All Chapters of SOLD TO THE DEVIL KING: Chapter 41 - Chapter 48

"Dante is going to marry me."My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. I looked at Dante.Isabella sat perfectly composed at the breakfast table, her hand resting lightly against his arm as though the gesture were already habit. Silence spread across the table, Marco's cup pausing mid-air, Sofia's eyes darting between them, Luca's expression carefully blank.Something tightened in my stomach, sharp and immediate, though I couldn't name why it mattered so much."I don't remember agreeing to a marriage," Dante said, his voice carefully controlled."You don't have to agree yet," Isabella said, unbothered. "Your family already knows."She moved closer to him as breakfast continued, adjusting his tie with practiced familiarity. I told myself it meant nothing."Your mother wanted us to discuss the ceremony this week," Isabella added.I nearly choked on my drink. Dante's eyes cut toward me, and something in his expression, amusement, barely contained, made my chest flare with irritation.Why was

"That photograph was taken three days before your family died."Dante placed it on the table between us, and I studied the image again, my father's private office unmistakable behind him, the same room where he'd once taught me chess and corrected my posture at dinner.A second man stood slightly behind him, his face turned just enough to remain unreadable. He held a folder against his chest, and stamped across its cover, faint but unmistakable, sat the three-piece black crown from my father's hidden letter.That symbol again.Understanding settled cold through me. It hadn't appeared after the massacre, invented by whoever was hunting me now. It had existed before, active within whatever conspiracy my father had been unraveling in his final days."Do you recognize him?" Dante asked.I studied the man's posture, the way he held himself, something naggingly familiar tugging at the edge of memory. I reached toward the photograph, and for a fraction of a second, something almost surfaced.

"Adrian knows you're alive."Marco's words landed hard in the quiet of Dante's war room, the token from the ruins still resting on the table between us."Adrian," I repeated, the name tasting like ash.My anger surged immediate and visceral. This wasn't merely another suspect in a growing conspiracy. This was the man who'd smiled at me with teeth bared in the smoke of my own wedding, who'd told me love was never part of the deal, who'd watched my father die and done nothing."The token isn't just associated with him," Marco said. "It belongs to a private communication network he's been using. I've traced coded messages back to it.""He's alive.""He's been operating underground for years. And he's been searching for someone.""Me?" I asked.Marco hesitated."Yes."Marco pulled up several intercepted messages, choosing them carefully.The girl is alive.Don't approach her yet.Find out who has her."If he's looking for me," I said, "why hasn't he come?""Because whoever he's working wi

 "Your father left this for you."I looked up as Marco set an ordinary-looking box on the table, unremarkable except for the handwriting scrawled across its lid.I recognized it instantly.My hand hovered over the box, hesitant. I'd already discovered too many things I wished I hadn't since finding that first photograph. But I opened it anyway, and found documents inside, along with a symbol I'd seen before, painted across an ally's building, hidden inside my father's letter.The three-part black crown.Beneath it sat a date. The night before the massacre.My father hadn't been preparing for betrayal after it happened. He had been preparing for it before.I looked at Dante. "What did my father know?"He didn't answer."We don't know who planted this," Dante said finally, studying the documents with a frown."My father did.""You don't know that.""Then who else?" I demanded."Some