I didn’t fucking know why because I wanted to hurt her too.
But it didn’t take me long to figure out why.
When he yanked me out of that cage, pressed my face against the cement floor, his foot against my spine, my arms jerked behind me as he wrapped the rope so tight around my hands, it cut off my circulation before he even threw me back in the fucking cage, I knew why I didn’t like seeing him hurt her.
Because she might’ve been a bitch too. A worthless fucking cunt, just like her sister and just like their mother, but her dad was worse.
He was…he was like Lucifer.
I tell Sid all of this, stumbling over the parts where my hands had gone numb, and it no longer felt like I had fingers at all, and I didn’t think, when they finally untied me, that I actually would have them. My mind had conjured up images of my fingers detached from my body, black and blue.
I keep my eyes closed, wrap both arms around her, pulling her tight. She lets go of my wrist, brings both hands to my hair, still massaging my scalp, as if to keep me calm. To urge me to go on.
To tell her all the ways my own brother fucked me.
“He came down when I was bound,” I tell her, voice breaking. “He came down, watching me carefully, circling my cage like he was fucking predator.” I take a shaky breath, and I can feel Sid’s pulse through her tummy. I think about the baby in there.
I think about the ways I hope they’re nothing like their fucking father.
“I begged him. I fucking begged him.”
I screamed. My throat was raw, and even to my own ears, I sounded like a wild animal. I shoved my shoulders into the bars while he watched me.
My whimpers were hoarse as he stared at me, emotionless. “Help me.” I said it over and over and over. Pleaded on my knees.
I remembered the first time I was introduced to him. To the rest of them. I was quiet, withdrawn. They were arrogant, cocky.
Mean.
I didn’t see them all together after that. Not until I was reborn. Not until Ezra gave me what I needed to get free, to open the padlock.
Not until that moment.
Lucifer had stood there, watching me, his head cocked to the side. Even in the dark, his deep blue eyes seemed to glow.
My heart had thundered in my chest, twisting as he stared at me, because I knew he wasn’t going to help.
I stopped pleading, but I couldn’t stop the soft whimpers that left my mouth.
Then he left me. Without a fucking word, he left me.
When I made it out of there, he never spoke about it, except for that night he pissed on me.
Noctem.
He taunted me about it then. “Your hand is shaking.” He knew then, what he had done to me. What he had let happen.
He knew.
And that day, when I needed him, he walked out. Walked up the stairs without looking back, a smirk on his face.
And I hated him ever since.
Hearing the words hurts.
I always knew there was more. I knew they hated each other long before I became involved with Lucifer. I knew that Jeremiah’s anger and wrath was aimed carefully at my husband for reasons I didn’t quite understand.
Hearing them now, knowing the ways Lucifer left him, I feel something give inside of me. A crack, breaking me, releasing pressure.
Giving me permission.
Lucifer had planned to kill me that night. And I know Jeremiah messed up. I know he isn’t good. He’s capable of violence, and I’ve had it directed at me many, many times. The world has hardened him, and I think he was probably born a little off too, the ways he scared me growing up. Keeping me with him.
Locking me in his room.
But he’s always tried to protect me. And he knew a side of Lucifer I hadn’t quite experienced.
But I know my husband is a sociopath too, and I have no trouble believing anything Jeremiah just told me.
I remember the glass he threw at my head. The coke on the table. His hands wrapped around my throat. “Shut the fuck up,” he’d told me, more than once.
He’d hurt me.
He’d hurt my brother more.
Not to mention Jeremiah’s hand, trembling in my grasp.
Nerve damage.
Permanent.
Lucifer could’ve stopped it, but he didn’t. He fucking didn’t.
I move closer to Jeremiah, and he slowly picks his head up, his gaze wary, as if he’s scared of