Page 1 of The Devil

Prologue

Let us begin with a party.

An innocent night of care-free fun amongst teenagers.

Nate Carter, the popular boy with a heart, was throwing one of his infamous bashes that aimed to let the kids of Westlake Prep let down their hair and give into their urges within the safe confines of the Carter household.

Everyone knew who the Carters were, but none more so than me. After all, I grew up with them, lived with them day in, day out, right up until just over a year ago. I was their big sister, their little sister, and their best friend.Wasbeing the operative word. Now, we barely talk.

I never attended Nate’s party. In fact, I wasn’t anywhere near my parents’ house that night. I was lying on the kitchen floor of my two-bedroom cottage, far away from anyone, knocked out cold. While I lay there oblivious to the world around me, together with the mess of another dinner thrown across the floor in a fit of rage, my daughter was sleeping soundly upstairs. And for that, I am thankful. My Jessica is everything to me.

Conversely, my husband, Evan, was nowhere to be seen. But he would return; he always does. I might not have been at that party, but I felt the repercussions of what happened that night. I lost a little bit more of myself, brushed away another few bruises for another day, and pushed back more bad memories for my future self to deal with. So long as Jessica needs me, I will absorb the pain, become that little bit more numb, and plaster on my fake smile for all of them.

And it works; no one sees and no one asks. So long as I am what they expect me to be, they are happy with me tied up inside of their little, neat box. My brothers have always been forgiven for stepping outside the boundaries, but as the girl, I was destined to fulfill a role of subservience, obedience, and a contentedness to be what I essentially am – a function. A wife, a mother, and a daughter who always does as she’s told. A girl who never steps outside the lines, never answers back, and never complains. And perhaps I could have lived in this role without question or the need for more. But then I methim.

To tell my story, I have to go back much further in time. In fact, I need to start with someone else’s history. Someone who is as damaged as I am. Someone who is feared. Someone who has a reputation so bad, I was warned by my entire family to keep away from him. Someone who demanded that I be his. Someone who won my heart. Someone I lost.

This is not just my story, it’s also his. This is the story of how the little mouse fell in love withThe Devil.

Chapter 1

Past

Lucius

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have everything you thought you knew to wither away and die in a matter of moments? Alas, the day my mother died was not the first time I was forced into feeling like this. Being only thirteen when she passed, you would think this was my first introduction to heartbreak, especially when I tell you she killed herself with a piece of rope and an old tree in the backyard. To be fair to her, she had at least chosen to wait until I was at school before carrying out her task that day; I suppose I should be grateful for that small mercy. Magda, my nanny and housekeeper, was the first to discover her lifeless body, however, it had taken both the gardener and her husband to cut her down. Everything was nicely cleaned up before I returned home from school and with my tea already waiting for me – spaghetti meatballs; it was Tuesday after all. Meatballs were always served up on a Tuesday, even when your mother decides to take a premature exit from the world. I still refuse to touch my once-upon-a-time favorite meal.

I had already had a thoroughly frustrating day, all because Tommy Slater had decided to start a fight with my best friend, Eric. Being the brains of the friendship, I had had to get involved, if only to prevent them from killing one another. Of course, all the thuggery got the better of me, resulting in Eric and I having to participate in a week’s worth of after-school detention. The truly sad part of all this was the fact that it was all over hurt pride during a football match, a game I could care less about. However, I couldn’t stand by and let Tommy-the-gorilla-Slater pummel Eric into a bloody mess. Our counterattack was extremely simple and not at all sophisticated; I held the lump of a boy from behind while Eric kicked him in an area that would be sure to keep him hobbling along for the next few days.

Had I simply returned home to normality, I might have brushed aside my anger and seen the funny side. However, this wasn’t ever going to happen after my father sat me down to inform me that the woman who had given birth to me had decided to end her own life. No, after that little chat, I had had about enough of this particular Tuesday. Life was, forgive my crassness, a shitshow, and you only had yourself to rely on.

“Lucius,” Paul had begun, sounding suitably grave as he sat down next to me, depressing the sofa cushions under his large frame. “I guess now is a pretty God-awful time to tell you the truth, but after what’s happened today, I think this conversation is long overdue.”

He then paused for breath while I waited with a disinterested expression on my pubescent face. Do not judge my obnoxious reaction just yet, for truth be known, I already knew what he was going to tell me. His ‘big reveal’ was going to be thoroughly anticlimactic, for me at least.

“Now, this doesn’t change anything between us,” he reassured me before he’d even ventured to tell me the actual bad news. “But I’m not your biological father, son.”

I remember smirking over his choice of words. You see, the bitterness of it had begun to seep in years ago, when I had first found this out.

“But in every other sense of the word, I am still your dad.”

Looking pale and grief-stricken, he finally sat back and sighed with a hint of relief. He remained staring at me as if he was giving me the time and space to let that revelation sink in.

“Ok,” I replied with an arrogant shrug of my shoulders. My cold reaction to such news had caused him to lurch forward with a look of shock and hurt written all over his puffy, red face. I don’t remember feeling angry at Paul, just knew that I was angry. I had already been an angry child for so long, I had forgotten what it felt like to not feel such an emotion in my everyday life. I knew he loved me, and I knew he had loved her, but it still didn’t make up for the fact that she hadn’t loved me. My.Mother.Did.Not.Love.Me.

“Ok?! Is that all?” he eventually gasped, to which I merely nodded before asking if I could go outside and kick the ball around. My laidback reaction to everything that had come to pass that day was enough to silence him for a good five minutes or so, all the while I stared back at him with an expression that only spoke of my desire to go outside and play.

“Lucius, you’ve just lost your mom, I’m not the man you thought I was, have you nothing to say? Nothing to ask me?”

I pretended, for his sake, to at least think about it, but eventually settled on a shake of my head.

“Ok, son, yeah, go ahead.”

What my poor father didn’t know was that when I was nine, I had blown up in an almighty tantrum that was all aimed at my mother. She wouldn’t let me go to Eric’s birthday party because she didn’t approve of him. So, I kicked and screamed and threw things all over the place.

When I had eventually expelled all my energy, I was, quite rightly, sent to my room and told to keep my ass there until I could show her more respect. I remained brooding up in my room until I heard Paul return home from work because I was just that stubborn; I still am. In fact, it was another two hours before I ventured out, finally ready to apologize for my deplorable behavior.

On my very first step outside of my room, it was as though I had walked inside of a Stephen King novel. The house had been eerily quiet, dark, and atmospheric. I recall sensing the presence of something nightmarish, an intangible fog that’s only purpose was to suck the living soul out of unsuspecting pre-teen boys. In the back of my mind, I knew I was being foolish, allowing my immature fears to take over the rational part of my brain. However, the back of my mind was wrong, for something was about to reveal itself to me, something that would diminish my soul, rendering its owner dark and unforgiving.

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