Page 106 of Devil Mine

“Are you ready to accept the fact that you’re my wife now?”

I never thought there’d come a day where that question didn’t immediately make me want to run for the hills, but I’m standing in front of him still, feet firmly planted on the ground. I don’t want to fight anymore, both against what feels like the inevitable but also against my own emerging feelings.

“If we’re going to do this—”

“This?” he questions.

“Be married.”

His hand tightens on my cheek, his eyes flashing.

“There’s no if,amor, you—”

I set a palm on his chest, quieting him. “If we’re doing this, we should try and do it right. That’s what I was going to say. I have to be able to trust you and you have to trust me in return.”

When a shift in the air makes me shiver, Thiago reaches for my discarded gown and gets down on one knee, helping me put it back on until I’m holding the front up against my chest. Hands on my hips twist me to face the wall as he silently pulls the back zipper closed. He grips a handful of my ass when he’s done, making me yelp.

“Sorry, couldn’t help it.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. In fact, I can hear the smile in his words without even turning around.

When I do, I find him already in his trousers, looking down at his belt as he tightens it. He reaches for his shirt, looking back expectantly at me.

“Trust obviously isn’t going to happen overnight, but maybe,” I pause, finding my words. “Maybe you can start by telling me about Adriana.”

A shadow crosses his face before he hides it smoothly behind the mask of control he always wears. I wonder if he’s grieved her death. Vengeance is one thing, but grief is another altogether. Something tells me he hasn’t let himself feel that pain.

He looks down at where his hands work the buttons of his shirt. “What do you want to know?”

His fingers falter when I touch him. I take over for him, slowly buttoning his shirt from the bottom up. “How old was she?”

“When she died? She’d just turned twenty-three.”

My stomach twists in response. We’d be more or less the same age today.

“What happened?” I question softly.

“She was kidnapped from a club.Firenze.” Realization flashes in his eyes and his hands come back to my waist, his touch urgent. “You’re forbidden from ever going back.” I part my lips to tell him his tight grip is hurting me, but he mistakes my mouth opening as potential disagreement. “That’s non-negotiable. I don’teverwant you going back there. If you feel like going out, I’ll take you somewhere better. Somewhere safer.”

The chaotic look in his eye pierces right through my chest. It exposes a part of him I haven’t seen before.

I shake my head. “Of course I won’t go.”

His shoulders drop with his low exhale, the sudden tension in his body easing somewhat. He releases me and even though I’d been about to tell him he was hurting me, I find myself missing his touch.

“After she was kidnapped, my father received an anonymous, untraceable message telling us she was murdered in retaliation for crimes of the cartel. To punish him for unnamed acts he’d committed. They included her finger.” I inhale sharply, my hand flying to my mouth. “She always wore our mother’s engagement ring on her right hand. You can imagine it being returned to my father in that way.” He breathes violently through his nose. “Their final act of punishment was telling us they’d never reveal the location of her body. That we’d have to live the rest of our lives wondering what happened to her in her final hours and what they did with her remains.”

It’s my turn to cup his face, forcing him to look back down at me. His brows twitch when he sees the tears on my face.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine going through something like that. You didn’t deserve it.”

“Yes, we did.” He clasps my hands and removes them from his face, bringing them down between us. “Don’t cry for me,amor, I don’t deserve your tears. You know exactly who I am. What I’ve done. My father made me in his image; whatever I’m guilty of, he’s done a hundred times over. This business is war and people pay in blood for every victory, for every new inch of power. There are an innumerable amount of people who would slit my or my father’s throats for revenge if given the opportunity.Wedeserve worse than death. But Adriana.” He stumbles. “Adriana did nothing wrong. She was never involved with the business, never wanted anything to do with it. She always said she was a pacifist,” he says with a rueful smile. “She studiedbotany, for fuck’s sake. All she wanted was to work with plants, to have a couple cats, and to live in a home with a large garden where she could plant anything she wanted. That’s it. She came to London to celebrate her graduation. She was innocent. Killing her never made any sense to me,” he continues. “I never understood why anyone would willingly make an enemy out of us. They had to know our retaliation strategy would be complete annihilation.”

I blow out a shuddering breath. The truth is so far from what I expected. I’d fabricated this entire story in my head about her, blindly hating her based on my own foolish rush to judgment.

“Have you found the person responsible?”

“Not yet.” He looks off to the side and awareness brushes up my spine.

“You’re lying.”

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