Chapter 15
Lucifer watched as Hades paced inside his office, amusement playing in his eyes. Pixie clearly thought they were playing because her little legs kept up with his long strides as she panted happily and looked up at her new best friend.
“Pix, what you think, man?” He stopped suddenly, looking down at the dog.
Pixie yipped before lying down by his feet, expelling a long sigh. Baby girl was worn out from all the pacing they had done over the past thirty minutes.
“You gon’ ask the dog what she thinks before me, bro?” Lucifer asked, a grin spreading across his face. “Let me find out you like the mut.”
“The mut is cool,” Hades said dismissively before scooping her up and walking over to his desk. He sat down and allowed Pixie to get comfortable on his lap before he spoke again. “I ain’t ask you because I know what you gon’ say.”
“I mean…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Lu. We just need to make a move because I have a really bad feeling that punk ass Drew is about to bring us a world of troubles.”
Lucifer stayed silent for a moment before he cleared his throat. “Why you ain’t just give Harley up?”
Hades frowned. “I ain’t giving that girl up.”
He didn’t say more, but Lucifer knew his brother like the back of his hand. He also already knew the answer to his question before he even asked it. “Just say you like her, man. It’s okay. I won’t think you got the cooties.”
“Get off that. We need to focus on Drew and this shit with the cops.”
Lucifer sighed. “Fine. Look, it’s time to see Pops, and if you don’t, I will. I’m not too prideful to go see him and get this shit to disappear. This is above us now, and we need help.”
Hades scowled at his brother. “You really okay with going to see that nigga and ask him for a favor?”
Lucifer stood. “To keep my freedom and keep our family safe? To keep you safe? To make sure the riders are safe? Hell fuckin’ yeah. You coming or not?”
Hades felt like he was at a crossroads. He had taken an oath to the Obsidian Riders as their leader to always keep them safe and make sure they were good. Lucifer was right. Unless they wanted to go on a killing spree and further implicate themselves, this shit was above them. On the other hand, their father was not someone he fucked with. He made an oath to himself the day his mother died that he would never speak with his father again, especially not to ask for a damn favor.
He weighed his options as he watched Lucifer walk out the door, and he knew right then what he had to do. Above all else, he swore to his mother to always keep his siblings safe, and if Lucifer was hellbent on going to see their father, then Hades needed to go with. There was no way in hell he would allow anyone close to him to be alone with than man who raised the devil himself.
Nobody would guess that a man named Henry was a true villain. But Henry Ashford was the villain in Hades’s story. He was the man who took everything from him and turned him into who he was today.
As Hades stood inside the fancy office on the twelfth floor of the city hall, he grumbled to himself and paced. He wasn’t a nervous man. Nothing in life could take him by surprise or stir up nerves deep within him. Nothing besides his father. Henry Ashford would put Hades on edge every single time, even after all these years.
Lucifer sat coolly on the brown leather couch, his foot tapping lightly, but that was the only sign of nerves coming from him. Hades took the situation with his father seriously and very personally, which allowed his siblings to have a bit of a distant and distorted view of how warped Henry really was.
“You good, man. I got you,” Lucifer said, keeping his eyes on his brother.
Hades waved him off in response and continued pacing. Eventually, the door opened, and Hades’s hardened gaze met his father’s. Immediately, he stopped pacing as he stood at his full height, towering over his father and grinning both sinisterly and triumphantly. Henry’s eyes grew large as his head tilted slightly to look up at his son. Hades had prayed for the day that he would tower over his father, and at sixteen, when he last saw him, that day hadn’t come just yet. Today was definitely that day, and the flash of nerves and fear that crossed his father’s features made Hades pull out his phone and snap a picture. Literally, he snapped a picture of his father’s confused and intimidated expression, allowing a menacing laugh to fall from his lips.
“What are you doing, fool?” Lucifer asked, getting up from the couch and strolling over to his brother. He snatched the phone out of his large hands.
Henry’s eyes snapped over to Lucifer, and Hades saw the moment his father realized both his sons were now twice his size.
“Aye, lil nigga,” Hades snapped. “Eyes on me. You don’t get to look at him.” Henry frowned, his features so much like Hades, as his gaze found his oldest son once again. When he was satisfied that any threat to his brother was diminished, he spoke to Lucifer while keeping his eyes on Henry. “I’ma find a good artist to paint that shit. I want it framed in my office.”
Lucifer chuckled, shaking his head and handing his phone back to his brother. “You hell, boy.”
Hades didn’t respond. He actually took pride in that comment and took it as a compliment. He stared his father down and clenched his jaw. Seeing him after all these years triggered the fuck out of him. Flashes of his mother’s angelic face filtered in his memory as he fought the urge to grab Henry’s throat. Or cry. Or worse… both.
Finally, he realized he didn’t come here to stare at the man who loaned his sperm to his mama to create him. He also realized that his father wasn’t going to speak first, so he took the lead, just how he liked it.
“I’ma cut to the chase. We need a favor, and you’re the only person that can fix it.”
Finally, Hades saw a hint of the father who raised him. A shit-eating grin that mimicked his own flashed on Henry’s face, and he slowly moved over to his desk, looking frailer than Hades remembered. Once he was seated, he finally spoke, his voice conjuring up the worst memories Hades had.
“What makes you think I want to do anything for you, Hades? My wife died, and you took my kids away from me. Now, if Lucifer asks?—”
Hades had never moved so fast. In a flash, he pulled his father over his desk, by the collar of his button-down shirt. He held Henry up to his face, allowing his feet to dangle several inches off the floor.
“There are three people you cannot speak on. Are you listening?” Henry gulped and nodded his head slowly. Hades reveled in how the tables had turned. “Ashley Ashford. Lucifer Ashford. Eris Ashford. Are we clear?”
Again, Henry nodded, and Hades dropped him without warning, causing the older man to stumble and hit his hip against the edge of the desk. When he cried out in pain, Hades didn’t bat an eye. He deserved much worse than that.
“You good?” Lucifer asked, placing a hand on Hades’s shoulder.
“Long as dude acts right.” He gestured toward his father.
“I should call security on you,” Henry grumbled as he limped to his chair, massaging his hip.
“Nig—”
“Aye, man. We come in peace as long as you cooperate,” Lucifer said, cutting Hades off.
Hades mugged Lucifer and stepped in front of him, turning his back on his father. When he was young, that may not have been a wise action, but now, he wasn’t worried. His father was no longer a threat to him.
“I told you not to speak to him, Lu. The fuck you doing? He doesn’t get to talk to you or about you?—”
“It’s clear you aren’t able to handle this, Hades, so let me. The quicker we can get him to agree, the quicker we can leave.”
Hades scowled and wanted to argue. Everything in him told him to protect his brother from the man sitting behind him, just like he had done his entire childhood, but he recognized at that moment that his brother had grown up. Lucifer was way more level-headed than him, and Henry was bound to make Hades lose the only marble he had left in his head, so with a great deal of pain, he nodded and stepped to the side.
Lucifer stepped forward, and Henry grinned. “Glad to see someone can talk some sense into?—”
Lucifer didn’t allow Henry to finish his sentence. His fist connected with Henry’s temple, causing the old man to fall backward in his swiveling chair, his feet now sticking straight up as he tried to catch his bearings.
“Oh shit,” Hades cracked. Lucifer had no idea how proud he had just made Hades. He could die a happy man now. To see his father laid out on the floor before him, just as Henry had done to Hades many times… to his mother … this was a full circle moment indeed.
Lucifer calmly walked around the desk and picked their father up by the collar. He righted the chair and plopped Henry down in it before sitting on the edge of the desk. Henry cursed and made a big fuss as he pressed a hand against his temple, but Hades and Lucifer ignored him.
“You know the media and the police are comparing the Obsidian Riders to the Ellway boys,” Lucifer said, ignoring their father’s grunts of pain.
“Yes, and I’m disappointed to have such disgraceful sons ruining my good name.”
“Your good name?” Hades asked, taking a threatening step forward.
“Hades, chill,” Lucifer warned.
Hades held his hand up to his brother and continued speaking. “You don’t have a good name, Henry . All this shit is fake. You think beating me and my mother for years is good ? You think because you fooled these people into making you mayor for a second term means you’re good ? Lil nigga, ain’t shit good about you. You gave us names of the devil, knowing you came straight from a demon’s nut sack. You made us who we are, so if we’re a disgrace, lil bitch ass nigga, it’s because of you.”
“Don’t speak about Ashley,” Henry said, his voice sounding small and tired. “You don’t know what you’re talking about?—”
“No, you don’t talk about my mother!” Hades roared, causing Lucifer to stand up and walk around the desk. He placed a hand on Hades’s chest in case he needed to hold him back. Their mother was a really touchy subject for him. “You’re the reason she’s dead! And if in any sick or twisted way you fuckin’ loved her, then you need to help us!”
The pain in his voice was tangible, and his erratic breathing threatened to send him straight into a cardiac arrest. As bad as he wanted to beat his father until he was no longer amongst the living, he refrained. He thought about Eris, Dante, and Lucifer, who whispered calming words to him now. He thought about Harley. Hades used every bit of self-control he had, which wasn’t much, to stay on the opposite side of the desk from his father.
Henry dropped his head. “What do you need?”
“We need you to start by firing the police chief and any other crooked cop in the city,” Lucifer replied. “A man named Drew is the one responsible for all the crime in the city, not the Obsidian Riders. Drew has the police in his back pocket, and they’re coming down hard on us. Drew has started threatening us and the people close to us, and we just want it to end. We ain’t out here causing trouble, man. All we want to do is go back to living in peace.”
“How do I know you’re being honest?” Henry asked, rubbing his temple gingerly.
“Do you think we would come here if we didn’t absolutely need your bitch ass?” Hades snapped, genuinely over this conversation. “We don’t have any parts of what’s going on in the city, and unless you want every news station in the country to know what kind of man you really are, you’ll handle this.”
That got Henry’s attention. Hades had let him live his fake ass bourgeois life up until now because speaking on his childhood was entirely too much to handle, but if he had to face that fear and sing his story at the top of his lungs to anyone who would listen, he would. It would ruin his father’s reputation, and he would live the rest of his miserable days in exile, away from the precious city he grew up in.
With fear in his eyes and in a shaky tone, he said, “I’ll handle it.”
Hades stared at him, his intense gaze full of emotion, before he started for the door. “Make sure you do, and quickly, or not only will I make good on my threat, after the media has their time with you and everything you worked so hard for is taken from you, I’ll come and find you, and I promise the place I’m sending you won’t be as comfortable as hell.”
Hades walked out of the room, happy with the outcome of the meeting, but coming completely undone in its wake. There was only one person he wanted to see, and he was about to break every traffic law in order to get to her as quickly as possible.