Page 2 of Devil Mine

“Arturo is right. He doesn’t get to die until he’s repaid every penny he borrowed from us,” I grind out between clenched teeth. “Doesn’t mean I won’t let you send him a message,” I add.

Marco’s eyes snap up to meet mine, a barbaric shine twinkling in his eyes at my concession.

It’s an easy one to make.

People don’t get to default on payment to the da Silva cartel and get away with it. And the man we’re on our way to pay a visit to is about to understand that.

I twirl the knife in my hands between restless fingers.The sharpened tip digs into my index until a trickle of blood erupts from beneath my skin and flows down my wrist.

I notice it but don’t feel it.

Pain doesn’t register in my brain. I’ve been numb for years, my tolerance unusually high, blunted by uninterrupted bloodshed. My body is a canvas of healed bullet holes and cauterized stab wounds to illustrate the wars I’ve won. I display them as proudly as I do the tattoos that cover over half of my body.

As the Rolls ambles slowly through the busy streets of London, my mind wanders back to my arrival here.

London was such a perfect location for us that the scouts had come back from their mission with a common message – the choice was obvious. It was a massive international city, close enough to a coast with plenty of legitimate shipments coming in through which to divert attention away from us, and, importantly, an entry point to the rest of Europe.

But it was also highly contested territory with almost every gang, mafia, cartel and criminal enterprise fighting for the same fucking land, the same money, the same power, regardless of global legitimacy or not.

The da Silva cartel had the weight of being the largest criminal network in the Americas behind it. Once we’d run out the competition in the North and South, we’d looked to the East for expansion.

We announced our presence in London subtly, by blowing up over five hundred kilos of imported blow from various sources. Italian, Armenian, Russian, English, it didn’t matter.

Thiago da Silva was here and they needed to know it.

Since then, we’ve had to fight for every square inch of the new territory we’ve acquired in Europe. It’s been a hard-fought year of blood and mud and sweat and death.

And I’ve loved every fucking minute of it.

The adrenaline, the rush of a plan going tits up.

The surge of excitement when eliminating an enemy, whether a single man or an entire fucking army.

Of their screams as they beg for mercy and I give them none, of laughing in their faces as I rip their throats out and bathe my hands in their blood, of them dying by my hand.

They’ve all come to fear me now, the one they call “El Diablo”, and they should.

The European arm of the da Silva cartel is mine and mine alone. My father remains in Colombia overseeing that part of the business while I continue to grow my empire here.

I’m a king who doesn’t sit on a throne. The minute I get comfortable in this leadership position is the minute I’ll get my throat slit.

Comfort is the enemy of ambition and the manic feeling violence gives me fuels me to newer heights. I won’t stop until Europe is completely ours.

Completelymine.

The reputation we’ve cultivated since being here of being completely ruthless and merciless is one I fully embrace, born both out of necessity when establishing ourselves against more legacy players and out of a purely visceral need for vengeance.

Because the real reason I’m in London, beyond the opportunity, the money, and the power, the reason I campaigned for this to be the base of our expansion and not another city, is very simple.

I’m going to find Adriana’s body, and I don’t care if I have to burn the entire fucking country down to do it.

???

Chapter Two

Thiago

The Rolls pulls up in front of a massive high rise in The City. Irritation rolls down my spine. These high-bred, silver-spooned English society motherfuckers have all the money in the world when it comes to gaudy displays of wealth, but none when it comes to reimbursing their debts.

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