Page 57 of Devil Mine

“Where are you?” I ask, absentmindedly, working to control myself.

“Rome.”

My eyes snap up to meet his. I’m trying to hide my reaction but I can feel the blood slowly seep from my face and I know I must go pale.

He doesn’t miss a thing, he never does.

“So youarestill here,” he says. “I’ve spent a week looking for you, I was wondering if maybe you’d left. That’s good to know.”

How could he know where I am? I haven’t done anything differently, I’m still using the same cards and phone and emails from before. Nothing’s changed and yet he found my location.

I need to leave immediately.

“How’s Dagny?” he asks, like he can tell I’m about to hang up and run.

I snort. “Like you care.”

My mind is still racing, trying to figure out how he traced me. I’ve continued to do my job exactly like I would if I was still in London, except just doing it remotely. I was surprised when I never heard from my father, when he didn’t forbid me from working or lock my accounts, but I thought maybe he had bigger fish to fry. Now I’m wondering if that’s how Thiago traced me. I’ll need to talk to Wiz tomorrow and make sure I haven’t been detected. He would have told me if there was an obvious hack, but maybe one went undetected?

He huffs out a cold laugh. “You’re right, I don’t. It doesn’t pay to get attached in my line of work, people die every day.”

“Does it pay to be an unfeeling, hard-hearted asshole?”

He gives me a sharp smile. “I’m not burdened by trivial, unnecessary emotions. There are very few people I trust, even fewer I care about, less than the fingers I have on one hand. Everyone else is expendable to me. I already told you others will do whatever it takes for a chance at my status and power, and having too many people I care about is a vulnerability I can’t afford. Never forget that, especially when you take your place as my queen.”

“That sounds lonely,” I can’t help but say.

He thinks about it, I can see it in the way his jaw moves back and forth, mulling it over. When he looks back at me, his jawline has gone rigid.

“It is.”

I nod. “I get that.”

Our lives couldn’t be more different and yet it seems we’re connected by this one very obvious thing. A life that we’ve had to sacrifice a lot for, but that’s ultimately unfulfilling.

His gaze is inscrutable but intense on me.

“I have to go,” I say, my tone light. I find that I didn’t hate our conversation tonight, aside from the complete humiliation of him reading my journal. “I can’t be here now that I know you are.”

“Go dancing,” he says softly. Softer than I’ve heard him say anything. “Run again tomorrow. I won’t look for you tonight, I promise.”

I scoff. “Pff, do your promises mean anything?”

“They do. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

His gaze sweeps possessively over my face, warming my cheeks and igniting a low hum inside me. He really is gorgeous, a dark devil inexplicably fascinated by me.

“Why do you care if I go dancing?”

“Because you wrote about it in this,” he says, holding up that infernal journal to camera again. “I want to take dance lessons at night. It must be so magical to dance under the stars. I’ve never done it but it’s been on my bucket list forever,” he recites, seemingly from memory.

There’s a tension between us born from him quoting a wish of mine. It feels so intimate, him having access to pages in which I poured my heart out. It feels unfair that I wouldn’t get something similar in return.

“Do you know it by heart?” I say jokingly.

Dark eyes bore into mine.

“I’ve read it enough times.”

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