They Sold Me to Hell and Called It Love Chapter 02

They Sold Me to Hell and Called It Love Chapter 02

I don’t know how long I screamed until the old wounds on my palms split open and started bleeding before the door finally swung open.

When my uncle saw my disheveled hair and swollen eyes, a flicker of concern crossed his face before vanishing instantly, replaced by undisguised disgust.

“You’ve been back less than a day and you’re already causing a scene. Can’t you ever just behave?”

He shoved me impatiently. I weighed less than eighty pounds now, so I staggered and fell hard to the floor.

My uncle froze for a split second. Then a cold smile curled his lips. “More fake tears for sympathy? You want me to let you out?”

Even though I’d already seen how cruel he could be, my heart still clenched like a frozen hand was squeezing it. The pain made me tremble.

The uncle I once knew would never have spoken to me with such sarcasm.

I had been born into this world with my memories intact. My mother died in childbirth, my father passed away soon after, and my uncle—ten years older than me—raised me single-handedly.

He would have given me the entire world if he could.

All of the people in Southeast America knew: you could irritate the Cross family, you could irritate Kael Rourke, you could irritate Darius Voss, but you never, ever laid a finger on Seraphina Cross.

In my original world, I had been a lonely orphan with no one to rely on. No one had ever held me so preciously before.

So when the system appeared and told me my mission was to redeem these three antagonists, I didn’t hesitate.

I approached Kael Rourke, with his dark and brooding nature, and gave him my whole heart. I pulled Darius Voss back from the brink of death in a drug den and gave him a home.

My uncle watched it all and never once reproached me. In fact, he told them both to treat me like a little princess.

When the mission was complete and I was sure they wouldn’t descend into darkness, I gave up my chance to return to my original world and stayed.

Then my uncle brought Lila Hart back to the Cross estate—my father’s illegitimate half-sister.

He held me and swore to me with all sincerity:

“Phina, with your father gone, Lila is still your sister. We can’t just abandon her.”

“I promise you, I’m just giving her a place to stay. No one will ever take away the love I have for you.”

I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t object.

What I didn’t know was that Lila would never be satisfied with just a place to stay. From the moment she arrived, I became her enemy, her thorn.

When my uncle came downstairs, she would splash scalding harissa sauce on herself and drop to her knees, weeping and crying for help:

“Uncle, save me! Seraphina said she’s going to ruin my face. She can’t stand having me here.”

When Kael was poisoned by his enemies and lay in a coma for three days, I stayed by his side without sleeping a wink for seventy-two hours.

The moment his eyes opened, Lila shoved me aside and collapsed against his bed, tears streaming down her face like a broken dam.

“Kael, you’re awake! I stayed by your side the whole time—I was so afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

When I helped Darius crush a rebellion inside the mafia and secured his position as the head of the Voss family, Lila timed it perfectly. She slapped herself across the face just as he walked by, then choked out between sobs:

“Don’t worry, Seraphina. I won’t tell Darius it was me who helped him—you can take all the credit.”

Lie after lie. Credit stolen again and again. Slowly, the three of them grew more disappointed in me, while their eyes softened more and more whenever they looked at Lila.

Even on the day Kael married me, there was resentment in his eyes.

I couldn’t bear how much they had changed. I cried, I fought—but all I got from Kael was a cold response:

“Seraphina, if you can’t handle it, then divorce me.”

I had just found out I was two months pregnant. I didn’t want my child to grow up without a father, so I swallowed my pride again and again.

Then I lost that baby—and the hatred I had been holding onto for so long finally exploded. One slap to Lila’s face, and they sentenced me to five years of hell in Nueva Sangre.

A flicker of the countdown in front of my eyes pulled me back to the present.

Seven hours left.

I braced myself against the wall and pushed myself up, swaying on my feet. When I met my uncle’s mocking gaze, my voice came out hollow, like stagnant water.

“I’m not faking anything. Since you clearly can’t stand me, give me the divorce papers—and a disownment paper.”

Before I left this world, I wanted nothing more to do with them.

I was done fighting. It meant nothing now.

The words had barely left my mouth when a loud bang made me flinch.

Kael stood in the doorway, his face dark as thunder. Beside him, Lila Hart’s eyes were rimmed with red.