Page 18 of Devious
“I need to get in contact with Devious. Please tell him to come see me.”
She steps around me, heads to the door, so I block her.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” I ask. “Why are you ignoring me?”
“Mr. Cayden told me to not speak to you and only give you food,” she answers.
“What will happen if you speak to me?”
She shakes her head. “He’ll fire me. He hates disobedience. Please don’t talk to me.”
“How do you turn on the television?”
Sighing, she goes to the nightstand, grabs the remote, and hands it to me. “We have every streaming service you can think of.”
Right before she leaves, I offer her my thanks, and I glance at the tray of food.
This time it’s a meaty dish I’ve never seen before, but it smells so good. I cut into the meat and it taste like roast beef. It’s so good I gobble it up so fast that I have hiccups. When I climb into bed, I tuck the blanket over me, and I settle on a trashy reality TV show. I’m not about to live the rest of my life confided to these walls, rotting away.
Regret buries in my chest. I treated the little freedom I had with Papa as if it wasn’t anything. I always thought my life couldn’t get any worse until now. I’m completely at Devious’s mercy, and there isn’t anything I can do about it.
My mind travels to Tommy and how he died because of me. My brain is scattered as I think about the fond memories we had in high school. In high school, he was a jock and popular. And I wasn’t, but I hung out with everyone. Even though I was socially awkward, it didn’t stop other kids from wanting to hang out with me.
I went to a private school with other kids whose parents were rich, and Tommy wasn’t loaded like ourfamiglia. He used to drive a pickup truck and often told me he wished his parents were rich. I was privileged. He had an autistic brother, who he had helped his mother take care of, and his father owned a small bookstore. He asked me to go to prom, and of course I did. It was a major milestone for me, and I had to beg Papa to let me go. I already knew how my life was going to turn out, and I knew the kids I went to school with had a lot more freedom and choices than I had. When Tommy picked me up for prom in his pickup truck, Papa stared at him in disgust and told me not to get attached because I would not be marrying trash. I didn’t care—I wanted to get away, and I had no feelings for him in that way.
His blood will be on my hands for the rest of my life. Sobbing uncontrollably, I drag my knees to my chin.
“Tommy, I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I’ll never forgive Devious for what he did to Tommy.
Devious
I walk into the dungeon as I roll my neck to meet Aiden. Pissed is an understatement on how I feel about Roselyn trying to kill me. I should have killed her the minute I found out she was plotting against me but my obsession wouldn’t let me. Even though I don’t want any relationship with her, that doesn’t stop me from obsessing over her.
When she was asleep, I took her phone and had Damien hack it. I found text messages between her and Tommy, and then one of my maids told me they saw her carrying a knife to the bedroom. If word got out she tried to kill me and I let her live to tell the tale, my men would view me as weak. Dealing with her is more of a pain in my ass than I thought.
If I’m being honest, she will never escape me.
Aiden kidnapped one of Cashel’s hit men from his home and drugged and dragged him to the second level of my dungeon.
I throw the glass door open, just as Aiden beats the hit man in the face with brass knuckles.
Blood flies, splattering Aiden’s shirt. The hit man’s hands are tied to the arms of the chair, and a sock is stuffed in his mouth. The smell of blood and urine suffocates the air. Normally, I leave the torturing to the underbosses, but I like getting my hands dirty sometimes. I hold my hand up to stop Aiden, and he takes a step back. A wicked grin displays on his face. My brother is far worse than I am. He’s got a thing for bloodlust. He goes into a full sex frenzy after he finishes a killing spree. Me, I’m bloodthirsty. It’s how we both earned our street names. We killed so many people, my mafia runs the city. Everyone knows not to fuck with us.
Aiden wipes his bloodied hands on his white shirt as the hit man scowls at him. He grips the hit man by the cheeks. “The bastard won’t talk.” He pauses. “Look at his face. A face of honor and bravery,” he says sarcastically, tapping his right cheek with the back of his hand.
The hit man’s left eye is purple and swollen shut while his lips are bloody and bruised. Dried blood clings to the top of his forehead.
Cashel and I used to be close friends; a few of our businesses intertwined with each other’s until he fucked my now dead wife. He was fucking her for five years behind my back.
I grab a chair from the other cell, prop it in front of him, and snatch the sock from his mouth. He tries to spit at me, but I move out of the way. I take a seat and lean forward with my elbows on my knees. “Where is Cashel?”
The hit man breathes choppily, and I can smell copper on his breath.
How am I going to torture him?
Personally, I love a knife. You can carve up a body slowly without them dying as long as you don’t cut a main artery. Too easy, though. I want this dickhead to suffer, and I’m still pissed off at my childish wife for trying to kill me, so I’m going to take my anger out on him.
