Finding Forgiveness novel Chapter 13

When I got back to the warehouse, Andrea was sat 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 me.

"You could have told me," I stated.

"Told you what?" he asked looking up for the first time.

"That one, I needed 5,000 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 and Leo's names were not amongst 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 realise 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 box.

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

There was an agonising 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.

"That gives me four reasons to be very fucking angry," he growled in my ear. 

"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 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 priveledges and protection and safety the second you dialled 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.