BOUND TO THE DEVIL

🌸CHAPTER 5🌸

🌸 Sera's POV

She had been in the mansion for nine days when she met Dave Drave.

Nine days of learning the rules of a world she hadn't asked to enter. Nine days of memorising which corridors were hers and which weren't, which hours Sebastian was in his study and therefore which hours the east wing felt marginally less like the inside of a held breath. Nine days of meals eaten mostly alone, of conversations with Lena that were the only warmth she allowed herself, of lying awake at night listening to the silence of a house that was nothing like any home she had ever known.

Nine days of being terrified.

Not all the time. That was the thing about fear that nobody told you — it wasn't sustainable at full volume. It ebbed. It had quieter hours, usually in the mornings when the light came through her curtains and the house was still and she could almost, almost convince herself that this was simply a strange dream she was moving through. And then a door would open somewhere, or she would hear footsteps in the corridor that had a particular quality of weight and certainty to them, and the fear would come back all at once like a wave that had only retreated to gather force.

She was in the garden when she met him.

Lena had suggested it — gently, carefully, the way Lena suggested most things. The east garden is yours, if you want it. The roses are still good this time of year. Sera had taken the suggestion the way she took most of Lena's offerings, which was with both hands and quiet gratitude, because the east garden meant outside and outside meant air that hadn't been filtered through the cold perfection of the mansion's interior.

She was sitting on a stone bench near the rose beds, her knees pulled up, her face tipped slightly toward the pale autumn sun, when she heard footsteps on the gravel path behind her.

She turned.

And found someone who was not Sebastian.

The relief was so immediate and so physical that she felt it in her chest — a loosening, a sudden absence of the tension she had been carrying for nine days like something strapped to her spine. Because this man, whoever he was, was not Sebastian. He was tall — most men in this house seemed to be built like architectural features — but not that tall. And he was smiling. Actually smiling, with his whole face, the easy open smile of someone who had decided before he arrived that he was going to be liked.

"You must be Sera," he said.

His voice was warm. Easier than any voice she had heard in this house. She sat up slightly, hands dropping to her lap.

"Yes," she said carefully.

He stopped a respectful distance away — close enough to talk, far enough not to crowd. She noted that. After nine days of learning Sebastian's particular disregard for personal space, the consideration of it felt significant.

"Dave." He tilted his head slightly, smile still in place. "Sebastian's brother. The better looking one, obviously."

Something happened in Sera's face that wasn't quite a smile but was in the approximate neighbourhood of one. The first thing that had been in that neighbourhood in nine days.

"I didn't know he had a brother," she said.

"He doesn't advertise it." Dave moved to the other end of the bench — still that careful distance — and looked out at the rose garden with an expression of comfortable familiarity. "Sebastian doesn't advertise most things. It's very on brand for him." A pause. "How are you settling in?"

The question was so ordinary. So entirely, disarmingly ordinary. How are you settling in. The kind of question that belonged to normal life, to the world she had come from, to conversations over kitchen tables and bakery counters. Not to stone benches in the gardens of mafia estates.

"Fine," she said. Because what else was there to say.

Dave looked at her sideways. His eyes were dark, like Sebastian's, but warmer — or at least they looked warmer, and in that moment warmth was something she had been starved of long enough that she reached for it without examining it too closely.

"That's the bravest lie I've heard all week," he said. Not unkindly. Just — honestly. Matter of fact.

Sera looked at her hands. Something in her throat tightened.

"It's very quiet," she said finally. "I didn't expect it to be so quiet."

"Sebastian runs a quiet house." Dave settled back slightly, relaxed in the way of someone entirely comfortable in his surroundings. "He runs everything quietly. That's what makes him — what he is." A pause that felt carefully placed. "He's not an easy man to live with. I know that."

Sera said nothing.

"But you don't have to be alone in it," Dave said. "That's all I wanted to say, really. If you need — anything. Company. Someone to talk to who isn't the furniture." That easy smile again. "I'm around."

She saw him three more times that week.

Once in the library, where she had discovered a collection of books that were the closest thing to home she had found in the mansion — she was reaching for something on a high shelf when Dave appeared and retrieved it for her without making a production of it. Once in the corridor near the west dining room, where he fell into step beside her for exactly as long as the walk lasted and talked about nothing in particular — the garden, the weather, a film he had seen that she hadn't. Once in the east sitting room where she had been trying to write a letter to Lily that she didn't know how to finish, and he had knocked, looked around the door, and retreated immediately when he saw she was occupied with something private.

That last one stayed with her.

The retreating. The knock. The immediate respect for the boundary of her private moment.

After nine days of a man who opened her door without knocking, who moved through every space like he owned it — because he did — who regarded her privacy with the same consideration he gave weather or traffic, as an irrelevant external condition —

The knock meant something.

She knew that was the point at which she decided, in the quiet careful way of someone who had very little to hold onto, that Dave Drave was safe. That he was, in the landscape of this world, something like a friend.

She was wrong.

She just didn't know it yet.

The fourth time she saw him, they walked in the garden together.

It was his suggestion — easy, casual, entirely without pressure. The grounds are beautiful this time of day if you haven't seen the far end. She had said yes because yes was always easier than no and because the company, she admitted to herself quietly, was something she had been missing more than she expected.

They walked along the gravel path that curved toward the far end of the east garden where the rose beds gave way to something wilder — untrimmed hedges, old stone walls, the kind of corner of a garden that had been allowed to exist on its own terms. Dave talked easily. About growing up in this house, about the parts of it that felt like home and the parts that never had. He was careful with what he shared — she noticed that too, the calibration of it, the way he gave her just enough to feel trusted without giving anything she might find alarming.

She talked too. More than she had talked to anyone since arriving. About Lily, about her mother, about the bakery and the cinnamon and the small ordinary life she had lived before all of this. It felt strange to say those things out loud in this place — like taking something fragile out into weather it wasn't meant for.

But Dave listened. Really listened, in the way of someone who was paying attention rather than waiting for their turn to speak.

They were rounding the curve back toward the house when it happened.

He was saying something — she couldn't remember afterward what it was, something light, something meant to make her smile — and his hand came to rest over hers where it lay on the garden wall beside her.

Just rested there. Easy. Natural. Like it had simply landed without intention.

Sera went still.

Not the paralysed stillness of Sebastian's proximity — something different. A subtler wrongness. A small, quiet alarm somewhere underneath her skin that she couldn't immediately name but couldn't ignore either.

She moved her hand. Carefully. Just slid it away from under his and brought it to her side, dropping her eyes to the gravel path.

"Sorry," she said softly, though she wasn't entirely sure what she was apologising for.

The silence lasted exactly one second too long.

She looked up.

Dave was still smiling. Of course he was. The smile hadn't moved. But something had shifted underneath it — something fast and dark and immediately controlled, there and gone so quickly she almost convinced herself she'd imagined it. His jaw was tight. Just slightly. Just enough.

"No, I'm sorry," he said smoothly. Warmly. Like nothing had happened at all. "I wasn't thinking."

She nodded. Looked away. Kept walking.

But she filed it. Tucked it somewhere quiet and careful inside herself, that one second of silence, that flash of something underneath the smile. She didn't know what to do with it yet.

She just knew she didn't want to forget it.

That evening she sat on her window seat in the fading light and thought about two brothers.

One who never smiled and made her shake just by entering a room.

And one who smiled constantly and had just made something in her go very, very still.

She didn't know which one frightened her more.

She thought, for a long time, that she did.

By the time the light was gone she wasn't sure anymore. 🌸

🌸 END OF CHAPTER FIVE 🌸

Oh Sera. Oh sweet, perceptive, quietly brilliant Sera. 💔

She felt it. That one second of silence. That flash underneath the smile. She doesn't know what it means yet but she filed it away and that — that might be what saves her. 👀

What did you think of Chapter Five? 🌸

🌸 First impressions of Dave — charming or immediately suspicious?

🌸 The hand moment in the garden — did your skin crawl?

🌸 Sera noticing the one second of silence — she's smarter than she gives herself credit for, isn't she?

🌸 That last line — which brother frightens her more?

🌸 And the question we're all thinking...

How long before Sebastian finds out his brother has been spending time with Sera? 👀😏

💭 Drop everything in the comments! Your theories are everything to me 🌸

🌸 Vote if Chapter Five gave you chills!

🌸 Comment your favourite moment!

🌸 Follow for updates — Chapter Six is the forced marriage ceremony and I promise you are NOT ready 🥀

🌸 Share with your dark romance girls 🖤

Thank you for reading Bound to the Devil 🤍

See you in Chapter Six...

Where Sera stands at an altar she never chose, beside a man she is terrified of, making vows nobody asked her if she wanted to make. 🥀

The wedding. 🖤