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I think it was his paternal instinct or some other foolish nonsense. I’ve obviously never had one of those. He did though.
Being maudlin about the situation though will do no good. Onwards and such. What else can we do, we know the lives we’ve chosen.
I stop outside of Lucifer’s office and knock on the doorjamb. He’s staring at his computer screen and waves me into the office.
Adam sits across from Lucifer. Even now he’s a carbon copy of the man. Both wearing dress shirts, ties, slacks, and slicked back hair. They’re often confused by outsiders as real son and father.
If I didn’t know better, I would be inclined to agree.
“Are you sure about this, Adam?” Lucifer asks Adam with a raised eyebrow.
“Positive, Father. I know what my peers at school are using right now. If we invest now in the stock, we will see a large return,” Adam says with a smile.
Adam. Now this is a child I can understand. He’s a brilliant prodigy. As smart at mathematics as any I know, and probably more than half.
Under our tutelage, he has blossomed in his schooling. Lucifer has already had the school he attends advance him to sixth grade. I’ve no doubt he will be out of high school before he hits fifteen if things progress the way they have been.
“Excellent!” Lucifer says. He stands up from his desk and comes around to wrap his arm around Adam as they walk to the door. He hugs him tight to his side for a moment before saying, “I’m proud of you.”
Adam beams with pride as he walks out of the office and heads back over to his own office.
Lucifer closes the door behind him and then turns to me, his smile sliding off his face like snow off a sliding off a hot roof.
“What the fuck happened?” he growls out to me as he walks back to his desk and perches on the corner.
“Someone blew up our fucking club,” I snap at him as I slam myself down in a seat in front of the desk.
“I gathered that from the fucking fireball in the sky,” he snaps right back.
Closing my eyes, I try to blink away the pounding tension headache I feel coming on. I have to take my glasses off to rub gently at my eyes.
“As it stands right now, I’ve got feeds in a five-hundred-mile radius in and around the city running. I have my programs tapped into all our government databases, combing through them as well as Interpol’s. If the two men in the video I sent you show up, we’ll find them.”
“How is it that we missed the placement of the bomb?” he asks as he walks back to his chair and sits down.
“Perfect timing and opportunity. If you watch the feeds and pay attention to Cherry, you can see she’s running interference for the two men.”
“Damn,” he swears as he slaps his hand down hard on the wooden desk. “How did we miss her getting turned? Especially after Bartholomew?”
“The payments were in such increments that it looked like it could be extra deposits of her own. And when I look hard enough, she started making those deposits in cash after a couple of installments.”
“Simon, this is something you should have fucking caught,” his voice is almost growling as he stares at the screen on his computer.
Whatever he’s seeing there isn’t about this though. He’s just staring at it, not reading it.
“Agreed,” I say and place both palms on top of the shiny wooden surface.
The desk I rest my hands on is older than both of us put together. It came over sometime during the late eighteenth century. Its hard surface, while shined to perfection, has multiple scars from use over the years.
It was brought up by Lily once that he should have it refinished. That will never happen. This desk has been used as a warning to his men. As evidenced by the large gouge lines right were my wrists are sitting. He’s taken more than one hand since he bought this desk and I’ve no doubt it will see many more in its future if Adam takes over the family business one day.
“Take your fucking wrists off the fucking desk, Simon,” he says with a long sigh.
“It’s not an offer you should take off the table so easily, Lucifer. I fucked up,” I say.
“It’s not entirely your fault her deposits went unnoticed. She was trusted. She could have fucking been another member of the circle if we had groomed her right.”
Pulling back from the table, I sit back in my chair. I’ve thought about the consequences of what happened last night, and while I must agree it wasn’t entirely my fault, I should have been on top of it. He pays me to be on top of things like this.
