All Chapters of SOLD TO THE DEVIL : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The rain hit my face before I could even process what was happening to me.It came down hard and cold, the kind of rain that doesn't care about you, that soaks through everything you're wearing in seconds and leaves you standing there feeling completely exposed..Dorian's hand was already locked around my arm. His fingers pressed deep enough into my skin that I knew, without looking, that there would be marks by morning. He dragged me through the doorway and out into the wet dark like I was something he had grown tired of, something he couldn't wait to be rid of. Six years of tolerating me, and this was how it ended. Not with words. With force."Let go of me!" I pulled against him with everything I had, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough with Dorian. He was bigger and meaner and he had never once in his life been told that what he wanted didn't matter."Shut up," he hissed, not even bothering to look at me. "You have embarrassed me enough tonight.""I told you no." My voice was

The mansion made itself known slowly, the way certain things do when they want you to feel the full weight of them.First the iron gates, then the long driveway lined with trees so old and tall they made the sky look narrow. Then the house itself, appearing through the rain-damp windshield in the early afternoon light, grey stone and tall windows and a roofline that went on longer than felt reasonable.I stepped out of the car and straightened my spine and tried very hard to look like I belonged there.It didn't work. I could feel it not working.The front door opened before anyone knocked. A woman in a pressed uniform appeared at the top of the steps, tall and neat and composed in the way of someone who has been running a house like this for a very long time. She looked at Cassian with a small, professional nod. Then she looked at me, and there was a pause, brief enough that most people might not catch it, but I caught it."Welcome home, Mr. Virelli," she said. "I'll have someone sho

The Secret Behind the MarriageIt started as a feeling before it became anything else.I was being watched. Carefully and consistently, by people who were very good at making it look like something else.Certain staff members would be in the middle of a sentence when I came around a corner and they would pause just briefly before continuing, the pause so small you might not notice if you hadn't been paying close attention. Alaric had appeared at the house twice without any announcement, both times disappearing into Cassian's study for long stretches and leaving again without speaking to anyone else. A woman I didn't recognize had stood near the end of the upstairs hallway for several minutes one afternoon, watching me walk toward the library, and by the time I looked back she was gone.Nobody explained any of it.I got up early on the third morning, before the house was fully awake, and made my way to the small library on the second floor. I had been using it as a refuge in the mornin