All Chapters of SOLD TO THE DEVIL KING: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

"You want to survive? Then stop fighting like someone who expects to be rescued."The words hadn't been said to me directly, not really. They were mine now, borrowed from something Dante had told me weeks ago and twisted into a truth I couldn't stop turning over. I lay awake replaying the massacre for the hundredth time, the fire, the smoke, the arm wrapped around me carrying me toward a safety I hadn't chosen for myself.Someone had always decided my fate. My father, protecting me from a truth he thought would break me. Adrian, deciding my worth in gold rather than love. Dante, deciding what secrets I deserved to survive. Even the man who'd carried me from that burning estate had made the choice to save me without ever asking what I wanted.I was tired of being something other people rescued.I didn't want simply to learn how to fight. I wanted the power to decide, for once, what happened to me.I rose before dawn and went looking for Marco.I found him near the training wing, checki

"Your family didn't disappear. You did."I stared at the message on my phone, my hands unsteady in the dark of my room. I typed back immediately, demanding to know who was sending this, but the reply came without acknowledging the question at all.If you want the truth, find the people your father failed to bury.I read it twice, understanding settling over me with a jolt. Moretti loyalists. Survivors. People connected to my father who hadn't died the night everything burned.Hope surged first, sharp and disorienting. Then fury, thinking of everything Dante might have known and never told me. Then fear, for whoever these survivors might be, hunted for years by whoever had orchestrated my family's destruction. And beneath all of it, something steadier, something that felt almost like purpose.An address appeared on the screen a moment later, old and unfamiliar, tied somehow to the Moretti Syndicate's forgotten holdings. Then the message vanished entirely, the

"Where did you get that ring?"I looked up from where I crouched beside the restrained assassin, the silver band still cold between my fingers. Dante's voice carried an edge I hadn't heard from him even during the shooting, sharper, more urgent."It was on the floor," I said. "Near him."I turned it over slowly, studying the engraved symbol pressed into its surface. The metal felt heavier than it should, dense in a way that made my palm ache faintly. Something about the shape of it, the particular weight, tugged at a recognition that lived somewhere beneath conscious thought.A child's hand. Smoke curling thick through a room I couldn't place. Someone lifting me, urgent and strong. A silver flash catching firelight. A man's voice, low and steady, saying something I couldn't quite hear.Then it was gone, the fragment slipping away as fast as it had come, leaving only the cold metal in my palm as proof it had existed at all."Give it to me," Dante said, re

"If you want them to follow you, give them a reason."Dante's voice was quiet, meant only for me, as we stood outside a weathered door I didn't recognize but somehow understood."And what reason am I supposed to give them?" I asked."That's what you're about to find out."He opened the door.The room beyond had once belonged to my family, some old Moretti holding maintained secretly through years I hadn't known existed. Faded insignia marked the walls, the wolf crest worn but unmistakable, and photographs of my father hung near a cabinet of old records and weapons that had survived whatever fire had consumed everything else.A dozen men turned as I entered. Some looked at me with something close to grief, memory surfacing behind their eyes. Others studied me with open skepticism, arms crossed, expressions unreadable.I understood, standing there, that none of them were seeing me. They were seeing the daughter of a dead man, measuring me against a mem

"Dante... he's here."I stared at the screen, the communication log refreshing in real time. Gabriel Vieri's old channel, the one Marco had confirmed was accessed during tonight's attack, was active again. Not a residual trace from hours ago.Now.Dante crossed the room and studied the feed, and for the first time since I'd known him, something in his composure genuinely cracked."You know where he is," I said."No.""But you know something."He didn't answer.Marco confirmed the access pattern matched Gabriel's old credentials precisely, down to the encryption signature nobody had used in years. I held the silver ring tighter in my palm, a cold certainty settling through me.If Gabriel was alive, he might have been watching me for years."How long has he known where I was?" I asked.Dante looked at me, and his silence told me the answer was worse than anything I'd imagined.I followed him into a private room and shut the door beh