All Chapters of Bound To The Devil's contract : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The manor didn’t feel abandoned. It felt paused.The entrance hall was tall and quiet, with marble floors that caught the last bit of afternoon light. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, like someone had thrown a sheet over the whole house and never come back to take it off. The chandelier above us was still whole. The paintings were still on the walls. It just hadn’t been lived in.I stopped in the middle of the floor and listened.“Where is everyone?” I asked.Dante closed the door behind us. The sound echoed once and then faded.“They’re not coming,” he said. He set his keys down on a console table and left a clean circle in the dust.I turned to him. “What do you mean they’re not coming?”“Lorenzo. Bianca. Mrs. Bellini,” Dante said. “They’re staying at the estate. It’s just us.”From behind me, Leo let out a low whistle. Marco didn’t say anything at first. Then he exhaled like a man who’d just signed a bad contract.“This is going to be a disaster,” he said.Leo leaned

*ELENA*Nobody moved. Dante and Marco stood in the doorway with their guns raised, and the man on the porch had both hands lifted like he’d walked into the wrong house at the wrong time. Evening light cut across the marble behind them and made the dust in the air look like smoke.The stranger looked tired. Maybe thirty. Dark hair, a worn jacket, and eyes that were scanning the entrance hall like he recognized it.“Okay,” he said carefully. “This is definitely not how I thought this was going to go.”Dante didn’t lower his weapon. “Name.”“Jack.”“Full name.”“Jack Sanders.”Marco shifted so he was half-blocking the doorway. “Why are you here?”Jack glanced past them, into the house. He took in the chandelier, the staircase, the layer of dust on everything, and something in his face softened. “I was looking for the Alighieri family.”Dante’s expression hardened. “You found us.”“Apparently,” Jack said. “Who sent you?”“No one,” Jack said. “I came by myself.”Marco stepped closer. “Th

*ELENA* We left the old room without saying much. The air in the hallway felt different now. Colder. Like the dust we’d stirred up had settled into all of us. Jack closed the door behind us and locked it with the same old key. The click echoed down the empty corridor. Dante was waiting for me the second I turned around. He stepped in front of me, blocking the hallway like he could physically stop me from going back. “You're not going back in there alone,” he said. His voice was low, but it had that edge that meant he wasn’t asking. I frowned. “I wasn't planning to.” “Good.” “But we are going back,” I added quickly. “All of us. With the boxes.” “No.” I stared at him. “Dante.” “No, Elena,” he said again, and this time his eyes softened a little. “Not until we know what we’re dealing with.” “That photograph is of my parents,” I said, holding it up between us. The paper felt thin in my fingers. “My mom, my dad, and that man. I have a right to know who he was.”

*ELENA* By the third morning at the manor, I’d stopped waking up with my heart in my throat. That felt like progress. The house was quiet when I came downstairs. Sunlight cut through the kitchen windows in long, dusty lines, and for a moment it almost looked peaceful. Almost. Leo was standing in front of the cupboards with both doors open and a frown on his face like the shelves had personally offended him. “What are you doing?” I asked. He didn’t turn around. “Looking for food.” “You’ve been looking for ten minutes.” “Because whoever stocked this kitchen clearly hated joy.” I walked over and peered inside. There was pasta, rice, bread, canned goods. Enough to last us a month. “You’re impossible.” “I’m hungry.” “You ate an hour ago.” “That was breakfast.” “It’s still breakfast.” He finally turned to look at me, and despite myself I laughed. Before I could say anything else, Dante walked in. He took one look at Leo, then at the open cupboards, and sighed

Elena “Come on!” Leo’s voice bounced off the glass and wood, too loud for a place that had been silent for years. I hesitated at the doorway and immediately regretted the decision to take a full breath. The air inside was thick and stale, like it hadn’t moved since the last person closed the door behind them. Dust floated in the shafts of weak afternoon light that managed to slip through the ivy-choked windows. Leaves pressed against the panes from the outside, and inside, vines had climbed up the legs of the old wooden potting tables and tangled themselves around everything they could find. In the far corner, something brown and withered sat in a cracked terracotta pot. It might have been a plant once. Now it just looked like a warning. Leo stood in the middle of all of it with his hands on his hips, looking absurdly proud, like he’d just discovered a new country instead of an abandoned greenhouse. Marco was next to him, arms crossed, mouth set in that tight line he got when