Page 146 of Devil Mine

He laughs, a cruel sound. “Is that right?”

“I finally see you for what you are. A coward and a bully. A pathetic excuse for a man. I’m glad Mum finally left you, although if you ask me she would have done so fifteen years ago.”

He takes a dangerous step towards me, a sneer twisting his features. “Look at this brave little girl act. You get yourself a husband with an ounce of power and you think that protects you from me, is that it? It doesn’t. Your husband is gutter scum, not worth the air it takes to keep him alive and not worthy of ever being around people like us.”

A red mist descends over my eyes and suddenly I’m going toe to toe with him.

“My husband is a thousand times the man you’lleverbe. He has more dignity and honor in his little finger than you could ever dream of having. And he has a code of ethics even in the Underworld, whereas you beat women for sport. You could never measure up to him. The way you look disdainfully down your nose at a man who is your better in every way is proof of that.”

My father’s eyes jump skyward and then he laughs loudly. Unease coils in my belly at his reaction. I’d expected anger, not… whatever this is.

“Tess,” he starts, still laughing and making a joke of me. He makes me feel so small and insignificant that I want to disappear. “Please tell me you’re notactuallyfalling for Thiago da Silva?”

Silence robs the words from my tongue and I find I can’t answer. I look down instead, the unease turning to full blown discomfort.

“You are,” he notes, voice tinged with mirth and shock. “You’re actually falling for the man, if you haven’t already.” He gives me a pitying look that makes me want to zip myself out of my skin and seep into the floorboards beneath us. “I didn’t have high expectations for you, but I thought you’d at least be smarter than that. All those years of trying to prove yourself to me and now you’ve finally shown yourself to be exactly what I always knew you were – brainless, stupid, and emotionally unbalanced. Categorically unfit to work here.”

Ice crawls down my spine. I still can’t speak. I hate that he can reduce me to being nothing more than a speechless moron with just a few snarled words.

“Did you forget that he paid for you?” he continues. “You fell for a man who chose to buy you rather than woo you. You’re just as stupid as your mother.” My throat dries, tears stinging my eyes. “When he came to me and proposed forgiving my debts in exchange for your hand, do you know what he told me?”

I shake my head, not in answer to his question but because I don’t want to hear the next words that come out of his mouth. I don’t want to know.

“He said he wanted a woman who would be seen and not heard. Someone quiet who he could manipulate and get to bend the knee to him. I lied and promised him you fit that brief to a tee so I could save myself, but now I can tell you delivered on it anyway.” My world spins under the weight of his verbal assault. “You were never meant to be anything more than wallpaper to him, a nice decoration on his arm whose biggest contribution was your last name and nothing more.” He laughs again. “You pride yourself on being so smart Tess, but you’ve gone ahead and done the dumbest, most predictable thing in this situation. I’m embarrassed you were so weak. Even I didn’t expect that low of you.”

Every word is a stabbing knife wound to the gut. I feel fresh tears well in the corners of my eyes, but I blink them away.

“You’re lying.”

A slow, arrogant grin stretches his mouth as he reaches into his pocket. Lead weighs me down, a massive fog rolling into my brain and making my movements sluggish.

My father presses play on his phone and Thiago’s voice echoes in the room like he’s here with us.

And I hear every horrible word he once said to my father from his own lips.

“After he attacked me, I started recording our conversations in the event I needed them as insurance,” he explains as Thiago keeps talking in the background, every word causing more pain than the next. “I didn’t think it’d come in handy this way, but I’m not mad about the additional use case.”

He pockets his phone once more and looks at me.

“Which brings me to my original reason for coming in here. I’ll be back in the office full time and your brother will return to London in a few months so your services are no longer required. You have until the end of next week and then I want you gone. Think about all the free time you’ll have to spend with your loving husband now,” he finishes, throwing in one last loud laugh before walking out of my office. He stalks past Arturo who takes one look at my face and comes marching back in.

My father was right – I’ve been so stupid.

???

Chapter Fifty-Four

Tess

My commute home is spent in a blurred torpor. I don’t remember leaving the office. One second I’m standing in front of my desk bereft and feeling dangerously adrift in my own reality, the next I’m in my kitchen, pouring hot water in my mug and watching swirls of color from the tea bag mix with the clear liquid.

Arturo threw concerned glances my way the entire drive home but wisely chose not to ask me any questions. Now he’s disappeared, leaving me with my storming, embittered thoughts.

Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of how our story started. Hearing the words from Thiago’s own mouth that he wanted a living statue for a wife and nothing more tears at my insides. Could I really have been that naive as to fall in love with a man who’s been playing me from the beginning?

My father certainly thinks so.

Humiliation burns my cheeks and rots my insides.

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