A Deal With The Devil

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE LIBRARY

ELENA’S POV

I was running. My lungs burned as I stumbled through the darkness, my bare feet slapping against cold marble. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I had to keep moving.

Someone was behind me. I could hear footsteps.

Slow.

Measured.

Getting closer.

I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I pushed harder, desperate to find somewhere to hide.

A hand suddenly closed around my wrist and the cold marble floor suddenly turned into a muddy forest ground. The mud was sucking my toes.

I couldn’t hold back anymore. I let out a loud scream that finally passed through my lips. My chest heaved as I shot upright, my eyes darting wildly around the room. The mud was still there, sucking on my feet like quicksand.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I couldn’t breathe. For a terrifying second, I couldn’t remember where I was. Then my eyes shot open.

There it was—a tall, dark figure standing beside my bed. My blood ran cold. It didn’t move. It just stood there, watching me.

“AHHHHH!” I screamed and the thing jerked backwards.

“f**k!” I thought I heard it say but I didn’t bother to listen. I needed to get to safety.

I scrambled against the headboard, dragging the blanket over myself. “Stay away from me!” I squeezed my eyes shut.

Then a very irritated voice responded. “What the f**k is wrong with you?”

I slowly opened one eye.

Luca De Santis stood several feet away from my bed, staring at me like I’d completely lost my mind.

His hair was slightly disheveled, his tie loosened around his neck, and his jacket was open.

And he was holding a gun.

My heart nearly stopped again. “You’re holding a gun.”

“Yes.”

Calm down, you won’t die yet, I told myself. “Why are you in my room?”

“You were making a noise.”

“What kind of noise?” I asked with a tilt of my head.

His expression remained completely serious.

“A very loud one.”

I frowned. “Of course I was screaming! I was having a nightmare!”

He sighed. “You were snoring.”

My mouth dropped open. “I was not. I do not snore!”

He gave me a flat look, uninterested look. “You were snoring like a malfunctioning vehicle.”

My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“A very loud malfunctioning vehicle.”

“I do not snore!”

“Suit yourself then. And close the door next time. Maybe it’ll spare the rest of the house.” With that, he turned around and left.

~ ~ ~

“Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, wait no, that one is fifty-nine. Ugh f**k!” I felt like hitting my head on the wall after making the exact same mistake for the umpteenth time. I was stuck in an endless loop of counting the fibers on the plush rug for the past two hours.

The problem with having no duties was that time became an enemy instead of a resource.

I had spent four years of my life mapping every hour into study blocks and clinical shifts and exam prep, and now I had nothing to fill the hours with except my own thoughts, which were not good company. By the third day, I had memorized every c***k in my ceiling and every pattern in the velvet curtains. I needed something else to look at before I lost my mind entirely. The asshole had my phone taken away, so I couldn’t even talk to anyone aside from the staff, who I’d come to realize were an extension of their master’s rigidity.

I decided to explore the mansion since I was explicitly not asked to remain in my room by the demon.

I found the library by accident, the way I seemed to find everything in this house, wandering without a destination until something caught my attention. It was a set of double doors, taller than any door had a right to be, carved with a pattern I didn’t recognize. I pushed one open, expecting another cold, decorative room.

Instead, I found heaven.

Shelves rose two stories high, wrapped in dark wood and gleaming brass ladders that actually slid along tracks, the kind I’d only ever seen in movies. Sunlight poured through arched windows onto a worn leather armchair positioned exactly where the light would hit it in the afternoon. The air smelled like paper and old leather and something faintly like vanilla, the particular scent of books that had been loved rather than merely displayed. I took in a deep breath and sighed at the fuzzy feeling it gave me.

I hesitated briefly, then slowly took a step forward like I was entering a church or some other sort of sacred place.

I stepped inside, and the doors shut out the sound of the rest of the house.

The room went up two stories, with a walkway that ran around the whole top level like a balcony. There were two ladders bolted to rails that curved along with the shelves, so you could ride one in a slow half-circle from one side of the room to the other without ever getting down. I stood there for a second just picturing it—pushing off from history and drifting all the way around to poetry, the whole room sliding past.

The ceiling was the part that actually got me. I expected plain plaster, maybe some crown molding if the house was feeling fancy. Instead, there was a painting covering the whole thing—people in robes, caught mid-movement, gold and pink and pale blue everywhere, and the fabric looked so real I could make out where it bunched and folded, like the artist had gotten paid extra for every wrinkle. There was a dome in the middle of it all, and gold trim wrapped around the edge so thick it looked like the room was wearing a crown it didn’t need.

Under all that, the shelves were carved, not just built—leaves and little faces tucked into the corners, the kind of work nobody bothers with anymore because it takes too long and nobody pays for it.

The floor was marble, red and cream squares like a giant checkerboard, polished so hard the light from the chandelier just sat there in soft, blurry patches. My footsteps sounded too loud on it, so I started walking quieter without really deciding to, the way you do in a church or a museum or someplace that feels like it’s watching you.

I turned in a slow circle just to look at the whole thing and thought—stupidly, but I thought it anyway—that a person could get lost in a room like this and never really want to be found again.

For the next hour, I simply walked the shelves, trailing my fingers along the spines, reading titles at random. Classics. Poetry. History. Someone had organized this collection with real care, not just for appearance. I pulled down a worn copy of Wuthering Heights—not just any random copy or rewrite, but a copy of the original published by Ellis Bell in three volumes. I held the first volume in my hands, its spine cracked from actual use, and settled into the armchair like I’d been given permission, even though no one had given me anything of the sort.

I opened the first page and was pleasantly surprised. The pages looked whiter than I’d expected.

1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

I read until the sunlight shifted gold, then amber, then finally too dim to read by. It was the first time since arriving that the hours had passed easily instead of dragging. I marked my page with a scrap of paper and left reluctantly, already planning to come back.

I skipped down the hallway towards my room, my body and mind feeling light and giddy from finally experiencing some stimulation for the first time in days.

“—if the shipment doesn’t clear by Friday, I want to know whose hands it passed through. Every single one.” The sound made me stop. ‘Was this the devil’s office? Oh my! I need to go, I need to go. I don’t want to be caught here.’

“Yes, Don Luca,” the voice answered back.

I stopped beside the wall and peeked in through the small gap—the door wasn’t shut all the way.

“If it was carelessness, fine them. If it was disloyalty—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

The guard’s face went the color of old paper.

I pressed myself against the wall, fingernails digging into my palm from the adrenaline already pumping through me at the thought of being caught watching.

I stretched my neck a little more and finally caught a full glimpse of the room. Two men were kneeling before Luca, their hands were bound and their faces already swollen from whatever conversation had happened before my arrival.

Luca stood over the bloodied men hunched over in front of him. His trusted men made sure the men were not in a position to even dream of fighting back. He didn’t shout. He never shouted, she was learning. He spoke the way other men breathed, evenly, without effort, as though raising his voice would be beneath him.

“You were told what would happen,” he said.

One of the men was crying. Not loudly. Just steady tears tracking down a face that had clearly given up trying to look brave.

“Please, Don Luca. I have a family. They have no one else to depend on but me—”

“You should have considered that before you decided my money belonged to you.”

My stomach dropped and my gut twisted. The only thing saving me from throwing up and blowing my cover was the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since the day began.

I didn’t stay to see what happened next. I carefully tiptoed away and climbed the stairs two at a time as soon as I made it there, my heart hammering so hard I could hear it in my ears. I didn’t stop until I got to my room.

He’s not a man. Nina and Catalina were right. Whatever he is, it isn’t human.

My hands shook violently and my skin prickled with goosebumps.

I quickly shed my clothes and walk into the cold shower, trying to drown out everything I saw.

~ ~ ~

“You look like you saw a ghost,” Catalina said the next morning as I walked into the kitchen. She was peeling vegetables and Nina was doing dishes beside her. My stomach hurt from going almost thirty-six hours without food. I felt dehydrated and it felt like there were a bunch of tiny people currently partying and jumping around on my brain.

“Geez, thanks! Should I share my skincare routine?” I muttered with a roll of my eyes as I reached out and poured myself a much needed glass of water. I gulped it down and water had never tasted better.

She poured me a juice and placed my breakfast in front of me. I picked up the fork and started eating immediately.

“Let me guess. You finally understood what ‘Don’ actually means around here.”

I didn’t answer. What could I say?

Catalina’s teasing expression softened. “It’s a lot, the first time you really see it. Most of us got the abridged version, the gossip, the stories. Seeing it happen in front of you is different.”

“How do you stand it? Living here, working for him, knowing what he’s capable of?”

Nina shrugged, settling into the desk chair backward, her arms folded over the top. “You stop thinking of it as living for him and start thinking of it as living around him. Like weather. You don’t ask why there’s a storm. You just learn to carry an umbrella. And the Don is not that bad. Let’s just say circumstances changed him. And he never hurts innocent people.”

“That’s a terrible metaphor,” Catalina countered.

“It’s an excellent metaphor and you know it.”

The room went quiet for a beat too long.

“What do you think will happen to me?” I asked, my voice sounding smaller and broken than I intended.

Catalina walked over to my side and asked the one question I’d been dreading ever since I arrived here. I didn’t want them to treat me differently. “Why are you here? Do you owe money? I’m not trying to pry. I mean I—”

“Eight million,” the words came out more like a wince. “I don’t exactly owe it, but it is tied to my name.” I exhaled briefly before continuing—“my dad is a gambling addict. He started gambling after the death of my mother. He gambled everything away. Then one day, he placed a bet for an amount he did not have. If he’d won, he would have become a millionaire. He didn’t win. He couldn’t pay what he owed. He was already on Luca De Santis radar then. Men started coming and asking for him at random times of the day. Then a few days ago, he asked me to accompany him here. He said he was coming to ask for more time. I don’t know if that’s what he truly intended. I just know my life stopped belonging to me after that.”

Catalina moved to touch my cheek with her right hand, but slowly stopped, waiting for me to give permission. I nodded and when she touched my face, I realized I’d been crying. No dramatic sobs and hysterics, just silent tears.

She wiped the tears away with her hands, and finally, a sob broke free from my throat. She hugged me and I just cried it out. Nina stood in the corner awkwardly, subconsciously drying a plate with a napkin.

“Nina and I were abandoned by our parents when we were kids. Zia Pina took us in. She raised us. When we were old enough, we started working here along with her.”

Her voice distracted me momentarily and I raised my face and looked at her. “You mean you grew up here in the mansion? The servants quarters?” I asked and Catalina huffed lightly and said I have sweet ears.

“No. We didn’t exactly grow up here,” Nina began. “Outside the mansion walls lie a large estate. It’s like a small small village with families. The residents are all part of the mafia. It has schools, hospitals and everything else that makes it normal. That’s where we grew up. Some of the people moved away after growing up to work at other branches of the mafia. Nina and I wanted to apply and move to New York but we couldn’t bear to leave Zia Pina alone.”

I stared at them in awe. This place was bigger than I expected. I’d thought it was just the mansion and servants quarters standing in the middle of nowhere.

“Now stop those gears from overworking and finish your food. Catalina and I will be leaving soon to work on other stuff soon.”