“I played, but when I was accepted into the next round, Vinny said nothing. Then the next, and he was silent. It was only when they offered me a job in the orchestra that he made me...” For a split second, the room disappears. I see the interior of the theater and the rich backdrop of the ruby curtains that shielded the stage. I see the face of the director who praised my talent and offered me a spot.
And I see Vinny, his gaze malicious as he made me turn them down.
“I knew then,” I hear myself say as if Lucifer were there withme, watching four years into the past. “I could see it in his eyes, what he was. What he had become. A monster.”
It feels so strange to admit it all out loud. Vinny could torture me for weeks and I could still love him. I still recited that stupid list in my head:He likes to read, he likes the color green, he loves classical music. Only then did I see what lurked within the shell of the man I’d once called my best friend.
“He made me turn...turn them d-down. Every year after that, around the same time, he forced me to audition again—a different theater every time. Sometimes he watched me, sometimes he wouldn’t. This time...” My throat aches. I have to stop talking and gulp at the air just to keep from being swept under again.
Pain has a different flavor here than it did with Vinny. It’s a potent, powerful drug, and once it hits...all I feel is rage. I can only see fire, hot and burning, licking at Vincent Stacatto’s skin. In Lucifer’s realm, pain is nothing more than hate, and I won’t survive the reckless high it brings.
“This time, I knew the theater. I had only been there once, five years previously...but I knew the general layout of the area. Vinny couldn’t accuse me of lying if I said that I wanted to take a walk home from the subway station. A week before that, I had sold one of the pieces of clothing he gave me—a designer shawl. I used the money to pay off some thug I met on a street corner to have men waiting in an alley for a ‘young woman who looks like me’ that night. They...they could do whatever they wanted to her, just as long as they killed her. Slow. Quick. It didn’t matter. She merely needed to d-die.” My voice cracks.
The room starts spinning. The shadows distort and become the two men whose death warrants I signed the moment I just lay there and let them try to get their bit of fun in before killing me. Maybe...I even felt like I deserved it—the pain, the humiliation, the brutality. Maybe I’d needed to feel it all just to erase theharsher ache of flirting with the only future I had ever envisioned for myself and having to walk away.
Maybe...maybe.
It’s only when a hand falls on my shoulder that I realize I’ve said all of that out loud. The fingers clench, gripping me down to the bone, but not because of what I’ve said. I’m choking. Tears spill down, blurring my vision, and I can’t keep up with whatever sound is leaving my mouth now. My ears cringe from it. At some points, it sounds like laughter. At others, it sounds like sobs.
The devil waits until I catch my breath and smother the sound, but for some reason, he doesn’t pull away.
When I gather the nerve to look up, I catch the tail end of a searching look. It’s confusing that I don’t find the things in his eyes that I expect to or should—no hate, no disgust, no pity. I look into his gaze and I see myself staring back, my eyes wide, my hair a mess.
“I never hated him,” he tells me, his voice so gruff that I could have imagined it—but even my dark fantasies were never so twisted. “I never hated...him. You can’t hate an animal. You pity it. You fear it. You want to put a bullet in its brain to end its fucking misery, but hate? No...” He backs away, shaking his head, and my shoulder burns with the loss of his touch. “You don’t waste an emotion like hate on a creature that can’t even feel.” He flexes his fingers, and I think I understand what he means.
A man who makes his living off violence can’t afford to be reckless with the tools of his trade: hate, pain, rage. They fuel him, making it easier for him to envision himself as merely another worthless animal fighting its way out of a cage.
“Espi hates me because...no matter what I fucking did, I could never protect him. It wasneverenough.” His voice carries a wave of pain even someone like me—scarred and abused and tormented—can only dream of.
It’s the ache I feel whenever I think of Christoph, only magnifiedby every year and every day he had to build the shadow of an illusion around the only person he seems to love.
What was it like for him? Having to enter that house every day to shield Espi from the monstrous “animal” lurking in the basement? What was it like, waiting to kill his own father the moment he heard footsteps on the stairs at night?
There’s nothing I can say. I can only sit and watch as the devil retreats and storms into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
I can only breathe and reach down to finger the length of the cello. I can only pray that, if I play long enough or hard enough, I can escape this hold he has over me.
I won’t let the devil destroy the one thing Vinny never could.
I play for hours.My fingers ache. My arms are on fire. My mind is stillhere. I’m still painfully aware when the door to the apartment opens and a new presence slinks his way inside. He watches me with a scowl, his green eyes blazing. Apparently, he isn’t a fan of Bach’s cello suites.
“Can someone shut her the fuck up?” Arno takes a step toward me only to freeze in his tracks. A quick glance over my shoulder reveals why.
Lucifer’s guarding the doorway to the bedroom, his arms crossed like a true beast from Hades. I don’t know how long he’s been standing there, but with one look, he pins Arno in place. With one look, he steals away every semblance of peace I have ever found while playing. In defeat, my bow-wielding hand falls, and the song dies on a harsh, broken note.
“Mack’s waiting for you,” Arno says. “Wanted to come get you himself, but I ‘volunteered.’” He’s implying something. Something that makes Lucifer perk up from the top of his head down to the tip of his toes until he prickles with energy, electric.
“He can fucking wait.” His tone leaves no room for challenge.
Chuckling to himself, Arno doesn’t even try. There’s a hint of admiration in his gaze. Despite the anger that sometimes burns hot between them, I sense that—though I don’t think by blood—these two really do harbor the bonds of brotherhood between them. There’s respect in the way Lucifer lets him off with only a visual warning when Arno takes another step toward me.
But there’s a challenge between them too. A dare. Maybe even a game. I’m the ball, but Lucifer won’t give me up so easily.
“Anything else?” he wonders, his tone steady and cold—but I don’t miss the way he shifts, bringing his bulk just a fraction of an inch closer.
“Nothing,” Arno concedes, taking a step back. “Just that Mack seems to want to do this shit tonight. Be ready.”
“Am I ever not?”
