Page 37 of Die for You (Kiss or Kill #2)

I wake to a thud.

The bed is cold. Valentina hasn’t been in it for a little while.

I pull back the covers and sit on the edge of the bed, listening for anything out of the ordinary.Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me.

Regardless, I get up and measure my steps as I walk through the house in search of Valentina.

She’s not with Lettie. Nico is still sleeping beside her when I peer inside her bedroom.

I do a sweep of the house, but she’s not here.

She probably couldn’t sleep and is in the gym.

I open the back door and am about to walk down the steps, but I hear it before I see the devil. He was waiting for me on the porch.

I don’t know who he is because he wears a mask like a coward. The mask is modeled after a Venetian-style devil. A sign of things to come. And perhaps, where I belong.

Before I have a chance to fight him off, he jabs me in the side of the neck with a needle.

I punch him in the face and stomach before I’m heavy on my feet. I’m now faced with four faces of the devil.

I try to fight off the heaviness, but the drugs…are quick.

I wake to the obnoxious chewing of gum.

I must be in hell.

It takes me a few seconds to catalog what I remember last.

“Valentina,” I moan, forcing my eyes open.

She was gone when I woke.

I should have listened to her. She warned me that something was amiss. But my arrogance got in the way. With Gianna dead, I assumed our enemies were no more.

But I was wrong.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting, but I know where we are—we’re at home, tucked away in the panic room inside the walls.

But in here, we have every torture device available. We built this room in secret. No one knows about this room.

So we’re here because whoever that coward is beneath the mask has been watching us.

Valentina is tied to a chair next to me. Her chin drooped to her chest. She’s out cold.

The man stands in front of me, sitting backward on a chair, chewing his gum.

I tug at the restraints, but they’re done up tight.

I need to know my enemy so I can understand how to beat them. I need to know their weaknesses, and when he slowly removes the mask, his weakness glares at me…through one eye.

A ghost from the past is here, someone I haven’t given a second thought to since the moment I left the orphanage.

“Surprise!” Hugo exclaims, hands out wide like this is some grand reveal. “Bet you didn’t see that coming?”

“Neither did you, not with that one eye of yours.”

Hugo the asshole, who I thought was dead afterValentina and I tortured him in the toilets after he defiled my girl, is here.

In my home.

He may be older, but Hugo is still a little runt.

My response to this is nothing but hilarity. I burst into laughter, which Hugo doesn’t appreciate.

“What’s so funny?” he demands, standing slowly.

His attempts at scaring me make me laugh even harder.

“You,” I manage to get out between laughs. “You’re fucking lame. You’re still holding on to some childhood trauma. Do you need a cuddle?”

Hugo launches and punches me in the face. “Trauma? She took my fucking eye! And the internal damage done to me when…”

“When I stuck a mop handle up your ass?” I finish for him. “Did you forget what you did to her? You tortured her for years! So if anyone needs a cuddle, it’s her. But she’s not a little bitch like you. I’m sorry !” I snivel, mimicking him from that night.

Hugo punches me in the stomach.

“Wow, you even hit like a little bitch,” I wheeze with laughter.

Hugo inhales sharply before turning his attention to Valentina.

My poker face is fixed in a firm expression because he knows the only way to hurt me is through her.

A disgusting smirk tugs at his thin lips. “Just like old times, baby.”

He licks her face like a salivating dog in heat.

I try to remain unmoved because he wants a rise out of me.

When he sees I continue to be passive, he licks down her neck and opens the lapels of her silk kimono. Her breasts are exposed. He takes them into his mouth and suckles them.

I shift in my seat, clenching my fists, attempting to break the restraints.

He slips a hand between her legs and molests her, never taking his eyes off me.

Rage animates me, and the wooden chair creaks beneath me. “I’m going to cut off your fingers and tongue and take great pleasure in watching you eat them.”

Hugo snickers, thinking he’s won.

But he’s missed one vital thing—Valentina is awake.

She’s playing dead until she sees an opportunity, like right now when he places his lips on her and defiles her mouth. He thrusts his tongue into her.

In response, she clamps her teeth around it and bites down hard.

Hugo’s muffled screams echo loudly. He desperately tries to break free, but Valentina is like a rabid dog and violently shakes her head from side to side.

He tries pushing her away, but when he moves, she lets his tongue go and headbutts him. He staggers back and trips over his own feet, ending up on his ass.

She turns to look at me.

Her cheeks are flushed, and her pupils are pure black.

God, I love her.

“Are you okay?”

She nods. “Where are we?”

“At my home. In a panic room.”

She takes a minute to take in what I just shared. “How does he know about it?”

I shrug because that’s something I don’t know.

Valentina looks at his boots. “ You’re the one who’s been following me. Doesn’t surprise me. You’ve always been a fucking creep. What do you want?”

Now, it’s Hugo’s turn to laugh. “Ready for it? Here’s the plot twist!”

Nothing he says can shock me.

Or so I thought.

“Surely you didn’t think Hugo was the mastermind behind this all? I’m insulted.”

Both Valentina and I share the same reaction of utter shock.

“Hello, my darling. Miss me?”

“How? You’re dead.”

“Yes, I know. You killed me. Till death do us part. But you didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you?”

“I’m not crazy. I did see you.” Valentina seems relieved.

But now, we have another issue to deal with.

Bria is alive, and she’s fucking pissed.

“This isn’t possible. You were dead. I felt for a pulse. I plunged that knife into your heart.”

Bria stands tall in a pantsuit, very reminiscent of Gianna. “Yes, you did, but lucky for me, I was wearing a stab-proof vest. Very affordable and came in a day, thanks to Amazon Prime.”

She’s making jokes? She is fucking crazy.

“You felt for a pulse for two seconds. You were too worried about Valentina to check if you had finished the job. You know better than that.”

“But I was at your service. My men told me it was all taken care of.”

“I was too,” she says, examining her nails. “That pathetic excuse of a burial was an insult to my memory. Thankfully, your men are easily bribed.”

Her words cut deep because now, I understand. “It’s been you this entire time, not Gianna, hasn’t it?”

“Ding! Ding! Ding!”

Throughout this entire time, I believed Gianna was the one responsible for killing my men and overthrowing my kingdom. But it was Bria.

“The mole is you.”

“Yes, darling, I can’t believe it took you this long to figure it out. I thought you’d have worked it out long ago. When I saw the files my father had on Valentina, I knew you’d have the proof to convince her that Gianna was her mother.

“So I thought if I deleted them, you’d give up your little obsession with her. But it seems I was wrong.”

“So you made a deal with the woman who killed your father?” I shout, struggling in my seat to break free.

She flinches as my words have cut her deep. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?”

“Have you no loyalty?”

My verbal stab wounds her, and she lunges forward, slapping my cheek. “I was loyal to you! And where did that get me? Constantly living in her shadow! Do you know what it feels like to be second best your whole life?”

Valentina is quiet, and that’s because she’s working at the restraints behind her back. She must have enough slack to eventually break free.

In the interim, we need to stall Bria.

“I’m sorry! I was a fucking shit husband! But that doesn’t warrant you to destroy everything I’ve worked so hard for. You killed good men, and for what? ’Cause you’re upset we didn’t go on date nights!”

“Don’t patronize me,” she snarls.

“I’m not,” I counter, hoping she buys through my shit. “I acknowledge my mistakes in this marriage, but I didn’t fucking go out of my way to destroy you! I loved your father. I loved you.”

The minute I mention Aldo, tears fill her eyes.

“I know you’re hurt. I fucked up. I went back on my promise. You never got revenge, and I am sorry.”

“My father was good to you.” She sniffs, her lower lip trembling.

“I know he was. Everything we’ve built has been to honor his legacy. You’re his legacy, Bria. And this is how you honor him? By siding with his enemy? The woman who killed him in cold blood?”

A tear trickles down her cheek. “I got my revenge in the end.”

“How?”

“Gianna and I made a deal. I would overthrow you from the inside, so to speak, and in return, she would give me Valentina. I would give it all up for revenge on that bitch because she’s the real reason my father is dead.”

“That’s the reason Gianna wanted me to bring you to her? In reality, she wanted me to bring you to her so we all would be in the same place at the same time?” Valentina asks, piecing things together.

“Not just a pretty face,” Bria spits, walking over to a steel table with an array of tools.

She picks up a box cutter.

“But that’s soon to change.”

“You did me a favor killing Gianna. Yes, I was planning on killing you, but once I was done, I was going to kill Gianna and take her kingdom, which she stole from my father. This world is rightfully mine.”

“You were aiming that gun at Gianna, not Valentina,” I say. “She thought you would ‘save her,’ but you were going to double-cross her the entire time.”