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chapter 21
publish date:
2026-08-05 05:16:59
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Bound to the Devil I Wed chapter 37
One of Luca's men had already appeared at the edge of the room as if summoned by Adriana's tension alone. She spoke to him in rapid Russian. He nodded and vanished toward the exit. Elena rose too quickly and almost caught the edge of the tablecloth with her chair. Across the room, Sokolov smiled. Not with triumph. With patience. As if he had expected exactly this. They were halfway to the private exit corridor when he intercepted them. Not physically. Just by stepping into the path before the guard returned. "Leaving so soon?" he asked. Adriana moved first, placing herself half a step in front of Elena. "Yes." Sokolov's eyes slid past her. "I wasn't speaking to you." Every muscle in Elena went taut. He wore civility like a tailored suit. No threat in his posture. No raised voice. Yet the menace beneath it sat plain as wire beneath skin. "I was enjoying the evening," he continued, eyes still on Elena. "It improved when you arrived." Adriana's voice cut like glass. "Move.
Bound to the Devil I Wed chapter 36
The next two days passed without blood. Which in Luca's world, Elena was beginning to understand, did not mean peace. It meant preparation. The house remained under stricter guard. No guests entered without clearance. Deliveries were searched twice. Adriana complained about it once, was ignored, and never brought it up again. Camilla stopped appearing unannounced, which Elena suspected had less to do with pride than with the fact that Luca had made access to the east wing nearly impossible without provoking a confrontation she'd lose. It should have made Elena feel safer. Instead it made her feel watched from all directions. By enemies outside the walls. By men inside them. By Luca most of all, though never in a way she could call obvious. He was busy. Always busy. Meetings, calls, strategy. Yet somehow he still knew whether she had gone to the south terrace, whether she'd skipped half her lunch, whether the book left in the blue salon was the one she'd been searching for in
Bound to the Devil I Wed Chapter 35
Elena stopped just inside the threshold.She had imagined Luca's office before, despite herself. A room like the man: hard, cold, immaculate, stripped of softness.She had not been entirely wrong.But there were things she had not expected too. Books. Not for decoration, but worn at the spines. A chessboard half-played on the side table near the windows. A framed photograph turned slightly away on the shelf behind the desk, positioned so deliberately she knew at once it mattered.Luca crossed to the far wall and pressed a button hidden beneath the frame of a map.A second panel slid aside.Behind it, screens flickered to life.Camera feeds.The front gates. The east drive. The south wall. The city-facing perimeter road. The terrace below her rooms. Even the service entrance where deliveries came and went.Elena stared.Luca stood beside the monitors, one hand at his side, the other resting lightly against the edge of the desk as if the wound still pulled when he forgot not to move too
Bound to the Devil I Wed Chapter 34
The first time Luca let Elena see his office, it was because someone had tried to shoot through the front gates.Not at him.At her car.The bullet never reached the glass.One of the outer guards had seen the glint in time, shouted, and the driver had swerved so hard the back tire struck the curb and sent the entire car lurching sideways. Elena's shoulder slammed into the door. Marta, who had been beside her on the way back from a fitting in the city, grabbed her so fast the older woman's nails bit through her sleeve.Then came shouting. Engines. Men running.And after that, the sickening quiet that always followed violence too narrowly missed.By the time Luca's security convoy forced the second car off the road, Elena and Marta had been turned around and driven back to the estate under armed escort.Elena was still shaking when Luca arrived.He did not come through the front hall this time. He stormed straight into the east drawing room where Marta had planted Elena with tea she co
Bound to the Devil I Wed chapter 33
After Sokolov's visit, the house changed.Not visibly to an outsider, perhaps. The flowers still appeared each morning. Meals were still served on time. The chandeliers still burned warm at dusk and the staff still moved with seamless quiet. But Elena felt the shift everywhere once she knew how to look for it.There were more guards.Not lined up theatrically, not enough to make the house resemble a barracks. But they existed now in places they had not before, at the east corridor turn, outside the lower terrace doors, near the back gardens after dark. Men she had not seen earlier in the week rotated through the entry hall in pairs. The gates remained closed longer before allowing cars through.And Luca?Luca became sharper.He spoke less. Slept less. The wound at his side should have slowed him; instead it seemed only to strip away what little patience he had. Twice Elena saw men come out of his study looking pale and newly repentant. Once she heard raised Russian from behind closed
Bound to the Devil I Wed chapter 32
The next morning, Luca was gone before sunrise.Of course he was.Elena woke to a house moving in careful quiet and knew before she even sat up that he had not obeyed a single word the doctor said. Marta confirmed it over breakfast with the disapproval of a woman who considered men's refusal to heal properly one of civilization's great failures."He left at five," she said, setting down a tray of tea and sliced fruit. "Against advice."Elena looked down at her cup. "Whose advice?""Everyone's."That drew the faintest shadow of a smile from Elena.The smile vanished quickly.His wound had been deep. She had seen the stitches. Seen the blood.And he had still walked out before dawn.By midmorning, the house had tightened around that absence. Men came and went faster than usual. Adriana spent an hour on the phone in the blue salon with the doors shut. Even Camilla did not appear, which felt less like peace and more like weather gathering elsewhere.Elena tried to read.Then to write a le
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