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

I’m bored.

In fact, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bored with my life. I’m so bored that I’m even bored of being bored.

Isn’t that just tragic?

And the worst part is, I did this to myself. Every decision I’ve made over the last eight years – hell, every decision I’ve made since I was old enough to understand and be dissatisfied by the position I was expected to occupy in the world – has brought me to this moment.

I shut my computer and push back from my desk, standing to stare out of the bay windows of my office. I can’t get any work done. I’m annoyed and dismayed by the conversation I had with my father a few days ago.

I’d expected that after all the work I’d put into his company, our company, after years of putting my life on hold and wholeheartedly devoting myself to growing the Noble Group as the Chief Financial Officer, that he’d finally see I was worthy of taking over after him as CEO. 

Instead, he’d cut me off the second I’d uttered those three letters and dismissed me with the wave of a hand.

“Your brother will be the next CEO of the Noble Group, Tess,” he said with an annoyed sigh. “I’ve indulged your fantasies for too long, thinking it would satisfy you. I see now that I was wrong and I’ve done nothing but encourage these foolish delusions of yours.”

Bitterness welled inside me. I love my brother but he has zero interest and even fewer qualifications in taking over after our father. The only reason he’s being handed the keys to the company is because he has a dick between his legs where I do not.

“But Father–”

“No.” His voice was harsh and unforgiving. “It’s time I rectify this situation. I will allow you to keep working here for one more year while your brother straightens out his act in Switzerland.”

After one too many scandals, my father had banished Tristan to teach at RCA, a private school for the children of the rich and privileged, for a year. I wasn’t allowed to communicate with him at all while he was there.

He’s my best friend, and losing my closest ally and sounding board had been tough. I was already wondering how I was going to make it through without him and it had only been a couple of months.

“…That should allow me time to find a suitable match.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, having missed the first half of his sentence.

He threw me a contemptuous look that revealed just how little he thought of me.

“You can keep your position at the Noble Group for one more year while I find you a suitable husband. Someone who can teach you some much needed discipline.”

His words cleaved me. I took a step back, a yawning fracture splitting through me.

“No,” I gasped.

“You’re twenty-five, Tess. You’re not getting any younger,” he sneered. “Who knows, maybe your husband will let you work.” A sadistic smile cracked his lips. “But I highly doubt it.”

Arranged marriages are standard in our echelon of society, but my father had never mentioned it for me. I thought I could be an exception. That’s what I had worked for.

There are no real, great female role models in my world. Women are defined almost exclusively by their husbands. There are only the lucky wives whose husbands ignore them and cheat on them, and then there are the unlucky wives. The ones that face a battle every time they’re home with their spouses. The ones like my mother.

Some of them don’t survive their husbands.

The exceptions are the girls who run away or turn their backs on their families, but you never really hear about them again.

That’s why I’d invested all my energy into succeeding. Into doing better than my brother on all the things he’d be judged on. Luckily for me, he had no interest in competing in this race so I’d dusted him.

I graduated first from Cambridge and then got my MBA from Wharton. I was top of my class, as formidable with data and numbers as I was with people.

I did that.

I did everything right.

Everything.

And it still wasn’t enough.

All those years of missed experiences. Of never traveling, never seeing friends. Of being head down, book open.

Studying, reading, memorizing, revising, test taking. Putting the real world on hold to find success in this fucked up high society world that men had created only for themselves.

I’d embraced what I was good at, data, and put everything else aside. I’d never really had time for romance. I dated, but had never been in love. My experiences were lackluster because I was driven by more than was expected of me.

I’d helped grow our profits over the past two years by twenty percent, and still it wasn’t enough.

Because at the end of the day, all that mattered was that I was a woman and women got married, especially when they were getting a little too independent. The best way to break a mare’s spirit is to chain her to a fence.

“What about Franklin Marsh-Sackville? That’s a fantastic match.”

Now I was sure I was having an out of body experience. How could he so callously drop a world-ending announcement on me and easily pivot into rattling off names of men he could sell me off to like I was a piece of chattel.

Franklin is our Chief Operating Officer and a certified creep. He openly leers at me and routinely comments on my wardrobe. I always wear pink at the office, both because it’s my favorite color and because I believe in flaunting the fact that I am a woman in a position of power and I’ve had to fight for the right to be in this building. I refuse to blend in with the men or to make myself smaller in any way.

Plus, why can’t I be smart and pretty?

Franklin’s double barrel last name is an ostentatious show of his pedigree. He’s very, very distantly related to the royal family, although closely enough that he’s mentioned it on five separate occasions in the two years we’ve worked together. 

He’s also twenty years older than me.

A full body shiver racked through me at the thought of him touching me.

“Please reconsider this, Father,” I’d begged.

I knew I’d made the wrong move when fury had slackened his face. I’d made a quick exit out of his office before he lost control of his anger. He’d never hit me before but I wasn’t going to stick around and find out if that was going to be the day he started.

All I could hope for at this point is that he’d change his mind. That he’d see my value where he never had before and realize that I could be much more useful to him in the office than I could be chained to some random man.

✽✽✽

Revisiting the conversation with my father makes me restless. My office is stifling, the four walls of my achievements oppressing. I can’t be in here a moment longer.

I know just where to go.

Carl, a colleague from sales, is walking by as I step out of my office. He accompanies me down the hall and across the reception area towards the other corridor where the freight elevator is.

As I’m walking and listening to the updates he’s giving me, something makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Awareness slams into me as does the heavy feeling of being watched.

When I throw a quick glance over my shoulder, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. People are milling about the reception area, going to and from meetings.

“You’re officially losing it now, Tess,” I mutter under my breath to myself.

My body must still be on high alert from reliving the news of my potential arranged marriage. I shake the feeling off and get in the elevator alone.

The doors open onto a darkened hallway on the second floor. This area is completely uninhabited except for one person and he prefers it that way.

“Hey, Wiz,” I say, walking into his office.

Antoni “Wiz” Wyszyński doesn’t startle or even bother to turn around at my entrance. Instead, he burrows his head deeper into his computer, his gaze flitting between the four monitors he has up.

“Hiding out again?” he asks.

I groan, kicking off my shoes and dropping onto the comfortable couch in the corner.

He didn’t used to have any furniture in here except the chair he’s sitting on, his desk, and the dozens upon dozens of servers and other computer equipment lining the walls. But it appeared one day, not long after I started coming here when I needed a break from the testosterone-fueled madness of upstairs.

I like to think he had it brought in specifically for me. It’s pink and in complete opposition to the entirely black space, so my guess is justified.

“I recently learned my father is going to marry me off. I’m trying to process it.”

He twists in his chair, one eyebrow raised in surprise.

“To whom?”

I shrug, playing with a loose piece of fabric sticking out from the couch cushion.

“To the highest bidder.”

He doesn’t answer, his face impassive. After a few moments, he turns around and gets back to work, typing away quietly on his computer. Wiz isn’t a talker, and certainly not someone who’s good at reassuring people, but that’s not why I come here.

I appreciate his silence, his quiet support. I need the safe space far away from the relentless and cutthroat pace upstairs.

“You want me to put a worm on his computer that’ll crash his entire system?” He says it nonchalantly, continuing to type away.

I laugh softly, shaking my head.

“That’s a very kind offer, but it’s okay, I know you’re busy.”

It’s his turn to shrug. Outside of his eyebrow raises, that’s about the range on his outward emotion spectrum.

“I can do it in under two minutes. Want to time me?”

Wiz is our savant head of IT. We became friends when I spilled coffee all over my keyboard and fried my hard drive. I’d been directed to go see some of his underlings who worked on the floor below mine. They’d all said there was no hope for my data.

When pressed they’d told me about a man, their boss, on the second floor. They’d spoken about him like he was some sort of bridge troll, but also said he was my only hope of getting any information back.

So, I’d traipsed down here, unsure if I was being sent on a wild goose chase as part of some prank, and found Wiz huddled in this dark, windowless room.

He’d been as surprised to see me as I’d been to find him. Apparently, I was the first person to come to him since he’d started here a few years prior. He didn’t like people and still doesn’t. He’d demanded to work alone, far from others, and he’d been granted everything he asked for simply because he was the best at what he did.

By the following morning, he’d retrieved all of my data.

I bought him a funny mug to thank him and came back two days later to give it to him. He’d been unprepared to receive the gift and had stared at my extended hand for a good minute before tentatively reaching for it.

He’d turned back around to face his computer and hadn’t said a word. But when I moved to walk out the door, he’d told me to stay.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

So, I had.

An unlikely friendship had grown from there, one of few words exchanged but mutual understanding nonetheless.

Now, I come down here to escape and he lets me stay for the few moments of socialization. I never overstay my welcome; I know when he starts to get fidgety that he wants to be left alone.

I sigh. “No, if his computer crashes he’s just going to find a way to blame and yell at me. Thank you though.”

He grunts in acknowledgment and we sit in comfortable silence for a few moments before he asks.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

The truth is, I’m bursting for freedom.

I’ve spent all my life working to prove I’m good enough to make up for the mortal sin of being born a girl, and it isn’t going to matter anyway because my father is going to force my brother into my CEO role.

I’m weddable and beddable, those are the only assets of mine that my father sees as being valuable to him.

“You’re just going to take it lying down? That doesn’t seem like you.” Wiz’s voice holds no trace of judgment. As always, he’s making an astute inference based on a series of facts he knows about me.

He’s right.

Why would I stop fighting now?

I’m someone who makes decisions on logic and probability. I’m not one to let emotion cloud my judgment. It’s not that I’m unemotional, I’m just not driven primarily by my feelings. 

If I can take the same unemotional approach with my father, maybe I can convince him. There has to be an argument he’ll listen to.

I jump to my feet, grab my shoes in one hand, and dash barefoot for the door.

“I’m going to talk to him again,” I call from the door as I rush out. “Thanks, Wiz! You’re the best!”