Page 83 of Devious
I get out of the vehicle, removing my gun from my holster. My soldiers shoot the guards, and bodies fall to the ground one by one. Some of them fire back-to-back.
Aiden’s phone rings, and he picks up on the first ring, handing it to me.
“Can you get me? I’m in the basement.” I hear her crying over the phone.
“I’m on my way.” And I toss my phone at Aiden. “Kill everyone on-sight. Roselyn is in the basement. I’m going after her.”
I rush around the back, shooting every one of Cashel’s men I see in sight.
When I make it to the basement, I open the door and see Roselyn, her hands and feet chained to the wall, naked, duct tape over her mouth. Tears fall down her cheeks.
I run to her, but suddenly someone stabs something into my neck. I pull it out to find it’s a syringe.
Dropping the syringe, I glance around before I feel dizzy and my vision goes in and out. I feel like I downed a bottle of tequila. My eyes land on Cashel, and he smiles at me with his hands behind his back.
“What the fuck did you do?” I mumble.
“I gave you succinylcholine. It’ll paralyze you temporarily. Nighty night, bastard,” he says, smirking before using the butt of his gun to punch me in the face. Before I know it, the room spins, and everything goes black.
Devious
Iwake up to my head pounding like I got shit-faced last night, and my vision is blurry, and my head feels as if I was beaten with a sledgehammer. When I look up, I realize I’m chained to a wall, but I’m not in the same basement as I was when Cashel injected me with a drug. Glancing around, I spot surgical tools on the white shelves against the wall, and it looks like I’m in a torture room.
Roselyn is tied to a wall and she’s naked like before. She’s passed out on the concrete floor. My heart beats rapidly against my rib cage, and I feel completely hopeless for not being able to help her. I’m the reason why we’re in this predicament. If I hadn’t pursued my vengeance against Cashel, she wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire of all of this. I grit my teeth, yanking on the chain that’s holding me back.
Someone slow claps from across the room, and my heart pounds in my chest. Cashel stands up from his chair, stomps up to me, and punches me in the face. I groan in agony as pain shoots up my jaw, then he kicks me in the stomach, as I swallow the pure agony, trying to hold it in. I cough, spitting blood onto the concrete floor. I taste the copper in my mouth and smell iron in the air.
“Let Roselyn go. She has nothing to do with what’s between us. I’ll give you Maya.”
He chuckles. “I don’t care about Maya. Lex told me you were plotting to kidnap my sister, so I set everything up for her to be captured by Villainous, so I get my hands on your wife and use her as bait to get you alone, so I can kill you.” He runs his fingers through his hair, and he spits on my face. I wipe it away. “I’m getting you back for destroying my family.”
“You fucked my wife. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? You destroyed my life, so I went after you. It wasn’t even about her; it was about you betraying me. You were supposed to be my brother.”
“I was only using her to take over your territories. I’ve never been pussy-whipped like you have. I never cared about Shelby. She was just a tool to get back at you. You betrayed me first.”
This isn’t the first time he’s said this to me. Why would I betray him? I loved him like a brother.
I raise my eyebrows. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Don’t play coy with me. You killed my parents.”
“Cashel, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never touched your parents, and your father was a piece of shit. I asked you if you wanted me to kill him and you told me no. I cared for your mother. I loved Maeve like she was my own mother. Why would I kill them?”
He grabs me by the neck, squeezing tight, cutting off my airways, and I claw at his hand. “Do you think I’m fucking stupid, Cayden?” Finally, the bastard lets me go. He stares at me in confusion. “Lex showed me a video of you killing them. That’s why I came after you. That’s why I fucked Shelby.”
I cough. “You fucked Shelby because you thought I killed your parents? Are you fucking kidding me, Cash?”
He removes his phone from his pocket, taps on the screen, and a video pops up. On the screen, the man is wearing a mask I used to wear when I was a sniper in my twenties. I watch as both of his parents beg for their lives, pleading with whoever it is. He shoots Cashel’s parents in the head. The fucker set me up. He removes his mask, lays it on the bed, then removes his shirt and pants. My clothing, I realize. There is a tattoo of the old crest on his back with the initials L.B. I recognize the tattoo anywhere. The mafia men used to get branded in the past. We don’t do brands anymore.
“Lex killed your parents, that’s his tattoo. Not mine. He played you. He plotted this all along.”
“You have that exact same tattoo,” he states.
“I did until I got it removed, and mine had my initials on there.”
He tears my shirt off and looks at my back. Even though I had mine removed, you can still see the faint outline of the tattoo.
“What the fuck?” he says, before he disappears from the basement, and comes back with Lex with a gun to his head. “Take off your shirt.”
