Page 178 of Devil Mine

“I did for over a fucking year!” he says, finding enough strength to spit the words at me. “You never suspected me, never thought I could have been involved in Adriana’s death. I could have continued for years if it wasn’t for your stupid cunt of a wife.”

“I’m going to rip your lungs out and feed them to you, Marco. I’m going to shove them so far down your windpipe you’ll choke, you piece of shit.”

He rasps out a painful-sounding laugh. “It’s unlike you to be so obvious in exposing your weaknesses, Thiago. Tess blinds you, she makes you make mistakes, you know she does. And I got greedy because of it. I saw the way she distracted you and I wanted more, so I took it. If I’d just stuck to my plan and continued slowly turning your men against you, I would have won. You would be sitting here dying, and I would be taking your place asjefe. I underestimated you and her together.”

“You lost, Marco. And now you’ll pay.”

I stalk towards him. His right arm, which had been hanging limply by his side, raises and he points a gun at me.

A demented smile pulls at my lips. I keep advancing on him. He can shoot me all he wants, nothing is going to stop me from getting to him and disemboweling him with my bare hands.

He keeps lifting the gun until he’s pointing it up at the ceiling and then he fires.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Four shots.

I pause dead in my tracks, confusion knitting my brow.

He had a clear shot at me. He could have buried every single one of those bullets in my chest instead of leaving himself with almost no chance of killing me. With these four bullets now in the ceiling and the two that Tess shot at him, that leaves him with only one shot to finish me.

His gun hand drops into his lap, spent. The energy it took him to raise his arm and hold it as the bullets charged through nearly finished him off.

He stares at me and there’s something in his gaze I can’t quite make out. A calculatedness that doesn’t make sense to me but chills my spine in foreboding nonetheless.

“It’ll take a lot more than one bullet to kill me,” I say coldly.

Marco smiles, an ugly grimace that freezes the blood in my veins. How I once considered this man a trusted advisor, a friend even, is beyond me.

He raises the gun once more, this time aiming it at me. “I learned something these last few months,” he explains. “Something a lot more valuable than money.”

My hand shifts slowly to behind my back, inconspicuously making a move for the blade that I’d hidden back in my trousers.

“What’s that?” I clip.

Marco’s head tilts to the side and he closes his eyes slowly. When they reopen, triumph shines in them.

My stomach twists, like my body understands what’s about to happen before it actually occurs.

“‘You don’t play the board, you play your opponent’,” he parrots. “You taught me that. It doesn’t matter to you whether you live or die, so you make for a difficult opponent to beat. You’re not afraid of death and because of that, killing you holds very little appeal to me,” he explains, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Destroying you on the other hand, does.” A rasping wheeze shakes his lungs until he coughs blood into his hand. “While you may not be afraid of death for yourself, the exact opposite is true when it comes to protecting the one person you care about most in the world.That’syour single biggest fear, a fate that’s worse than a death sentence for you. I realize you’ve shown me exactly how I win.” A slow grin stretches across his face. “And to make that final move,jefe,” he starts, sneering mockingly, “I only need one bullet.”

As if in slow motion, I watch as he glides his arm to the side and aims the gun away from me. His stare remains fixed hatefully on my face as he coldly declares, “Checkmate.”

And then he fires.

The shot whistles loudly past me, making my ears ring. I feel the heat of the bullet as it travels inches from my body, expecting to then catch the telltale sound of plaster exploding as the slug makes contact with the wall.

Instead, I hear the bullet bury itself in a much softer target.

And then a startled, pained whimper comes from behind me, clear as a bell in the thick silence. It’s a sound that’s going to echo in my ears until the day I die.

Ice crawls unnaturally slowly down my spine, the hair raising chillingly on the back of my neck.

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