Bound to the Don

Chapter 29

Salma

My heart turned to ice. I felt something inside me twist and shatter all at once, as if he had driven a stake right through my chest. A month. That's all the time I had left before I was handed over to a monster.

Giulia's face paled. "What the hell Armando? You're going to sell her? And to that prick? Rafael is a goddamn pedophile She's too young! Think about this."

She sounded genuinely distressed, her voice trying to coax even a flicker of humanity out of him.

"She'll be eighteen next month," he said, brushing her off like it was a minor technicality. "So by the time Rafael gets her, she'll be of age. No laws broken. No loss for me."

His indifference stung more than I could bear.

"Just make sure to change her," he added cruelly. "Rafael is picky."

Every word fell like a blade, slicing through what was left of my strength.

Giulia stepped forward, her voice rising. "Armando, this isn't you. You never sell girls. You're better than this!"

Then... he laughed.

That laugh.

Dark. Twisted. Inhuman.

It wasn't just cruel, it was cold The kind of laugh you'd imagine from a demon that takes pride in his wickedness.

"I'm better than this?" he echoed, voice low and mocking. "Funny, coming from you. Weren't you the same woman who called me a devil when I killed your little boy toy, Luca?"

My breath hitched. The room felt smaller. Giulia's face fell.

And I... finally understood.

He wasn't just heartless. He was the devil in human skin.

And that was the final straw for Giulia.

"How dare you bring up Luca!" she snapped, her voice raw and trembling with fury.
"You're despicable! F*k you! You can do whatever the hell you want, but at the end of the day, your conscience will eat you alive, that's if you even have one! Go to hell?

Her words echoed through the room like a slap, cutting through the tension and landing squarely where they were aimed. I could feel her pain. Whatever Luca had meant to her—friend, lover, or something in between—his loss was still a wound that hadn't healed. And Armando had just torn it open again, with zero remorse.

That was when it hit me—this man truly had no heart.

If he could kill someone close to Giulia and throw it in her face so casually... what chance did I have?

Suddenly, Rafael, the man I was supposedly going to be sold to didn't seem like the worst option anymore.
But then Giulia's voice came back to me: "That man's a pedophile."

My stomach twisted.

There was no good ending here. No light at the end of this tunnel. Just two roads paved with fire, both leading to hell.
One ruled by a cold-blooded monster.

The other... by a predator.

And I was trapped in between them, like a pawn...no, a possession,passed from one darkness to another.

No matter where I turned, I lost.
Each option had its own brand of pain, its own cruelty.
There was no lesser evil here. Only survival... if I was lucky.

I was so buried in my thoughts—so consumed by the chaos spiraling in my head—that I forgot I wasn't alone. I forgot I was still in the lion's den, standing before the devil himself.