Page 124 of Die for You

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.

Imustbe 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.