Page 23 of Devil Mine

Tess

Paunchy Guy yanks me to my feet by my arms. By some miracle, my legs manage to hold my weight and I remain upright. His grip on me is brutal and bruising, and he drags me into the room, kicking the doors shut behind him.

Fear makes me want to avert my gaze or close my eyes, anything not to face this reality, but I fight against my baser instincts and yell at myself to keep my head up. There’s no use pretending I don’t know what just happened here, I’ve already seen too much.

There is no saving me now, but I won't cower.

If he is going to kill me, I intend to look him in the eye when he does it. To humanize myself so as to appeal to any shred of mercy he might have buried inside him. Although, with the way I just watched him clinically dispatch the now dead man into the afterlife, I doubt he has any.

Think, Tess. How can you get out of this?

I feel my bravado slip the closer I get to him. We come to a stop when just a few feet separate us and he’s so much more terrifying up close. His physical presence dwarfs me. Even with my heels on, the top of my head only reaches the tip of his chin.

My gaze hovers around the collar of his suit jacket until I feel composed enough to look up.

Finally, I peer into the eyes of death. A lethally black gaze stares back at me with unbroken intensity.

Gold eyes soften a chiseled face. He’s got sharp cheekbones, a nose that’s been broken before, a square chin. His eyes are like a big cat’s looking at its prey — unfeeling and callous. Tattoos burst out of his collar and tentacle up the entirety of his neck, including the underside of his jaw, and continue into his hair. There’s a rose tattooed vertically on his face, right next to his ear, and the outline of a teardrop etched below the corner of his left eye.

His entire appearance is rough, from his broken knuckles and the daggers on his fingers, to the trace of scars visible on his neck and face. He’s no gentleman — he’d probably consider that an insult — and nothing like any of the men I grew up around. Fear should be the only thing I feel, and it’s definitely there, but there’s also that same pull from earlier.

He sucks on something, a sweet of some kind that he rolls from one side of his mouth to the other. His mouth parts slightly and his tongue peeks through, wetting thick lips. The juxtaposition between the gore and violence I just witnessed and the almost juvenile act of sucking on a candy chills me.

I’ve never seen someone so unforgiving yet attractive at the same time. The revulsion and hatred my mind feel completely oppose my body’s visceral reaction to him. The more my brain labels him a sociopath, the more lust unfurls in my belly, powerful and unrelenting.

He looks almost amused by my perusal of him and watches me watch him. I get the sense that he’s toying with me and I realize I’d be a fool to underestimate him — he’s not just a mindless brute, there’s a shrewd mind lurking behind those dead eyes.

I carefully avoid looking at the body.

When he’s had enough of me scrutinizing him, he utters two words that make my blood run cold.

“Hello, Tess.”

His voice is deep, his accent wrapping deliciously around the one syllable of my name like he has any right to know it, let alone speak it. But he says it like he owns it, like it belongs to him.

“How do you know my name?”

I’m pleased at the perfectly even tone of my voice. I was afraid it’d come out shaking and broken.

“Let her go,” he orders. I’m immediately released. He nods once at the two men, keeping his eyes on me. “Leave us.”

I don’t know how I feel about that command. The last thing I want is to be alone with him, but if it means Paunchy Guy who pointed a gun at me and is currently still glaring in my direction will go, I won’t fight it.

“We’ll be right outside,” Paunchy Guy says, shooting me one last glare. I don’t know what his deal is — his boss is the one with the gun and the sociopathic tendencies, not me.

He and Younger Guy exit, closing the door behind them, and instead of seeming bigger, the room feels like it compresses down around us.

“I looked for you afterFirenze,” the devil answers. His words are said dispassionately and yet they reveal that he was also intrigued enough by me to look into me after that night. “Do you know my name?”

I nod and his eyes darken. Goosebumps roll across my skin at his reaction.

“I know who you are.”

Everyone in London knows the name Thiago da Silva. The rule of violence and destruction he’s rained down on the city are all anyone’s talked about for the last year. He’s never photographed and he obviously isn’t invited to society events so I’ve never seen his face until now.

His reputation is a lot uglier than he is. Knowing who he is now, I’m surprised he didn’t use the machete on my father. Cutting up people is certainly a signature of his.

He’s everything I hate. He’s part of the ruling class in the seedy underbelly of the city I love, colloquially referred to as the Underworld. He thrives in this bastion of criminality, running drugs and guns and most likely women. Murder is just one in a long list of offenses I judge him for.

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