Devil Mine: A Dark Cartel Romance (London Underworld Book 1)

I’m at my home in Knightsbridge, working with Arturo on ironing out the latest contract with Blackdown when Marco walks in. Immediately, I know he’s bringing bad news. I can tell by the look on his face that whatever it is he’s about to tell me, I’m not going to like it. 

“What is it?” I ask.

“Jefe,” he says, pausing there. I’ve never seen Marco at a loss for words. Arturo frowns at him. Exclusive content © by Nô(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.

I settle back into my chair and bounce it a few times, looking at him appraisingly. “Is it the Italians? Did you learn something new about Adriana?”

“No,” he says, grimacing. “It’s Tess.”

I stop my chair mid-bounce, and my heart momentarily follows. “What about her?”

She was fine when I left her. If something happened to her, if her father did something…There are two hundred and six bones in the human body and I’ll filet every single one out of him like a fish.

“She’s gone.”

I stand abruptly, placing both of my palms on my desk. Heat crawls up my neck at his words.

“What do you mean gone? Where is she?”

“We don’t know, jefe. We put a couple falcons on her like you requested and they lost her.”

“Where?”

He winces. “They’re not sure. She seemed to be following her normal routine. She took her car to work, they watched her walk into the Noble Group building, watched her come out around lunchtime with a couple of colleagues and head to Bistro Barbès. According to them she returned to the office around one thirty and never came back out. They haven’t seen her since.”

I look down at my watch. “It’s noon right now.”

He grimaces again, his expression pained. “This was the day before yesterday.”

An arctic chill lowers the temperature of the room. My palms clench into tight, bloodless fists.

My ears must be deceiving me because surely I’m hearing the information coming out of his mouth incorrectly.

“You’re telling me they waited almost forty-eight hours to tell me she was missing?”

“They wanted to make sure she was really gone before they flagged it to me. I came as soon as I heard.”

I roar furiously, pounding my fists on the table with such force that everything jumps up half an inch, landing haphazardly back on the surface a second later.

“Kill them,” I order cold-bloodedly.

“Thiago–” Arturo starts.

“Kill them. Send their heads to their families, wherever they are.” It’s standard punishment for betraying the cartel. They deserve no better fate. 

“Consider it done,” Marco answers with a sober nod.

The emotion I’m feeling is unfamiliar. Something akin to agitation. Our engagement hasn’t been announced so the risk to her is low, but her position as my fiancée makes her vulnerable. Tess being missing triggers flashbacks to when I found out Adriana had been taken. I never got her back.

I won’t let the same happen to Tess.

My features shake under the weight of my fury and uncertainty. My being this rattled by news that she’s disappeared is concerning for a whole other set of reasons.

“Are you sure she isn’t at home? Or that she didn’t stay overnight in her office for some reason?”

“No, I sent other men to her home. Noble confirmed she isn’t there, that she hasn’t come back since she went to work Monday. I have men at her office now…Hold on, this is an update from them.” He looks down at his phone, the screen lighting up with a notification. He reads whatever message he just received, his eyes flashing before he throws me an indecipherable look.

I have to actively work to keep my breathing regulated. My clenched fists hold my weight on the desk, keeping me stable. If he’s about to tell me she’s dead my reaction is going to be less than pleasant.

“Tell me.”

“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 will have Tess 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.”