Page 117 of Devil Mine

Thiago circles the desk slowly, like a predator assessing its prey, coming to stand on the other side of Marco and Arturo. He places the sharp edge of the machete blade on Franklin’s forearm, right below his elbow. I watch the man stop breathing, terror rendering him stock still.

“This is the hand you had between her legs, correct?”

Franklin starts shaking at Thiago’s lethal tone.

“No!”

“I saw you. Are you calling me a liar?”

Franklin gulps, emitting a scared squeak. The dichotomy between the way he’d used his physicality over me to try and violate me and the gutless wretch he is now, currently begging for his life could not be more apparent. He’s a coward, always has been, I was just an easy target for him.

“She–she wanted it. She was asking for it.”

My heart stutters in my chest thinking that he might believe what Franklin is claiming. Thiago has restrained me in the past, but…that was different. I never wanted what Franklin did to me.

The last time he caught me alone with another man, he didn’t react so well.

Thiago doesn’t give it a second thought. The demented grin that stretches across his face chills even me. “Is that why you had her pinned against the wall? Is that why you had your other hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming? Because shewanted it?”

“She said she wanted it rough–”

“Shut the fuck up,” Thiago snarls, bringing the butt of the blade down on his temple. Blood bursts from his skin and explodes across my desk. “My wife doesn’t want me to kill you, so I won’t. But open your mouth again and even she won’t be able to save you. I’ll shut you up for good.”

Franklin nods frantically, lips zipped shut.

“You should never have touched her.Never.” Thiago’s voice shakes under the weight of his fury. While he speaks, Marco rolls up Franklin’s sleeve so that it’s above his elbow. “You could have touched anybody else and walked out of here whole, Franklin. But not her.”

Thiago flicks a watchful eye at me over his shoulder. He’s two men at once in this room, a vengeful husband and a protective lover. His tone softens when he speaks to me. “Look away,amor.”

He raises the machete above his head and this time, I do as he says. I look away. I have time to see the blade come hurtling back down before I close my eyes and turn my face.

The sound of metal slicing through the air is followed by the terrifying noise of it cutting through flesh and bone before it buries itself in the wood of my desk.

A blood curdling scream that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and turns my stomach echoes through my office. I keep my eyes screwed shut even as Franklin’s excruciated howls filter through my ears.

“You’ll hand in your letter of resignation tomorrow,” Thiago orders stoically over his screams. “Typed, obviously. And then you’ll disappear.”

I finally open my eyes and look at the grisly scene before me. Franklin is white as a sheet, his eyes bulged and crazed as he stares in shock at the hand Thiago severed from his body. Blood leaks in thick waves from his stump before Arturo rips Franklin’s belt off him and uses it to tourniquet the wound.

“Contact her again and I take the other hand. Talk to or touch her ever again, Franklin,” Thiago says dangerously, “and I’ll tear out your intestines with my bare hands and use them to hang your body up from the nearest streetlight.” The two guards pull him up to his feet and release him. Franklin wobbles dangerously, his knees giving out, so they catch him again. He’s ashen, almost gray in color, and holding his stump protectively.

“Get the fuck out,” Thiago orders. He turns on unsteady feet and heads slowly towards the door when Thiago calls after him. “And take this shit with you,” he adds disgustedly, grabbing his severed hand by the fingers and tossing it at him. It hits Franklin in the chest and nearly topples him over before flopping lamely down to the ground. He manages to remain standing, bending at the waist to pick up his hacked off limb before he leaves.

“Go with him,” Thiago instructs his two guards. “Take him into the freight elevator and make sure he doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“Jefe,” they confirm with almost military nods, unperturbed by what just transpired. They go to turn but hesitate. Finally, both of them give me a curt nod and exit, closing the door behind them and leaving me with my husband.

???

Chapter Forty-Six

Thiago

There are some moments that you just know are going to stick with you for the rest of your life. For me, those are few and far between, simply because there’s not much that can affect me on that level. But when I open the door to Tess’s office expecting to surprise her and instead find her pinned against the wall of windows with one hand slapped over her mouth and the other working its way up between her legs, I know that memory is going to remain scorched in my retinas forever.

My brain empties. I’m both quick to understand and slow to accept the horror show that’s unfolding before my eyes. The fear that slams into me is debilitating, as surprising as it is unusual. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve felt panic for someone else and Tess now owns two of them in the span of a week.

If I’d been five minutes later, if I’d hit one or two more red lights on my way to her office, who knows what I would have walked in to find. The thought alone makes me want to chase after Franklin and finish what I started.

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