The Cruelest Chaos (Unsainted Book 3)

by KV Rose

  She turns to go, but sets the gun carefully on the ground, rising back to her feet in silence.

  I stare at the floor, still holding Ella’s hand.

  “Wait,” I call after my sister.

  I hear her steps falter.

  I can’t hear my father anymore.

  “Do you love him, Angel?” I still can’t look at her. “Did you ever?” I remember what he said to me: Aside from hearing Sid tell me she loves me? Nothing has ever felt better than driving that knife into my father’s fucking brain.

  Had she meant it?

  Does Ella?

  Do I?

  “I love him so much,” Sid whispers, pain in her words. “And that’s why I have to leave him.”

  Sometimes you leave the things you love, to keep them safe from just how strong your love can be. Because you love them enough to save them from yourself.

  Keep Ella safe.

  Love,

  Your Angel

  “He’s not making you do this?” I still can’t look up. I still can’t meet his eyes.

  “No, Mav. This is my choice.” Another step. “Goodbye, Ella.”

  “Ria.” I get her name out before I lose it. Before I stop them. I meet Ria’s gaze, ignoring the man who has his arms wrapped around her. “Ria. I’m so sorry.”

  Tears streak down her beautiful cheeks. “It’s okay, Maverick,” she lies to me. “I understand why you did it.” She turns away.

  And then Sid and Ria walk out with Jeremiah Rain, and I don’t stop them.

  I don’t think about him. Lucifer. I don’t know how many levels of betrayal our brotherhood can survive, but I think I’ve passed all of them. I think this last thing…he won’t forgive me this.

  But if I had stopped her, if I hadn’t let her go, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.

  Ella’s hand in mine is the only thing that keeps me from sinking to my knees as we make our way up the steep stairs of whatever building this underground tunnel was built beneath. Leaving my father behind for fate to decide if he lives or dies.

  Amor fati. I wonder how much he’s loving it now.

  Ella doesn’t speak, and I can only imagine what she’s thinking. I can only imagine how she feels. I can only imagine that when we get back home, she’s going to run.

  I can only imagine that if I stop her, I’ll be no better than everyone else.

  I push open the door at the top of the stairs and warm air greets us; a relief from the cold underground.

  I blink, trying to take in exactly where we are, Ella walking in the door behind me. I hear music playing; Linger, by Stuck Out. It’s loud and stabs a fucking knife through my chest, and I just want it off.

  I just want silence.

  But before I can demand anything, before I can ask anyone where the hell we are—an empty basement it looks like, with concrete floors and apparently, speakers in the wall, a dim light on overhead—Lucifer appears from the shadows, rushing over to me.

  He’s got something in his hand, his fist clenched around the papers so hard he’s torn them.

  My blood runs cold.

  How did he get those?

  His jaw is set, his blue eyes flashing as he charges toward me.

  I shove Ella behind me, drop her hand, and I take a step toward him. But he stops. Inches from my face, he stops, breathing hard.

  Circles line his eyes, dirt on his face like I’m sure it’s on mine. His eyes are streaked with red veins, and he’s only wearing a black t-shirt and dark jeans, his hoodie gone.

  He wipes the back of his hand over his nose, which I realize is running.

  “Did she leave?” he asks me, his voice tight with barely restrained rage. He’s still panting, his chest heaving, and he doesn’t give me time to answer before he asks it again, angrier this time: “Did she leave?”

  He drops the papers to the ground where they scatter, spreading in every direction. He fists my shirt in his hand, yanking me toward him until we’re nose-to-nose.

  Ella is silent at my back, but Lucifer should be careful. I wouldn’t put it past her to hit him for me.

  “You know the answer to that.” I grab his wrist, but don’t try to throw him off of me. For a moment, we just stand there, breathing hard.

  He takes a deep breath in. Closes his eyes. I can smell his sweat, and mine too. I wonder if he’d rather be breathing in the scent of my blood, instead.

  “Did she choose it?” he asks, his tone quieter. “Don’t lie to me,” he says quickly, eyes still closed, fist still clenched around my shirt. “Did she choose…him?”

  I can’t watch it. I can’t watch the pain on his face. Even though I played a role in it—or maybe because of that—I can’t watch.

  I swallow, try to wet my lips so I can get the words out as I close my own eyes. He deserves to know the truth. He’s already seen it, if the letters he dropped to the ground are any indication.

  “Yes.” The word is hoarse, and I don’t even know if I’ve said it loud enough for him to hear. But I can’t hear him breathing anymore.

  I can’t open my eyes either.

  He yanks me closer, his other hand coming up and I think he’s going to hit me, and I think I’m going to let him, but then he just pulls me into a hug with both arms wrapped around me, his head on my shoulder.

  I don’t hesitate. I hug him back. Holding him.

  “I never told her.” His words are strained. “I never told her. And I never told you.” He swallows, hard. “Thank you. For Pammie. For getting rid of one of my worst nightmares. Thank you, and god, Sid, thank you, too, baby girl.”

  His body heaves in my arms, and he collapses, all of his weight against me. I’m holding him up, his heart breaking in my arms. Linger starts up again and I don’t know if he’s doing this to himself or if they’re doing it to torture him.

  I don’t know, but as his heart shatters, mine does, too. For him.

  Because now I know. I know what it would be like to feel this pain. To know Ella chose to walk away. I know how it would taste a lot like something I deserve, knowing that any person in their right mind would do what Sid did.

  They wouldn’t walk away.

  They’d run.

  So fucking far that the 6 couldn’t get to them. Couldn’t hurt them anymore. And Jeremiah Rain is the only hope she has for that kind of protection.

  And I know just how much that fucking guts Lucifer.

  He buries his head in my neck and I feel the warmth of his tears, and when a cry leaves his throat, it’s a strangled sound. Something a wild animal might make.

  His fingers dig into my back as he struggles to stay upright and I wince with the pain, but I don’t dare let go of him.

  No matter what he’s done, no matter that Sid did what she thought was best, I won’t let go of him. Not until he’s ready.

  His choked sobs rip through my own heart, the warmth on my neck growing hotter as his tears fall against my skin. I squeeze him as close as I can, and he trembles in my arms for a long, long time.

  I don’t know how much time passes, but his muffled whimpers grow quieter, and then I feel Ella’s arm around me, and Lucifer slowly pulls away.

  When I look up, he’s not looking at me.

  He’s looking at her, and she at him.

  He opens his arm, one still around my shoulder, and she sinks into him, and I sink into them, the three of us holding one another.

  Her head is against his chest, and his eyes are closed as silent tears still fall, his eyes swollen and puffy even closed.

  He calls Sid’s name over and over, like a broken plea.

  And when he picks his head up from her chest and his mouth comes to mine, Ella between us, I know something I didn’t before.

  As I taste his tears on my tongue, I realize that love is strange.

  It can be mad, and it can be a cruel sort of chaos. It can be violent and terrible and damaging.

  That part I’ve understood, since I was a kid.

  What I didn’t get was th
at…it’s okay.

  It doesn’t matter how awful it is.

  There is no right way to love. There’s no wrong way, either, not really. It’s out of our hands.

  Love is love, and it meets people exactly where they’re at. Ella met me, and I her. And the both of us met my brother, and I know that Jeremiah and Sid met one another, too.

  As much as I might hate that, I can’t fight it.

  Neither can they.

  Let it go.

  Lucifer’s mouth is warm and wet against mine, and he chokes on a sob as I let him take what he wants from me, Ella holding onto both of us.

  Let it go.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Spring comes early to Alexandria.

  Maverick sits on the back porch, staring off at the fountain, the morning sun barely risen. He’s dressed in a t-shirt and grey sweats, his elbows on his knees.

  I glance at him from the back door, then turn to take in the state of the living room. Cain is passed out on the couch, one arm flung over his eyes, his bare chest rising and falling softly. He’s got bruises on his torso and I’m not sure if they’re from sex or his fights in the ring, but they seem almost as permanent a part of him as birthmarks or freckles.

  Ezra is asleep upstairs.

  So is Brooklin Astor.

  She’s a lot like Maverick. Full of fight and guts and she’s so beautiful and still…healing.

  A lot like Maverick.

  I glance again at him. He’s still staring into the distance, lost in his own thoughts.

  When I turn back, it’s not Cain I look at.

  It’s Lucifer.

  He’s on the floor, the coffee table dragged over to the opposite wall of the couch Cain is sleeping on. Lucifer’s got a pile of blankets underneath him, his arms folded under his pillow, head twisted to the side, his lips slightly parted, eyes closed as he sleeps.

  He looks tortured, just as he does when he’s awake. There’s a crease between his dark brows, and I see his bare shoulders, the blanket tugged down to the middle of his back. Every muscle in his lean body is tense.

  I wonder if he dreams of her.

  In the three weeks that’ve passed since Noctem, since the 6 took Ria and Sid and me and threw us to the wolves, he hasn’t spoken of her, at least not around me, save for once. He hasn’t really spoken much at all, period. He’s drank a lot and he’s always around, but he rarely…participates.

  An orphan with an estranged wife, my heart aches for him.

  We haven’t done what we did again since that first time, the three of us tasting each other’s hurts, and I know it would kill Maverick if we did. I know, too, that I can’t stop Lucifer’s pain. Neither can his brothers.

  Only Sid can do that, and I’m not so sure she wants to.

  The letters she wrote Maverick, echoing the pain she felt at cutting off Jeremiah, the boy she thought was her brother…they’re heartbreaking to read.

  Mainly because I know how the story ends.

  For now.

  She hadn’t made up her mind in those letters. But when the 6 came for us, pawns in their strange rituals, she made a decision. She was paranoid enough about the taunts the 6 made to Lucifer of how she became his wife. Of how Lucifer forced their hand to accept her.

  So when her worst fears came true and the 6 wanted to use her in their mind games, she chose.

  She chose for herself, and for her and Lucifer’s baby.

  I swallow down the lump in my throat and pull the sliding glass door open to go outside.

  The words echo in my head, that one conversation where Lucifer brought her up:

  “Is she still going to keep it?” he asked Maverick, his eyes on the floor, a beer in his hand. A week after Noctem.

  I had been pulling cookies from the oven, and I forced myself to keep moving. To not make this harder than it might already be.

  Maverick had cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t say?” Lucifer pressed, his tone desperate for something. For any scrap of information. “Nothing at all?”

  Maverick had sighed. “If she had, either way, I would’ve told you, Luce.”

  Lucifer had been quiet a moment, and then he asked, in a voice so low I could barely hear him as I turned the oven off, “Will he hurt her?”

  Maverick didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  And that had been the end of it.

  Outside in the warm air of March, I sit beside Maverick.

  He wraps his arm around me, tugging me close and kissing my forehead. He smells like leather and I breathe him in.

  “You ready?” he asks, his lips moving against my hair.

  Dread coils in my stomach, but I nod anyway. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  “It’ll be okay, baby,” he assures me, pulling me into his lap, turning me to face him, his hands on my waist. “And afterward, we’ll go shopping and—”

  I slap his chest playfully, shaking my head, my hair tumbling down around my shoulders. “I don’t want you to spend all your money on my wardrobe, Mavy.”

  His baby blue eyes narrow and it thrills me a little, to see him look angry, but I know he doesn’t mean it. Not like he might have before. “I’m insulted you think your clothes would drain all of my money.” He bites his lip, eyeing the white t-shirt of his I’m wearing. “Although you look damn good in my clothes, so maybe we’ll skip the fucking shopping.”

  He leans down, closes his mouth around my breast, over my shirt. My hands grip his shoulders as I throw my head back, letting his hands roam under my shirt. My nipples harden, and he groans, tugging on them with his teeth, using his hand to knead the other.

  “Let’s go inside,” I say breathlessly, swatting his shoulders. “Your brothers are asleep right—”

  “As if they haven’t seen two people fuck before,” he growls, his mouth still around my breast.

  I laugh, shoving his chest and reluctantly, he pulls away, looking back up at me.

  I trail my finger down the side of his face, over his tattoo.

  He smiles up at me, and it’s real. It’s soft, just his lips tugging up at the corners, but it’s real. For me.

  “Why’d you get this?” I ask him, rubbing my finger up and down the tattoo.

  He cocks a brow. “To scare girls like you away.”

  “Like me?” I didn’t expect that answer. My hand comes down to his neck, then over his shoulders as I massage him with both hands.

  His eyes nearly roll back in his head. “Goddamn, that feels good.”

  I dig my nails in instead and his eyes spring open, shocked. “You didn’t answer my question, Mavy.”

  He rolls his eyes, but pulls me in closer, laying my head against his shoulder as he plays with my hair. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Girls like you. Beautiful. Smart. Good.”

  I shake my head against his shoulder, my cheek moving against the fabric of his shirt. “I’m not good, Mavy,” I mumble against him.

  He keeps stroking my hair. “You are, baby. You’re perfect. For me, you’re perfect.”

  My heart aches with those words. “Then why would you want to scare me away?”

  He cradles my head to his chest, one arm wrapped around my waist, holding me to him. “So I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “Didn’t I? I’m about to take you from your mom—”

  “Fuck her.”

  “—and Con,” he says with obvious disgust, “and The goddamn Ark, and every other boy who ever laid eyes on you and wanted to make you theirs.”

  “What about girls?”

  He stiffens. “Them, too.”

  That surprises me. “You wouldn’t want a threesome?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I think about Lucifer and what almost happened between us and my body tenses.

  Maverick is being gentle with me right now, but he isn’t always. And I don’t want him to be. He’s better, though, and so am I, and I guess that’s all anyone can really ask for fro
m one day to the next. Better.

  But his arms only tighten around me. “No,” he answers me. “No more. I own you, remember?”

  I laugh against him, glad the moment has passed. It’s too nice outside, too beautiful for us to be angry. “I own you too, asshole.”

  “You mean you don’t want me tracking down other girls in the woods and slapping the shit out of them?”

  I push away from him and grab his face, squeezing his lips together. He still smirks at me, his beautiful eyes gleaming. “I’ll kill you, Mavy.” I lean down close, my lips over his, my voice soft. “I’ll kill you. And if you do what Sid did to Lucifer,” my eyes flick to the door at his back and his expression changes to something darker, “I won’t sit around and cry. I’ll fucking find you and kill you, and whoever you try and run off with.”

  He laughs. “Such big threats for such a little girl, baby. I don’t think you’d have it in you to kill me.”

  I roll my eyes and kiss him. He opens his mouth for me, his tongue claiming mine as he holds me close. When we finally pull away, breathless, he says, “Let’s go before I wanna fuck you and we wake the whole house up.”

  Mom isn’t there when I leave, one single backpack packed up and thrown into the backseat of Maverick’s Audi, Come Thru playing through his speakers.

  He’d asked if I wanted to wait for her, but I didn’t.

  Instead, I left her a note on the rickety kitchen table that just said: I hope you find some peace, held down with a rock that hadn’t been too hard to find behind the trailer. I’d wished I could have found a bone, too, but there weren’t any.

  Maverick had asked me about it when I went scouting around back there. Asked me about the bone from the first night we met.

  “It’s one thing we did together that wasn’t hell,” I’d told him. Going on nature walks, finding rocks and bones and marveling over it all.

  I’m sure there were other things we did together, fun things, but I don’t remember them.

  I thought about telling her I loved her in that note. I thought about telling her she could be something different. That she could be better. That she could turn her life around. Maverick has, and I have, and we’ll keep doing it. Over and over again.