Page 92 of Like Grim Death: Part One
I frown, confused, until… until I look back at the water.
The woman.
The wavy blonde hair.
The unseeing eyes.
My stomach drops.
I step back again, putting more distance between her and me, between my brother and my uncle and myself.
It seems like the room is spinning.
Bile burns its way up my throat, and I have to swallow it down, hardly hearing Elijah when he answers Lucifer’s question.
“I don’t know.”
And I realize exactly who it is in the water.
Julie.
“When this is over,you’ll find out what you want to know.” Mikhail Malikov leans against Elijah’s mahogany desk like he owns it, his hands in the pockets of tailored gray slacks. A fire roars in the hearth—unnecessary, but I watched Mikhail burn documents as we all settled in and assume that’s its sole purpose—and the light from the flames dance along Mikhail’s lifted cheekbones. In his early forties, I imagine he, like many members of the 6, dabbles in magic known as Botox and filler.
I cock my head, watching him closely from the tan leather chair I’m sitting in. He glanced at Lucifer with his cryptic little sentence, and I know he’s referring to Finn.
Lucifer doesn’t react.
I’m sure he’s feeling kind of how I’m feeling. Like I want to rip apart Mikhail limb from fucking limb. I want to pay him back for threatening my girl, for killing Julie, for endangering my fucking family.
But I don’t move, because like everyone else, I am a fucking puppet.
There are five others aside from us in the large room with no windows and rows and rows of bookshelves, built against the dark walls. The rest of my brothers, save for Atlas, arrived shortly after we saw Julie’s body, but they know nothing of it as far as I’m aware.Theyaren’t the ones with unsanctioned relationships, Xs on their palms.
Cain, Ezra, Lucifer, Elijah and Adam sit in identical chairs, set in a semi-circle over the thick, red rug on the deep brown hardwoods. Callum is away for work, and Atlas… Well, I’m pretty fucking interested in where Atlas is, especially after Lucifer’s question about him over the phone last night.
I glance at Luce, closest me, and see although he’s slouched in his chair, hands pushed into the pocket of his black hoodie, his eyes haven’t once left Mikhail’s.
I think of the words he spoke earlier to Elijah, about not being like his father. I can only imagine that’s exactly who he sees when he looks at his uncle.
A bone in Lucifer’s jaw flexes, and I wonder if he’s seeing Julie’s body in his head. Sid surrounded by police lights. Ella smiling in another life, another time when she was… happier.
My stomach burns, and I wonder if he, like me, is thinking of the subtle threats against our families, and how it’s ourfamilythat fucked up our girls.
Despite the ways I’m annoyed with him, right now, we have a common enemy, and that means more than any fights between us.
I grind my teeth together and drag my gaze back to Mikhail. Before his remarks, he’d been giving us a refresher on RC. How “overseers” are more like “helpers,” and all this other bullshit I don’t believe. Apparently things we learned growing up, part of the unwritten code—Mos Maiorum—but where has Mikhail been all this time? He never bothered to help bury his younger brother last year.
His vivid blue eyes find Lucifer’s, seated only a few feet in front of him.
“I forgive you, you know, for what you did to Lazar.” Mikhail speaks the words with ease, like he’s read my mind. Like we’ve all been waiting for this moment.
Lucifer doesn’t react at all. I know it’s probably eating at him, wondering where Finn is. If he’s safe, if he’s hurt. Luce has a weakness for kids, and he always has. But I wonder what will become of Finn. It would be very hard for Sid, raising another kid when she’s nearly drowning with her own. It would be fucking unfair, and nothing in her life has ever been anything but. He wants to give her a life she’s only ever dreamed of, but all he keeps snatching up are nightmares.
“We had our own council on it.” Mikhail keeps talking and he glances at Elijah, the closest to the fire. Elijah smooths a hand down his button-down shirt, but his facial expression betrays nothing. He doesn’t look away from Mikhail though, and that’s something. “YourDominusspeaks very highly of you. And I’ve known, since you were a child, you would go far.”
Lucifer says he has no memory of this man, and neither do I, but the words make my skin crawl.
“Omnia dimittuntur.” All is forgiven.Mikhail whispers it like an incantation.
