Page 113 of Trust Me

There wasn’t a punishment capable of erasing such a moral deficit.

I needed to stick to the present. The past offered too many loopholes that ended with me killing my newest brother-in-law.

“What do you know about Pier 19?” I’d wait to ask Lucifer about Amelia Rossi. I knew who I was dealing with. What if Lucifer had an FBI connection that he didn’t want others—like his faithless twin brother—catching wind of?

“It’s a pier—located between 18 and 20.”

I forced a tight smile. “Right—and who controls Pier 19? What happens there?”

“You’ll have to ask your boyfriend. Haven’t you heard? He’s the Ceann na Conairte.” Sarcasm dripped from his mangled lips.

“Husband.”

Raphael righted his head. “Pardon?”

I cleared my throat and pulled my shoulders back. “Lucifer is my husband.”

Raphael held my gaze as he straightened to all six feet four of himself without so much as a flinch. His wounds camouflaged his expression.

My heart rate ticked up.

A mixture of liquid steel and something I’d triggered flowed through his veins.

He took calculated steps toward me.

With each footfall, I felt an invisible noose tighten around my neck.

I was Lucifer’s wife. Raphael was impaired. Wrecked. A reinforced cell door separated us, and still he had a way of invoking a sense of terror in me without uttering a single word.

There wasn’t a fraction of doubt that I still fucking hated him.

Raphael loomed over me. His tongue darted out, slithering over the flakes of dried blood in the corner of his mouth. “Do you know why I called him Lucifer?”

My bottom lip trembled. I trapped it between my teeth. Any sign of fear would only encourage him.

He sneered. “Answer. Me.”

I shook my head. I’d always assumed it had to do with Lucifer’s perceived fall from grace on the night their mother died, but I didn’t know the origins of the nickname, or that Raphael had been the one to come up with it.

He gripped the bars, pressing his forehead to the cool iron. “Lucifer was God’s favorite angel—his most beloved son.” He seethed every syllable through clenched teeth. “Athair. Máthair. Our brotherhood. You. You’ve all chosen Lucifer over me. Yet I am the true heir to this family.”

Raphael Flynn was nothing more than an entitled brat with an inflated ego.

He was the green-eyed monster incarnate.

But jealousy begets spite, and in our world, spite almost always resulted in extreme acts of violence.

I didn’t know what Lucifer planned to do with his brother in the long term, but I knew in that moment that we’d never be free of Raphael’s wrath if he was allowed to live.

As this concept took shape, a distinct odor distracted me from my dilemma. “Do you smell that?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered.

I lifted my nose and inhaled sharply. “I’m serious—do you smell that?”

Gasoline.

“Fuck off, Willa.”

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