Page 26 of Devil Mine

Absolute shock stabs through my chest. No one’s ever spoken to me that way before. My treacherous pussy clenches in response.

“I’d rather you kill me.”

“Would you?” he whispers, reaching for my face.

I duck under his arm and turn back around to face him. I gulp when the hand holding the gun moves, but he simply holsters it.

“Don’t touch me,” I snarl. “Everything about you disgusts me.”

He snorts, laughing at me. “Is that why you came looking for me? Because I disgust you?”

???

Chapter Nine

Thiago

Her pretty blue eyes widen. She has no immediate answer, she can’t conjure a lie fast enough. I watch as her cheeks flush with the embarrassment of having been caught out.

I don’t press her on it, a rare kindness I won’t be offering in the future. She’s still in shock at what she witnessed, both tonight and back at her office apparently. Now I know why her scent had taunted me that day. She’d been right outside the door the entire time.

It’s a pleasant surprise to find out Tess has a backbone. She’s no meek society girl. She doesn’t do what I say just because she’s afraid I’m going to kill her. She doesn’t throw herself at me knowing it can save her, knowing being with me can give her protection and power.

No, she’s reckless with her mouth, her words, and her actions. Like me.

She’s perfect.

So fucking beautiful it steals my breath away.

“Who was that man you danced with?”

I’d walked into the charity event to find her clutched in the arms of some geriatric fucker, pressed so tightly against him she couldn’t move. A primitive type of anger had filled me when I thought she was willingly throwing herself at him. It’d devolved into outright rage when I saw her face and realized she was more a prisoner than anything.

Arturo had yanked me back by my shirt when I’d made a move towards her, reminding me that we were here to follow the lead on Adriana.

Marco found Dadurian the day afterFirenzeand tortured a confession out of him. He’d quickly admitted to having seen Adriana that night two years ago. He’d been in charge of slipping something in her drink but wasn’t the one who’d kidnapped and eventually killed her.

That man was an Italian, one Dadurian hadn’t named before dying, simply telling us he was a Leone.

The family of Augusto Leone, the capo.

Angelo Leone, a distant cousin of Augusto, presently lays dead at my feet. Turns out he wasn’t the man I was looking for either, had no idea what I was talking about or who Adriana even was, but he’d gotten a bullet in the head nonetheless.

In no particular order, I was going to destroy every single member of the Leone family one by one until I found the man responsible for Adriana’s death.

It made sense that it was the Italians. There’s no way they’d have let the Armenians come to their club and create such a mess without their involvement or supervision. Unlike them, they have the manpower and firepower to take me on.

Arturo had been right to stop me from making a scene, redirecting me instead to the rare species exhibit where Marco had plucked Angelo from the charity gala and was holding him captive.

Nonetheless, the second we’d stepped away from the event I’d clocked Turo in the jaw for getting between me and Tess.

And now anger burns in her gaze, but it doesn’t seem directed at me. At least not entirely.

“He’s a colleague.”

She spits it out like it’s an insult. She’s beautiful when she’s mad, her cheeks red, those delectable tits of hers straining to escape. If I make her angry enough, will one finally slip free, exposing one of the nipples I’m so desperate to bite?

“Do you let all your colleagues touch you like that?” If she does, that’s going to stop right fucking now.

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