SOLD TO THE DEVIL

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 shaking and I hated that, hated the way it betrayed me. "I told you I would not do it. I said it clearly." He stopped walking. He turned and looked at me, and I saw his face the way you see something familiar in a nightmare. Those eyes. I had known those eyes since I was seventeen years old, standing at my parents' graveside with nowhere to go and no one to take me in except this man who made it clear, every single day, that my presence in his house was a burden he had not asked for. "You don't get to say no in this house," he said. His voice was very quiet, which was somehow worse than shouting. "You never did." I had lived under Dorian's roof for six years. Six years of waking up early and sleeping late and making myself small in every room I entered. Six years of cooking meals I didn't eat first, cleaning floors I didn't dirty, swallowing words I badly wanted to say. I had told myself it was temporary. That I was building something, saving something, waiting for some moment when I would finally have enough to leave. But six years had passed and I had nothing. Not a single thing I could point to and call mine. Tonight he had asked me to do something I couldn't do. Something that crossed a line I hadn't known I still had. And for the first time in six years, I had said no and meant it. "I'm not doing what you're asking," I said. "Not for you. Not for anyone." He opened his mouth to respond. And then the headlights came. They flooded the driveway all at once, blinding and white, cutting through the rain. We both froze. Dorian's grip on my arm went slack for just a second, and I turned my head toward the road. Three cars. No, four. Long and black and expensive in that specific way that makes ordinary things look cheap by comparison. They moved in a slow, deliberate line through the rain and stopped in front of the house as though they had all the time in the world. Doors opened. Men in dark suits stepped out first, two from each car, moving with the quiet efficiency of people who do this kind of thing regularly. Then, from the center car, one more figure emerged. He was tall. That was the first thing I noticed about him. Tall and completely unhurried, standing in the rain as though it wasn't raining at all. He wore a dark coat and he walked toward us with the kind of directness that said he already knew exactly where we were standing and exactly what he intended to do when he got there. Dorian's grip loosened again, This time fully. The man stopped a few feet from us. He looked at Dorian briefly, barely a glance, the kind you give something that isn't particularly interesting. Then his gaze moved to me and stayed there. He looked at me in a way that was deeply unsettling, not because it was rude or inappropriate, but because it was so entirely blank. Cold and precise, like a man looking at a contract he was deciding whether to sign. "She'll do," he said. Two words. Nothing else. No explanation. No context. No acknowledgment that I was a person standing in the rain who had no idea what was happening. And then Dorian changed. It happened right in front of me and it was one of the most awful things I had ever seen. The aggression that had been in his posture just seconds ago drained away completely and something else replaced it. Something I had never seen on Dorian's face before. Eagerness. Softness. The particular expression of a man who is about to get something he has been waiting for. "Of course," he said quickly. "Of course she will. She's exactly as I described." I stared at him. "What is this? Dorian, what did you do?" Nobody answered me. The men in suits stood quietly in the rain. The tall man looked at one of his companions and gave a small nod. The companion started moving toward me. "What is happening?" I stepped back. My heel caught the wet grass at the edge of the driveway. "Who are you people?" The tall man looked at me directly for the first time since he had assessed me. His eyes were dark and completely without expression. "My name is Alaric Virelli," he said, as though he expected that to mean something to me, as though his name was supposed to settle everything. "I don't care who you are," I said. "I am not going anywhere with you." Dorian grabbed my arm again and this time he yanked me toward him so hard that I stumbled. He got his face close to mine and his eyes were ugly with something I recognized after a moment as desperation. Not anger. Desperation. He needed this. Whatever this was, he needed it badly enough to drag me out of the house in the rain and hand me over to strangers. "You will go," he said through his teeth. "You will go and you will not make a scene and you will be grateful that someone has found a use for you." "Grateful?" The word came out of me before I could stop it. "Dorian, what have you done?" He raised his hand. The slap came fast and sharp, the kind that snaps your head to the side and leaves your ear ringing and your whole face burning. I tasted rain and something metallic. I stood there for a moment with my cheek on fire and the world slightly tilted. Nobody moved to stop him. Alaric Virelli watched from a few feet away with that same blank expression, as though this were simply a step in a process he had already anticipated. "You don't get to choose your life," Dorian said. His voice had gone very calm, the way it always did when he had already made up his mind about something. "Not here. Not anywhere. You have no money, no future, no family. You have nothing, Evelina. At least this way, you're useful." My face was burning. My ear was still ringing. But the part that hurt most wasn't the slap. The part that hurt most was the fact that I couldn't stand here and tell him he was wrong about everything, because he wasn't wrong about everything. I had nothing here. I had built nothing and been allowed nothing and stayed too long in a place that had never once felt like home. Two of Alaric's men moved forward and positioned themselves on either side of me. Their hands were light on my arms, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. I thought about fighting. I thought about it clearly and seriously, running through the options in my head. But there was nowhere to run to. No one to call. No door I could knock on and say please, someone help me, I need somewhere to go. I had been living inside a closed loop for six years and the only exit was this one, and I hadn't chosen it but it was the only one that existed. I let them walk me to the car. The door closed behind me with a soft, expensive sound. Alaric got in across from me. The car pulled smoothly out of the driveway and I watched the front of Dorian's house through the window until it disappeared. I pressed my fingers carefully against my stinging cheek. "Where are you taking me?" I asked. Alaric didn't look up from his phone. He said something to the man in the front seat, his voice low and completely unbothered. "Prepare her. The wedding is tomorrow." The word settled into my chest like something cold and heavy dropped from a great height. Wedding. I sat very still and stared at the dark road ahead and tried to understand what was happening to me. I couldn't..