Page 71 of Dirty Behavior

Ivy

Crouching in the corner, I hugged my knees. Tears streaked down my cheeks as I cried and sobbed.

I'm so fucking stupid!

How could I be so stupid!?

Slamming a fist into the ground, a gentle whistle hissed through the small room, reminding me I wasn't alone. I wasn't completely sure, but I was almost certain the man on the ground beside me was Vince. It was hard to tell because his face was so swollen, but I knew Remo hadn't spared him one bit.

His eyes were as large as golf balls, protruding out from the sockets.. The skin on his lids were stretched so thin, that his lifeless gaze peered out, glowing like faint flames off a distant candle. His lips were split into sections with thick chunks of flesh hanging off, his hair was dirty and crusted to his forehead.

I watched him, his chest rising and falling so shallow that I expected each breath to be his last.

The guy was hanging on, but it wasn't Dante, and I was grateful for that.

Vince hadn't moved once since Remo shoved me inside, snagging the knife off the floor after I dropped it. When the metal hit the hard ground, the clank it made sent a shockwave through my system. I had lost my only form of protection, my one tool to keep Remo away.

And now I had nothing, nothing to fend off a hungry vulture like him.

Maybe he has something. . .

There's a chance.

Crawling across the floor, I felt Vince's pockets, checking him for a gun, a weapon, anything that might keep me alive. But he had been stripped clean, his clothes were empty, his waist was bare, and my heart sunk into the fiery pit of my core.

Even the restraints used to keep him trapped had been removed. The only reminder they were even there were thick, bruised indentations of braided chain links on his skin.

Shit.

No. No. No.

Raking my hands through my hair, I slid Vince's arms back onto his chest. The bones crunched and scraped against each other, making me cringe.

His arms were broken, fingers bent over in the opposite direction. Swallowing hard, I forced my stomach to steady and not dispose of its contents on the floor.

Fuck!

How the fuck did this happen?

All of this had been a ruse, an evil trick to lure me here. Remo never had Dante, he just used that to force my hand. I just couldn't figure out how he knew I was alone.

He had to know, I couldn't imagine he would have pulled that shit if Dante had been with me. It wouldn't have worked.

He was watching us.

The thought made me shiver, chilling my spine and freezing my veins. To know that he had been observing our every move was scary. We had no idea, we had thought we were safe in that house.

We couldn't have been more wrong.

There was nothing I could do now but wait.

I was tired of waiting. I had spent way too much time just anxiously counting the minutes for the right moment, the right chance, the right escape.

And I still ended up back in the hands of the devil.

Remo had methodically planned this . The room he kept me in had absolutely nothing to use against him. There were no pipes, no wires, not a fucking thing. It reminded me of the closet he had at his home, the same empty cavern he had created to stow me away in.

I had been his secret play toy, his sick twisted object.