked back on his heels.
I suddenly felt chilled, and a shiver moved through me.
He shook his head. “We’ll play again. Ask me another question.”
The energy between us had shifted. Lucifer was on a fact-finding mission. My walls went up. Everything but my heart went still.
“Are you planning to give me my knives back?” I asked coolly.
Without my knives, I was as vulnerable as a bird with a broken wing. I’d be sitting prey for the next Russian who wanted to strangle me or the sole beneficiary of Raphael’s next irrational mood swing. A scenario the enforcer of Boston’s most powerful crime family could never relate to. Unlike Lucifer, I was alone in this dreadful world of murder and mayhem. I had been for ten years.
His expression was apologetic. “No.”
He was dead serious.
Dead. It had a nice ring to it.
They’d call it straight-up homicide if I killed him right now. First-degree murder. A life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Still. Tempting.
I slipped off the vanity and shoved past him to escape the answer I owed him in return. Lucifer definitely wasn’t about to get any gory details out of me now.
“I think you should go. Don’t forget to ask Katarina for antibiotics.”
Before I reached the door, he snatched my wrist and dragged me back, forcing me to turn around. His eyes remained fixed on mine, and his thumb traced the scar on my inner forearm as though he’d known exactly where it was. It took every ounce of self-control to steady my breaths.
“I never met your mother. But Jack ...” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “He was a good man.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I whispered. My hurt was bleeding through.
Lucifer bowed his head in understanding. “But he was good to you.”
A single tear slipped free. “He was good to me.”
