All Chapters of The Devil’s Boy: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The lights dimmed until only the stage glowed, that deep, honeyed gold spilling across the polished floor like oil. Luca sat stiff beside Kain in one of the velvet chairs, pulse beating in his throat. Around them, the low spill of laughter and clinking glasses blurred into a single, lazy rhythm. The stage curtain shifted. Music began, not loud, just the faint ache of strings and percussion blending into something slow. A woman stepped out first, tall, olive-skinned, clothed in translucent fabric that did nothing to hide how little was beneath. Then a man joined her, his shirt open to the waist, the same gold light tracing muscle, sweat, and movement. Their dance wasn’t elegant. It was something slower, rougher, every motion a taunt, every turn deliberate. Luca’s face burned before he even realized he was holding his breath.Kain leaned back, one arm over the back of Luca’s chair. His masked face turned toward the stage, but Luca could feel those black eyes behind the grocery bag,

The click echoed, then silence.For a heartbeat, nothing happened.Then the lion-masked man, Viktor, let out a trembling breath, laughter spilling out of him, half relief, half disbelief. The sound cracked mid–exhale. “Ha… luck, she favors me,” he said, voice shaking as he reached for the edge of the table, the sound of his own heartbeat almost audible in his chest.Kain tilted his head back and laughed. Not the way normal men laughed, not out of amusement or relief, but with mockery. The kind of laugh that didn’t belong to someone very sane…. Or sane at all. Luca flinched at it, the noise cutting through him as he stared, wide–eyed.That laugh. It was joyless and wild, something that didn’t care who bled.He looked terrifying like that, like the paper bag was barely keeping whatever monster sat under his skin from spilling out. His teeth flashed faintly behind it when he spoke, voice smooth again, composed too quickly. “Seems luck likes you after all, Viktor.”Viktor gave a nervous c

Luca didn’t know how this happened and why they were walking towards the room with Bishop Vitelli. He glanced at Kain who said nothing…. But men don’t speak anymore, seemingly walking towards a room?The room down here was dead quiet, far colder than the club above. The noise, the smoke, the bodies, it all just vanished the second Kain pushed the door open. The walls were dark, and a single, long glass table stretched toward a window draped in gold-thread curtains. The chandelier was dimmed, its light barely catching the silverware and the wine glasses.Luca followed, nerves shot, not sure if he was allowed to breathe. After Viktor’s insane dash through the halls, now they were here: a dinner table set for three, and the air so thick you could choke on it. This wasn't a meeting.Bishop Virell took off his mask with a slow, deliberate movement. It felt like he was unveiling a secret he knew you’d die to keep. His face wasn't what Luca expected. Older, maybe late forties, but striking

He woke choking, mouth full of cold water he didn’t remember swallowing. For a moment he was still in it, the dark pond, his father’s hand heavy over his mouth, the world narrowing to a single, wet, suffocating tunnel. Christian’s face was wrong up close: lips tight, eyes small and bright, the smell of iron under his skin.“G-get out,” Luca tried to say, but the water stole the sound. His limbs flailed and the hands, his father’s hands, only gripped harder, thumb pressing into the soft place beneath his chin like a promise. The cold bit through his ribs and he felt the panic climb the way it always did when the past remembered him first.Then a voice, Jesse’s, cut through the noise like a slam of a door. “Luca,” his brother said, and the word was the single thing that had kept him breathing for years. “Go. I’m sorry. I can’t, ” The voice broke. “I can’t be the one to keep you.”Luca clawed toward the sound. “J-Jes, ” He pressed his forehead to whatever he could find in the dark, finge

The phone lay in Luca’s hand like a shard of ice that refused to melt, small enough to hide, but too firm for his conscience to withstand. His breathing wouldn’t slow down no matter how many times he swallowed back the panic rising up his throat.He stared at the screen long after the call ended, the voice lingering in his skull like a poison that refused to dilute.Don’t you want to know what really happened to your brother? The question shouldn’t have shaken him. He should have thrown the phone across the room or smashed it underfoot the moment he understood who it came from. But his fingers wouldn’t let go. His brain couldn’t turn away.His brother.Alive?Dead?Something worse?His thoughts spiraled so quickly he felt nauseous. His memories tangled with the voice, and everything in his chest twisted. He wanted to reject it. He needed to reject it. Bishop was a monster, that much even he could recognize after a single shared room. Polite on the surface, silver-eyed venom underneat