Page 110 of Devil Mine

“Why did you involve Dadurian?” I continue as if my temper isn’t ticking like a time bomb. “If you wanted to keep your hands clean, you did a piss poor job of it. That fucker led us right back to your family with barely any effort.”

“She’s a tasty little number,Diablo. I didn’t peg you as someone who’d have a thing for blondes.” He licks his lips. “Looking at her though, I can’t say I don’t get it.”

My eyelid twitches.

My jaw ticks dangerously.

He’s baiting me and I won’t rise to it. I’m chanting it to myself over and over again, hoping if I say it enough times, I’ll actually fucking listen.

“Tell me where the fuck Adriana’s body is.”

Blood leaks from his mouth, seeping from between his teeth and from the cuts on his face, and continuing gruesomely down his chin. Speaking is excruciating for him, the effort of moving his lips draining him almost completely.

With a ghastly-sounding inhale, he throws his head back and opens his mouth once more.

And based on the expression on his face, I know that I’m not going to like whatever it is he’s about to say.

“When I have Blondie here taken from you, I’ll make sure they give you her body back this time,” he rasps, voice barely lifting above a whisper. “She’ll be well used, her holes nice and stretched out for you from her time spent with theFamiglia, but at least you’ll know what happened to this one.”

Pressure explodes bright and white behind my eye and I black out.

When I come to mere seconds later, I’m standing over Leone with his hair clenched in one fist and my knife clutched in the other, stabbing him repeatedly in the throat with frantic, jerking slashes of my wrist. The blade jams in again and again, all the way to the hilt with each vicious stroke as I hack away at him barbarically. There’s a frenetic mindlessness to my actions as I roar my fury dementedly in his face. Blood gushes in increasingly lame spurts from his wounds and covers me.

When the adrenaline recedes, I realize that he’s long dead even as I continue to butcher his body. His lips are twisted and frozen in a final, gleeful smile like he got what he wanted. He wanted me to kill him, to end his misery.

“Fuck!” I boom deafeningly, kicking the chair until he falls back and shouting my wrath open-throated at the ceiling. “Fuck!Maldita sea.”

“Jefe–” Arturo starts.

I cut him off with a hand. “Don’t say a fucking word.”

I can hardly see. The anger is still throttling me and dangerously dotting my vision. I need a second to breathe before it takes him out next. There’s nothing he can say that I’m not already screaming at myself. I just completely fucked our only lead. Leone never spoke, he never gave us anything to go on from here, and I killed him. He was trying to get me to do exactly that and I lost my shit and fell for it in less than ten minutes.

But the vision of Tess that my imagination was kind enough to conjure and burn into the back of my eyelids at his words, the one of her broken, mangled body returned to me, is still so fresh and vivid in my mind that I’m about to continue desecrating his corpse just for the fun of it. My blood rings in my ears and thrashes in my veins and I’m glad thehijueputais dead because there’s no universe in which she lives where I would have allowed him to keep breathing too. I would never have slept again knowing she could be in danger.

When I turn around, I find her standing by the door, hair wildly down around her shoulders, her blue dress criminal in the way it’s hugging her curves and her heels held in her hand. There’s something about seeing her barefoot, holding her shoes, that undoes me completely. She looks so young. Fragile, even though I know she isn’t. Completely at odds with the situation. The thought that this is what Leone saw when he looked at her makes me even more furious.

She’s shaking violently, a shocked expression on her face, and she’s white as a sheet. I can’t tell if it’s horror at what she just witnessed, terror at her seeing with her own eyes exactly what kind of monster I am, or pure, unadulterated disgust at the blood dripping off my clothes and hand. I stride towards her, needing to touch her, to take her away from the darkness where she doesn’t belong. Relief loosens the muscles of my stomach when she takes a stumbling step towards me instead of shrinking away. It immediately leadens when a haze passes over her eyes.

And then she faints, crumbling to the ground like a broken doll.

I catch her inches from the floor, scooping her into my arms and holding her tightly against my chest. She’s so pale the veins under her eyes appear beneath her skin.

“Is she alright?” Arturo questions, coming to my side.

“Just shock, I think. I’m taking her home. Clean this up,” I ask. “Dump his body on the front steps ofFirenze.”

“If we do that, it’ll be like leaving a calling card saying that it was us.”

Fresh anger fires through my veins when I look down at an unconscious Tess and hear Leone’s threats against her echo in my head. “I want them to know it was me. Let them know no one is safe until Adriana’s killer is dead at my feet.”

He nods, looking back at Leone thoughtfully before facing me. “Guess this leaves the door wide open for Matteo Leone to become the newcapo.”

Matteo Leone is a mystery. Very little is known about the only living son of Augusto Leone and the apparent heir to the Italian mafia. If he’s a sadistic, violent, piece of shit, he hasn’t been a show off with his tendencies, unlike his late father and brother. But the Italian mafia is like a hydra – you cut off one head, they grow back and multiply. I have no doubt he’ll do anything to avenge his father.

Well, like I said.

Let them come.

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