Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

I cannot imagine what he saw on my face, but I knew it was not the shattered glass panic scratching at my veins.

To him, that flippant remark and the assumption behind it were… innocent.

To me, it felt as if the room was a dead thing rising from the grave.

Speak of the devil and he will appear.

Though Ethan was about as deep as a puddle, even he took note of my brief lapse from flawless composure. “Darling, it’s just that—”

Hasty words fell from my lips before he might make this worse. “Has Papa reached out to the senator?”

Blond brows lifting with ingrained snobbery, Ethan pressed. “Senator Parker would really like him to come.”

No. He wouldn’t. My father likes to play with his food.

Stupid, selfish, silly, happy Ethan whose antics offered me the sensation of normal… by the time my father was done with him, he wouldn’t even know my name.

He wouldn’t remember dancing with me in the moonlight, or laughing as we jumped on the bed like children. There would be no naughty smirks when his prick engorged at thoughts of what I’d willingly do to him.

I’d be nothing but a whiff of familiar perfume when I strolled by, gracing the arm of another prominent man.

Hand shaking, so subtle a betrayal of my feelings that no human eye would catch it, I set the crystal stopper back in the bottle.

And I felt… bereft.

Because I’d grown too attached, and I had known better.

Someday, this game of playing house would all end.

Blue eyes falling to my inlaid Louis the XV vanity, I hated that perfume bottle of revolting honesty glinting in the scorching afternoon sun.

How sad to be reduced to something so fleeting—crafted, expensive stink.

Knowing full well that Ethan could never grasp the fate he tempted, I let spite make pretty words ugly. “Next time I see Papa, I’ll mention how much the senator is looking forward to the attention of his favorite benefactor.”

Waving off my fake smile as if it were real and inconsequential, Ethan rolled his eyes. “When you put it like that, it sounds tasteless, Jade.”

Because it was. The Parkers were extravagantly affluent in their own right, but it was nothing to the wealth the father of darkness wielded. And, after all, it was an election year… and campaigns were expensive.

Lifting up a tube of Chanel Shanghai Red lipstick, I ended the topic. “He’s not coming tonight.” Perhaps it was true, perhaps not. One thing I knew was to never anticipate the moves of the devil. “But I promise I will mention it to Daddy tomorrow.”

Another lie.

Tucking his phone in his pocket, Ethan bent down to press a kiss to my shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to call him? It’s going to be a fun party, you’ll see. The president’s coming.”

And that was disgusting for a very different reason.

Not all of my former companions had been as sweet or as horribly selfish as Ethan.

He was a treat compared to men I was duty-bound to air kiss upon greeting. Aging men who had no memory of our long-ago, fumbling trysts, their tempers rattling my ear, or their slaps to my cheek.

One could write off such behavior as belonging to a different time with different rules, but I’d lived long enough to know better. Some men were just lesser than their gentler peers.

The current leader of this great nation, for example, had been just as disgusting, insecure, and chauvinistic in the 1980s as he was sitting on his fat ass in the oval office scarfing down Big Macs.

In less than an hour I’d float past him; I’d stomach the feel of his paunch pressing against my body as he leaned forward to smear his fleshy lips across my cheek. A shudder would run through him at a whiff of my perfume, and somewhere deep down, ugly, old feelings would stir.

Desire, covetousness… fear.

I looked so young, so fresh, how could shadow memories of my face flicker in the darker corners of his mind? The sensation of someone walking over his grave would be brushed off, ego stepping in to answer with an affable, “I knew your mother,” or “I loved you in that film.”

Though I’d graciously say thank you, I’m not an actress.

Not of the paid variety, anyhow.

And I don’t have a mother.

But the human mind had to reconcile; it had to bend.

Weaker intellects made up the best stories.

So I would smile, I would laugh, I would make him feel important. And then I would drift away on the night air.

“It’s past five o’clock. You know it’s too late for me to call Papa, Ethan. He’s very old. He’s already in bed, and I can’t imagine his night nurse would be willing to poke the viper. He needs his rest.” And the sun was still up. Even if my father were awake during daylight hours, he’d be feeding at the trough of captives stored in the Cathedral, not pulling on a tux to mingle with cattle. If I were to even mention such a thing, his laughter would rail down the phone line until my ears bled.