Page 37 of Devil Mine

“She wasn’t at her office.” I breathe an internal sigh of relief. “But there was a note on her desk.”

“A demand for ransom?”

“No.” He extends the phone to me. “You should read it for yourself.”

I take it and look at the photo he has pulled up. It’s a picture of a crisp, white notecard monogrammed with Tess’s initials, laying squarely on her desk. I zoom in closer and read the words written in tidy handwriting.

I will never be yours, legally or otherwise.

By the time you find this, I’ll be long gone.

Get yourself another plaything and don’t come looking for me.

Screw you,

Tess

I straighten, my spine uncoiling as every vertebra slots back into place. Amusement curls the corner of my lips, even as anger lurks just beneath the surface. So, she made a run for it. A move that’s both foolish and brave, just like I told her she was. At least she’s safe.

Where others have thrown themselves at me in the past, she literally chose to run away from her life and home just to escape me. The unfeeling sociopath in me gets hard knowing I can have that kind of uprooting effect on her. She continues to be a surprise wrapped in an enigma, and one I’m even more desperate to get my hands on than ever.

My fiancée wants to play?

So be it, we can play.

And when I drag her back to me, it’ll be my pleasure to show her exactly what the punishment is when you lose a game against me.

“I’m going after her,” I declare. She has a two-day headstart on me which puts me at a disadvantage, but tracking down people who hide from me is what I do for a living. There’s no way an innocent, sheltered twenty-five-year-old London girl can get the best of me.

“Thiago, you can’t.”

I slant Arturo a murderous look, poison seeping into my gaze. “Tell me again what I can and can’t do.”

He stands to match my posture.

“Respectfully,jefe, we need you here,” he reasons, picking up the contract we were just reading over. “We need to get these back to Blackdown this week. There’s product coming in from the North Coast from a new supplier of your father’s who you need to meet. Our cleaners won’t be able to take on this new load with the turnaround we need. We have a couple other names but they’re going to need to be vetted. You’re the only one who can do that. Plus, there’s the Switzerland issue; if we’re going to transfer funds to the Caymans, Bachmann will want to meet with you.”

I scrub my hand over my face and think. Business is booming and that means we’re having a shit load of expansion-related issues getting our money cleaned and housed somewhere untraceable by law enforcement. I can’t be everywhere so I’ve turned over running some operations to Arturo and Marco, but I still oversee the majority. It’s an impossible time for me to be chasing after a runaway fiancée.

“When I said to get a wife, I didn’t say get a new headache,” he adds cautiously. “Your engagement wasn’t announced so there won’t be a reputational hit from letting her go and finding someone else…”

“You can’t push a wife on me and then tell me you don’t like the one I chose. I want and I willhaveTess Noble. Understood?”

He nods, although unhappy lines remain around his mouth. He hasn’t been shy about his dislike of my choice but I’ve just ignored him.

“I want her found, Marco,” I snarl, slamming my fist once more against the desk.

“Yes,jefe.”

“When you find her, you don’t lay a hand on her, you hear me? I’ll deal with her myself.”

He nods and awaits my dismissal. I look at them both, one after the other, and then address Arturo.

“He has two weeks to find her, Turo. If she’s still missing after that, I’ll go after her myself and you won’t stop me. I don’t care how much security I need to bring with me or how many back and forths I’ll need to make to London to keep the business running, you’ll make it happen.”

“Deal,” he agrees before turning towards Marco. “Better find her fast, we can’t afford to lose the boss.”

“Don’t worry,” he assures. “I’ll find her.”

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