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I met her halfway. She looked so small and frail. But I knew a lioness lived inside her. She was wounded. Not defeated. And I’d give anything—do anything—to help her heal.
She pressed her palms to my chest, but before I could swallow her in my embrace, she looked up at me. Something like an apology reflected in her eyes. “You didn’t kill your mother, Lucifer.”
My brain stumbled over her words. I stared at her in confusion.
What? My mother? Did Willa say I didn’t kill her? I had. Not intentionally. But I’d had a habit of sleepwalking as a child, and one night ...
The room swayed. “I don’t—” The hands of shame and guilt latched around my throat.
“Raphael did. He’s the one who killed your mother. It wasn’t you.”
Before my mind could catch up with my ears, Raphael’s deranged laughter rang out. He’d managed to free himself of his gag. “Is that what the Brennans told you?”
Willa studied Raphael over her shoulder.
A triumphant grin spread across his face.
Her gaze snapped back to mine, her mouth open, her eyes wide. “I’m not lying to you. I wouldn’t. I swear! I know I’ve kept a lot of things from you—but I’d never ...”
“The cunt got one thing right,” Raphael drawled. “You didn’t kill our mother. Our father did.”
Lucifer
The folding chair squeaked under the burden of my weight. I set the bottle of bourbon I’d been nursing on the concrete floor. My hands throbbed with new contusions. The bare-knuckle sparring session I’d shared with a punching bag in our home gym had provided little relief from the maelstrom of emotions that consumed me.
Raphael sat across from me on a cot. The thin mattress was supported by a metal frame and devoid of the creature comforts of a pillow and blanket. Vertical iron bars divided the four yards—give or take—between us. The twelve-by-twelve cell was as useful as it was symbolic. My brother had built a prison for himself—one transgression brick at a time.
Now he’d live in it.
Darkness enveloped the catacombs. Seconds ticked by, and then the light bulbs above me sputtered back to life. It was three a.m., and Mother Nature wasn’t finished with Boston just yet.
Mother.
I reached for the bottle and jerked it to my lips once more.
We’d get to that part—eventually.
Business first.
This moment required that I be the boss that the old guard believed me to be when they’d cast their votes. I could no longer put off the inevitable. I needed to formally declare my position and remove my brother from power. I had been preparing to do so judiciously, even as our window of opportunity to make things right with the Albanians and Russians had closed in. But the valuable days I’d spent building a resourceful approach had been for naught.
Raphael was unhinged. His time of reckoning had come.
I rested the loaded Glock on my thigh at the same time another gulp of whiskey slid down my throat. The punching bag hadn’t neutralized the chaos in my mind, so I’d try drowning the thoughts instead. I wasn’t a lightweight. I could operate like a well-oiled machine with alcohol flooding my veins. Feelings were my kryptonite, not liquor. And I was a fissure of emotion away from ending what Willa had started.
I pressed my lids together, testing the validity of my continence. But all I managed to do was call forth a vision of Willa—the look of despair and rejection on her angelic face as Keegan removed her from the study at my behest. She thought I didn’t believe her. That by sending her away, I was calling her a liar. But that wasn’t the case. I knew Willa was telling the truth, or at least, what she believed was the truth.
But I knew my brother’s tells as well as Willa’s—if not better.
Raphael wasn’t lying either.
My eyes snapped open. Raphael shifted. His movements were stiff and awkward. I had been shot three times in my life. I knew firsthand how he felt right now. There were zero fucks to be found.
“Shall I start?” he drawled from the shadows of his cell.
Disgust crept further up my skin with each breath of air we shared.
After I’d refused his request for whiskey or painkillers, Raphael had remained uncharacteristically silent while Liam cleansed and stitched his wound. Then he’d gone to the cell willingly—almost too willingly. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he ready to admit defeat? Had he settled on acceptance? Both seemed unlikely. Denial was more fitting. Remorse wouldn’t have been considered.
