Page 17 of Devil’s Torture

I haven’t looked at another woman since the moment I met Bexley and I never will. It’s not a boast. It’s not some ego trip wrapped up in fidelity. It’s just a fact.

Lucifer is sitting at one of the tables while Cherise, his Old Lady and a woman I considered a mom in my life, is just putting a fresh beer in front of him. Prodigal, their son and the VP for the club, is leaning against the bar.

I don’t know the woman next to him, but I don’t care.

Hacker, Tack, and Loot aren’t far from the pair.

With the atmosphere feeling way too jovial, I don’t bother looking any further. I don’t give a fuck who else is here.

My feet take me right to Lucifer. He looks up at me with wariness in his eyes.

“Did you know?” There’s no respect in the question, none of the deference he’s owed.

Because I’m barely holding it together as it is.

“Did I know what?” He sounds genuinely confused, which does nothing to dampen my anger.

“That I have a nine-year-old daughter.”

The words land with a concussive force.

Lucifer stands up so fast that his chair clatters to the floor. Hacker is pulling a laptop from who the fuck knows where. I think something hits the floor. I don’t look away from the president I trusted, from the leader I followed.

It feels like a lie, and I suddenly understand why Bexley turned her back on the club.

“Holy shit,” Hacker whispers. When Lucifer shoots him a look like he’s contemplating shooting the man, he continues, “There is a birth certificate for a little girl named Dawn.”

“How the fuck did you miss that all these fucking years? You’ve been ensuring everything was paid for. What the fuck do you mean there’s a birth certificate?”

Hacker closes his eyes and shakes his head. “There wasn’t a hospital stay. I had emergencies, like hospital visits, flagged. Nothing like that popped up. It would have alerted me.”

While he clicks away at his keyboard doing who the fuck knows what, I refocus on Lucifer. His mouth is open and closing and, for the first time since I met the man, he looks genuinely confounded.

“No, I didn’t know.”

He doesn’t offer any excuses. I look around the room and everyone who knows me, who knew me back then and knew Bexley, has surprise written all over their faces. I should feel relieved, but I’m not. The anger is too strong.

“All the bills are still being paid,” Hacker’s voice is distracted. Suddenly, he leans back and his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Well, fuck. That explains it.”

Lucifer growls, “Use all the words you need to, Hacker, not the least amount.”

“Right.” He shakes his head like he’s forcing the shock away. “She used a birth center with a midwife and a doula and all that new-age woo-woo baby stuff to organize a home birth.” His face screws up with something like disgust.

I might have found it funny ten years ago. Right now, I’m counting in my head to stop myself from shooting him in the face.

“I can’t even think about what a home birth would entail.” Hacker shakes his head before explaining, “That’s why I didn’t catch it. It didn’t trigger my alerts because I was focused on hospitals and urgent cares, you know, where normal people go to be treated.”

“You don’t have to go to a hospital to have a baby?” One of my brothers whispers to another.

Cherise smiles softly, but I can see the strain around her eyes when I look at her. The moment our eyes meet, hers turn glassy. She swallows hard and gives me a firm nod.

“I’m sorry,” her voice is sincere, “we didn’t know about your daughter. If I had known, I would have tried harder to keep her close. I just didn’t want to force my way into her life since it was obvious she didn’t trust anything we said to her.” The next thing she says comes out as a whisper, “Whenever I would stop by to check in, she would look at me, but it felt like she was looking through me. It made me wonder if I was doing more harm than good by pushing.”

Fucking hell.

“I didn’t know about your daughter,” Lucifer’s voice is filled with sincerity. “I’m sorry. I failed as your President.” He pauses and his eyes fill with regret. “I failed as your brother.”

“How the fuck did we miss this?” Prodigal is the one to ask the question.