“Your things you packed are there,” he continued, pointing to the small pile of boxes by the door as he passed. “And in case you missed him, there’s a guard by the elevator.”
The warning he gave her, she understood loud and clear that he didn’t want her to leave the apartment. She went to open her mouth to protest, but he was already on the other side of the door, seconds away from closing it.
“Goodbye, Kat.”
Hearing him say that again, she realized it was the first time he used her nickname, and she started to really fucking hate that she liked the way it sounded when he said it.
Twenty-Two
Lucifer’s Mark
Katarina went through her boxes trying to find the ones that held what she needed for tonight. She supposed she could have started to unpack, but then that would have made all of this come true, that she was really living here now.
Grabbing fresh clothes and her toiletries, she used his bathroom and took a quick shower to remove the blood off her. When she came out freshly cleaned and clothed, she took her shambles of a wedding dress with her, not knowing how she was supposed to break the news to Maria that the couture wedding dress was ruined. She found the trash can and threw it in.
May she never know of the loss.
Knowing her, she’d be more upset over the dress than over Todd.
Not ready for bed just yet, she couldn’t help herself from doing a bit of snooping. She wanted to know more of the man she was up against. The stairs had been calling her name since the first time she’d been here. Heading to them, she placed one foot on the step when something caught her eye.
Taking her foot off, she went back, going to the one lonely picture that hung on his wall that she had missed.
It was a photo of the Caruso boss and his children, but in the back stood Drago crossing his arms. Except this Drago didn’t look quite like the one who had just left. The one in the photo had a much bigger presence.
That was when she was fully able to see what her father had done to him, besides the holes he’d left on his chest.
She could see the muscle mass he once had was gone. His beautiful Italian dark skin now had a gray tint, the deep bags he carried under his eyes didn’t use to be there, and the biggest change she could see was in his eyes. They used to hold less of a red color, being more brownish, but closing her eyes, she pictured them how they’d shone earlier, red rings of fire that were hellbound.
Lucifer hadn’t put him in a coma; he had sent him to hell, and those eyes had seen the abyss.
Her father had always left scars on his victims, but what he’d loved the most was the change he made in a person’s eyes after he had broken them. She called it… Lucifer’s mark.
Kat could always see it, like the way she had with Chloe, but she had missed it this time, like she had only one time before…
…Still crying behind the door, she heard it go deathly quiet until footsteps got closer and closer to the basement door. Spending most of her ten-year-old life behind this door, she had learned whose footsteps were whose, and the ones coming closer belonged to the devil.
Quickly, she ran down the steps, but the second she was three steps away from the bottom, a hand came out, shoving her to the concrete basement floor.
With everything going fuzzy, she tried to fight it, crawling on the cold ground in hopes to get away.
“No!” Dominic yelled. His young broken body had fallen down the steps, but being the strongest of the brothers and already withstanding the beating he and the twins had taken to protect her, he was the only one still capable as he righted himself trying to grab the man who was coming after her.
“You can’t fucking protect her from me this time,” Lucifer spat before he gave him the back of his hand across his face, sending him to the ground with his sister. It had been awhile since he had gotten ahold of her, and he was itching to do it again.
When Dom tried to get up to fight again, Lucifer kicked him repeatedly wherever he felt so fit.
Kat made it under the bed to a tiny space below the mattress being held up by an old rusty frame. She watched her brother get kicked over and over again through the tears in her eyes.
Their father finally stopped hitting Dominic at a brutal place in between no longer being able to move and right before losing consciousness. Whatever the devil was about to do, he wanted Dominic to witness it.