Page 95 of Cruel Devil

Vito

He’s back.

Chapter 30

Savage

Sergio has always come and gone as he pleases, but this timing feels personal.

The only sound as I pad barefoot down the hall is Bella’s ID tag rattling against her collar. I should have locked Bella inside my room with Nyx, but I’m not sure who would turn on who first.

I join father and son in the dining room. Vito sits hunched inside his robe like the air conditioning is turned down too low for his delicate constitution.

Sergio gives me a fake smile and stands, coming to meet me. You’d expect someone like him to have smooth hands. While there’s a fresh manicure on his neatly trimmed nails, my fingers brush over calluses and scars as we clasp hands.

Unlike my father, he likes getting his hands dirty.

“Glad you’re back, Uncle.”

“I’m sure you are.” Sergio’s disingenuous smile slips off his face at the soft growl behind me.

I snap my fingers at Bella without looking at her, but the damage is done.

“Get that mongrel out of my sight.” Sergio’s voice is cold and hard, so far removed from his usual warm tone that my skin prickles.

Bella’s teeth left a scar on his arm.

The only reason she’s still alive is because he can’t tell my Rottweilers apart. He thinks the ‘beast that savaged him’ is rotting in a shallow grave at the far borders of the property. It wouldn’t surprise me if he occasionally visited the grave just to smirk at it.

It happened over a year ago, but Sergio’s memory is as deep as the fucking Mariana Trench.

Back then, I’d still been training Bella to settle. I was play-wrestling with her, getting her so excited and overstimulated that she was growling and snapping at me. She’d already drawn blood from my arm, but that was my own mistake for not getting out of the way fast enough.

My uncle walked in at just the wrong moment.

Bella figured he was in on the fun, and charged him. She was all paws and floppy ears back then, but she weighed over a hundred pounds already. He put up an arm, and she must have thought we were training her attack command, because she jumped and clamped down on his arm.

Over-excited as she was, she ignored my first command to release.

I never had the chance to give her a second command, because Sergio punched her.

As soon as I’d dragged Bella off him and confined her to her crate so she could calm down and feel safe again, I turned on him. I was merely going to warn him, to explain why Bella had attacked…but he was infuriated, and backhanded me when I got close.

If one of the gardeners hadn’t walked into the shed to fetch fertilizer, Sergio might not be alive today.

That’s the day I almost killed my uncle.

That’s the day he almost had Bella killed.

As soon as Doc had arrived and treated him for three broken fingers, a fractured rib, and pulled the tooth I’d knocked loose, Sergio decreed that Bella be put down.

Thankfully, the help working at the villa then hated Sergio and loved Bella. Anyone he asked afterward confirmed that ‘the rabid mongrel’ was dead.

I had to relocate one of my Rottweilers, in case Sergio did a head count and realized they were all still alive and well. Since Bella was my favorite, her brother, Bravo, was transferred to one of father’s sicario’s properties, joining their nightly patrol.

We both left our scars on Sergio that day.

I’d smile at the memory, but he’d probably draw a gun and shoot Bella in the head.

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