BOUND TO THE DEVIL

SIGNATURES AND SHACKLES

I didn’t sign it immediately.

At least, that was what I told myself as I stood there, staring at the pen like it might make the decision for me. The number still echoed in my head—ten million dollars, my mother alive, and one year of my life handed over to a man I barely knew. Owned. The word sat heavily in my chest, repeating itself like something I couldn’t shake off.

“Take your time,” Damien said.

He was already seated again, relaxed in a way that made this feel like a normal business meeting to him, not the quiet dismantling of everything I had left. That calmness irritated me more than anything else.

“You already decided,” I said quietly.

His gaze lifted to me, steady and unreadable. “Did I?”

“You don’t get to pretend this is normal.”

“I’m not pretending,” he replied evenly. “This is normal. For my world.”

A short, hollow laugh escaped me. “Your world is insane.”

“And yours is collapsing,” he said simply.

The words landed harder than they should have, and the silence that followed felt heavier because of it. My phone buzzed in my hand, pulling my attention back down to the screen. Another hospital update. Treatment plan updated. Full coverage active.

My fingers tightened around the contract.

He had already moved. Already paid. Already decided the outcome before I even agreed to anything.

“You’re controlling,” I said.

“Yes.”

“No remorse.”

“No point.”

There was no hesitation in his answers, and that lack of hesitation unsettled me more than anger would have.

“You really think people are just pieces you move around?”

His eyes held mine without shifting. “I think people survive however they can. I just make sure they survive my way.”

There was something in the way he said it that didn’t sound like arrogance. It sounded like experience. And that was worse.

I looked back down at the contract and flipped to the next page, forcing myself to focus. Clause after clause filled the pages—public appearances, restrictions, expectations, living arrangements. Everything structured, everything controlled. Then my eyes landed on the private terms, and my throat tightened.

They weren’t crude. That would have been easier to reject.

They were precise.

Measured.

Like even something as personal as intimacy had been reduced to something contractual.

I shut the folder immediately.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” I said firmly.

He didn’t react. Not even a flicker.

“That clause is negotiable.”

I stared at him. “…negotiable?”

“Yes.”

“You wrote a marriage contract and made intimacy optional after?”

“I wrote a contract for stability,” he corrected calmly. “Everything else is noise.”

The word sat wrong in my chest. Noise. Like I didn’t matter beyond the role he needed filled.

“What if I refuse everything?” I asked.

“You won’t.”

“You keep saying that.”

“And you’re still here.”

That ended the argument before it could continue, because he was right. I hadn’t left. I was still standing there, still holding the contract, still considering something I should have walked away from the moment I arrived.

A knock came from the door, and it opened before I could react. Another man stepped in—older, sharper, carrying himself with the kind of authority that didn’t need to be announced.

“Everything is prepared,” he said.

Damien gave a small nod.

“Signatures?” the man asked.

Damien didn’t answer him. His attention stayed on me.

Waiting.

Like the final move still belonged to me.

I stepped forward slightly, my grip tightening around the folder. “You never answered my question.”

“Which one?”

“Why me?”

For a moment, he didn’t respond. Then he said, “Because you don’t belong to anyone yet.”

The words caught somewhere in my chest.

“That’s not a reason.”

“It is for me.”

There was no hesitation in his voice, no attempt to soften the truth. That honesty made something shift in a way I didn’t like.

I reached for the pen.

My mother’s face flashed in my mind—machines, tubes, the constant ticking pressure of time running out. The weight of debt. The feeling of being stuck, of watching my life shrink into something smaller every day.

Then there was him.

Damien Vossano.

The Devil.

A man who didn’t ask, only decided.

“I hate you,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

That should have been enough to stop me.

It wasn’t.

I signed.

The ink moved across the page, final and clean.

Seraphina Voss.

The moment I lifted the pen, something in the room shifted. Not visibly, but in a way I could feel. Damien exhaled slowly, like something had just settled into place exactly the way he expected it to.

“Done,” the other man said.

Damien didn’t react outwardly. He didn’t smile or acknowledge it. He just watched me, his gaze steady, as if measuring what I had just become the second that signature dried.

“You have twenty-four hours,” he said.

“For what?”

“To move in.”

“I’m not ready.”

“You are.”

“That’s not your decision.”

His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “Everything after that signature is my decision too.”

The words settled cold in my chest.

I turned toward the door, ready to leave, but stopped just before stepping out.

“Damien.”

He looked at me immediately, the shift in attention instant.

“It better be worth it,” I said.

For a brief second, something flickered in his expression—too fast to read, gone just as quickly.

“You already agreed,” he said.

I didn’t respond. I just walked out.

Outside, the night air hit me hard, like reality forcing its way back in. The car was still waiting, exactly where it had been before. Same driver. Same silence. But everything felt different now.

As I stepped in, my phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

You just signed yourself into a war you don’t understand. Welcome to Vossano.

My grip tightened around the phone.

I looked up at the tower, at the top floor where he was somewhere behind glass and distance.

Watching.

And for the first time, I couldn’t tell if I had just been saved—

or trapped.