Page 88 of Dirty Behavior

Dante

Ican't find her!

Where the hell is she!?

I followed her voice, I thought I was moving in the right direction, but I was searching for a ghost. The sound was distorted, flowing in from one way and swimming out another.

I went room by room, hall by hall, but there was no sign of Ivy. Her screams had completely vanished. I was being met with silence and shadows.

There was no amount of words to explain how frustrated and angry I was. She was right at my fingertips and then she was gone.

Making my way back around, I stopped dead in my tracks. My head twisted side to side as I threw myself down onto my knees and swept the cement with my fingers.

My brother wasn't there anymore. A small pool of blood was alone on the floor where Sesto had been, two long drag marks curled around the corner, only to disappear in a ripple of cleanliness.

Fuck!

Where did they take him?

That was it. My temper had swooped in, clouding my mind and sealing the fate of every man in this building.

I was done trying to be sly, I was finished trying to sneak around and find my family. This was war. I had to find her, I had to find my brother, and I didn't care how.

Sucking in a huge breath, I kicked in the first door I came across. The wood splintered off in every direction, the metal locks all snapped in, breaking away.

Storming through the doorway, I held my gun out, aiming it high. The room was quiet and empty.

Or so I thought.

Looking down at the floor, a body was slumped into a pile of blackened clothing, all mangled and dis-formed. Glancing over my shoulder, I stepped in and fell to my haunches. I knew the hair, I knew the small web tattoo in between the ring and middle finger on his left hand.

Vince.

If I hadn't known Vince for so many years, I don't think I would have been able to recognize him. His face had exploded like a fucking hot dog in the microwave. His eyes were sealed shut, his lips dripping long beads of saliva into a slick pool beneath his head.

Leaning in, I let my ear hover above his mouth. A faint wisp of air crossed my face, tickling my skin with a scale of heat.

He's alive.

I had mixed feelings about him laying there. I wanted to kill him myself only days earlier, but now, staring down on his body that was barely hanging on. . .

I wanted him to survive.

Remo had used him, and Vince had taken the bait.

There was no right or wrong answer to what got him there. He needed shit, Remo needed shit. They were two hands that fed each other.

But he didn't deserve this for what I had done.

Resting my hand on his back, I closed my eyes. Vince had needed me when the world around him fell apart. When my father died and I abandoned my life completely, he lost something too. Security, money. . .

Family.

We were all he had. And I genuinely felt sorry for having taken that from him. All the shit I gave him, all the threats and heavy verbal assaults, that was just business.

I'll make this right, Vince.

I'll make this right.