Hearing every word she spoke, he stared at her, mesmerized like he was for that moment in the apartment earlier.
“I will work for you, Lucca, but you must know one thing. The road you are going down will lead to my brother one day, and I will stand by Dominic’s side.”
A smile touched his lips before he nodded in understanding.
“There is something else you need to know…” Her devil eyes glared into his demon-colored ones, unafraid. “Dominic’s like you. He just hasn’t shown you yet. He won’t go down as easily as Lucifer did. I can promise you that.”
Lucca leaned forward, blowing the smoke he had inhaled to float against her soft skin. “Why did you really come here, Katarina?”
“I know your little secret…,” she told him, holding it in for just a second longer. “I know you didn’t kill him.”
Amused, he sat back in his chair. “What makes you think that?”
“There’s no way you let him die, not after what he did to her.”
A spark flashed in his eyes for a split second, letting her know she was exactly right. She had seen the way he looked at Chloe, and in a single look she could tell he had fallen for the broken girl at first sight. It was what some would consider true love.
True love shouldn’t have existed for them, as it didn’t exist for the unlucky ones, but Lucca and Chloe defied the odds, making what they had more than just true love. They could die a thousand deaths only to be reborn to find the other again. Whatever that love was didn’t have a name, as it was too powerful to give it one.
He stood and went to the other side of the desk to sit on the edge. “Katarina…”
An image popped into her head. He could so easily lean forward and take her throat in his hands for knowing his secret.
“Would you like to see what is left of him?”
Thirty-Six
Do You Believe in Heaven and Hell, Lucca?
The sound of that cold metal door sliding open would haunt her nightmares, and when the light trickled into that dirty dungeon of a room, she could see the body that sat halfway in the shadows.
It was an almost lifeless, mutated, scrawny body that only lived because his captor willed it so, keeping him on the edge of death that was halfway on this living plane and the other in Hell itself.
The image before her would haunt her till the day she died as what she saw shouldn’t even exist in fucking nightmares.
“Has Angel seen him yet?” she asked, not crossing the threshold.
“Yes.” He confirmed what she thought. “He asked me to keep him alive till his brothers could see him.”
She took her eyes off the body to look at him. “You may think you deserve to get to be the one to kill him, but you don’t.”
“And who do you think does?”
Her eyes went back to the body. “That’s for Matthias and Dominic to decide.”
Lucca wouldn’t ever give her a promise such as that, but at least he heard it.
“Cassius though… you can’t let Cassius know he’s here….” They all might have devil blood in their veins, but Cassius was the true spawn of the devil. “Because I don’t know what he would do if he saw him like this.”
He nodded his head this time, seeming to give her at least that promise.
You could hear the shackles that bound him to the room stir as he started to wake.
“Do you believe in Heaven and Hell, Lucca?”
He thought a moment before he answered her honestly, “I’m not sure anymore.”
“It exists.” She watched the poor soul scoot deep into the shadows till the only thing you could hear was the rattling of the chains from his fear. “Hell existed in the house I grew up in, but now, you made it exist here.”
Lucca smiled. “And Heaven?”
“Heaven exists.” Taking one last look, she put her hand on the cold door as she began to slide it closed. “But people like us will never get to see it.”
“You didn’t want to go closer, so he could see you and you could talk to him?”…
…Kat was in her bedroom in the basement when she heard the door open and feet coming down the steps. She got up from her bed instantly after seeing her brother’s face. In her heart she knew something was very wrong.
Dominic wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him in a huge hug. It was the first time she’d seen him cry as he spoke the words she would never forget. “He’s dead. He’s finally dead.”
Her arms wrapped around him now, gripping him with force as her own tears began to fall. The two stood there together crying for what seemed like an eternity that paled in comparison to the eternity they’d had to spend with their father.