Chapter 10

ELLA

When I got back to the warehouse, Andrea was sitting slouched at a table with his long legs stretched out and twirling a gun between the fingers of one hand and a small laptop to the side of him.

I walked over to him and put the parcel on the table, along with the “you owe me” note and the gun, before sliding it across to him.

“You could have told me,” I stated.

“Told you what?” he asked, looking up for the first time.

“That one, I needed five thousand dollars, and two, the gun isn’t loaded,” I said.

He didn’t respond but instead gestured to the man who had driven me.

He picked up the parcel from the table and left the warehouse again. It was at that point that I noticed the four smears of blood on the floor.

“Whose is that?” I asked quietly.

“Oh, the blood?” he asked casually, before he pointed to the first smear. “That one is Esteban. Then Richardo, Eduardo, and Guillermo. They are all dead.”

“W…what?” I stuttered, although slightly relieved that Luca’s and Leo’s names were not among them.

“You failed the test,” he stated.

“I brought you your stuff, didn’t I? Is that not what you wanted? And how is this anything to do with shooting four people?!”

He reached forward and pressed a button on the laptop, and a muffled recording began to play. It took me a while to realize what it was, but when I did, my heart sunk three miles into the ground.

A tape of my conversation with Leo in the phone booth.

Andrea looked up to me with a dark expression and cocked his head to the side as he stared me down before turning off the recording.

There was an agonizing moment of silence before he finally had the kindness to end it.

“I’ve always had my suspicions that you were lying to me, Blanca, and then that phone call earlier was one of my men telling me that he couldn’t trace the existence of an Eleonora De’Meritchi fitting your description anywhere.

“So, I had to put it to the test,” he explained. “Now do you understand why they had to die? I can’t have this ‘Leo’ finding you, and you gave their names as leads for him.”

I didn’t reply. How could I? There was nothing I could say that would make anything better.

“Who is he anyway?” he said, tapping the gun on the table. “Your real mate? The owner of that huge mark?”

“Yes,” I said shakily.

“Would ‘Leo’ by any chance be shortened from Alpha Leonardo Antonio Loren?” he asked, still staring intently.

I looked up to the ceiling and took a short breath in. It just kept getting worse.

“And that makes you the luna of the Stella Pack…yes?” he said deviously. “Ella Jones Loren?”

I nodded. There’s no point trying to lie to him.

“You know I don’t appreciate being fucked about with, Ella. I don’t like being lied to either,” he said, standing up from his chair slowly and with a sort of calmness that made me uneasy.

“I also hate hassle, and you’ve caused me a lot of that. And finally, I was fond of Eduardo, and now he is lying dead out in the desert.”

He neared me and began to gradually circle me, without taking his eyes away even for a second. If intimidation was his objective, he was certainly achieving it.

“That gives me four reasons to be very fucking angry.” He growled in my ear.

“How is this my fault? Did I choose to get involved with you?” I spat. “I was just minding my own business, and you had me abducted! And what did you expect when you kidnap someone and give them money for a pay phone?!”

“That was the real test. Congrats for getting me my wolfsbane, though,” he replied.

“I wasn’t expecting you to succeed… José is not an easy man…but that doesn’t change the fact that my guys are dead, and I now have to deal with an alpha.”

“I didn’t make you kill your own men, and you wouldn’t have to deal with my mate if you just left me alone in the first place.” I growled.

With that, he struck me across the face hard. It stung like a bitch and made me feel far less inclined to open my mouth again.

As a matter of principle, I didn’t ever like to back down from an argument. I valued my own opinion and was always going to defend myself, but I also wasn’t stupid.

Andrea could and was clearly willing to hurt me, so provoking him would only be a foolish move here.

“You have a fierce temper,” he replied, picking up a lock of my short hair and feeling it between his fingers. He then took a deep breath and dropped it down again.

“You know that I have to kill you now, right?” he asked. “I like you, but you’ve become a liability,” he said.

Once again, I had nothing to reply with.

“But first I have one question? What was Leonardo Loren’s mate doing in Mexico getting involved in trafficking?”

“I was with a friend, and he had to get the shipment before we went on vacation,” I replied quietly.

“Ah yes, ‘Romano De’Meritchi,’” he said. “Or Luca Romano as I have recently discovered to be his real name.

“We will have to find him and kill him too now that I know he works for Loren, and my guess would be that he has been using his position in my cartel to the Stella Pack’s advantage. Did you get on well?”

“Yes,” I replied with confusion.

Why would he care?

“Then I will have the good grace to bury you in the same hole out in the barren desert,” he said in a disconcertingly kind tone.

“What does it matter to you whether we live or not?”

“I have a reputation to maintain, Blanca,” he said. “If I don’t kill you, I will have let you walk all over me, and I can’t let my other employees see that in case they get any ideas.”

“In killing me, you are signing up to live in constant danger. Leonardo will not stop until you are dead,” I said.

Andrea shrugged. “If he’s going to want me dead anyway, then it doesn’t matter if I piss him off even more, does it? I might as well take this wonderful opportunity to put his mate to use tonight.”

“What?” I said, furrowing my eyebrows, thinking about the last time he gave me a job to do. “You don’t trust me.”

“Your lack of loyalty makes you useless as an employee, but it doesn’t change how hot you are,” he said with a grin as he placed his hand on my hip.

“And there’s something weirdly exhilarating about sleeping with another man’s mate, and the fact that the other man is Leonardo Loren only makes it even better.”

My eyes widened.

“Andrea—” I began.

He suddenly lurched forward and put his hand between my legs on my upper thigh.

“Do not call me that,” he said, covering my mouth roughly. “I am boss to you now. You lost all your privileges and protection the second you dialed that number. You are nothing to me.”

I shook his hand off me. “Let me speak.”

“What could you possibly have to say?” He growled.

“Go to hell.”

~Big mistake~.