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

"Lot Number Thirteen. The last surviving daughter of the Moretti family."The voice came from somewhere far away, muffled through metal and static. I didn't understand it yet. I only knew that the ground beneath me was moving, that chains rattled somewhere near my ankles, and that my skull throbbed like it had been split open and stitched back together wrong.I forced my eyes open.Dim emergency lighting cast everything in sick amber. The walls around me were corrugated steel, the floor cold beneath my bare legs, and the truck rocked hard over what felt like unpaved road, throwing me against something soft and warm that flinched away from me with a whimper.I sat up too fast. The world spun, then settled.My dress was still there, or what remained of it. White silk turned rust-brown, torn at the hem, the veil gone entirely. My wrists were ringed with bruises where hands had gripped too hard. I remembered fragments, disjointed and sharp as broken glass. My father's shoulder blooming re

"Rule Number One," Dante said, stepping out of the car without so much as a glance back at me. "Never enter my office without permission."He didn't raise his voice. He didn't wait to see if I understood. He simply stated it, the way a man might state the time or the weather, already certain the words would be obeyed.I climbed out after him and looked up.Iron gates towered on either side of the drive, taller than any fence had a right to be. Guards stood at intervals along the walls, weapons visible, eyes tracking everything that moved. Beyond them, the estate itself sprawled into the darkness, stone and glass and lit windows stretching farther than I could see in one glance.This wasn't a mansion. It was a fortress.We walked through the entrance and into a hall lined with marble so pale it seemed to glow under the chandeliers. Paintings hung along the walls, the kind of art that belonged in museums, not private hallways. I noticed the guards first, stationed at every corner, stil