They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 07

They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 07

I didn’t sleep.

I sat in the dark and watched my own execution trend, and by 3 a.m. I had read the word rat so many times it stopped looking like a word.

Camilla gave two more statements before dawn. Tearful. Brave. “I just couldn’t let an innocent man like Mr. Varga be deceived the way I was.” She had never looked more beautiful. Destruction has always suited

my sister.

Matteo went on morning radio at six. He didn’t confirm the baby was his.

He just went quiet, and sighed, and said, “I’d rather not hurt anyone further,” which confirmed it to the entire city more elegantly than a blood test ever could.

And Nikolai – nothing. His study empty. His phone dark. His bed not slept in.

The arrangement ends and I move to the last piece.

Maybe this was the last piece. Vote closed. Harbor secured. Instrument used. And what cleaner exit than the deceived husband, nobly surrendering the lying woman to the Table? He’d walk away with the docks. I’d walk away a punchline twice in one month – this time with a baby the whole city had already assigned to

another man.

At 7 a.m. a courier knocked.

Inside the envelope: one card. His handwriting. Four words.

【Wear red. Trust me.]

I laughed until I cried. Trust me. From the man who called me an instrument, Trust me, says the axe to the

neck.

But here’s the thing about having nothing left.

You get free.

So at 8:40 a.m. I walked into the sit-down alone.

A hundred and fifty men in a black glass hall. Every family in Havenport. My father in the second row. My

mother in gray. Camilla in white, holding a handkerchief. Matteo with a black band around his arm he must have bought specially.

And me, blood-red chin up, one hand over my child, walking down that long aisle in absolute silence while every man in the room decided what to do with me.

I climbed the three steps onto the platform and stood there alone.

Say it to my face. All of you. I was declared dead by my own father a month ago. You think a room frightens me?

8:58.

The side door opened.

Nikolai Varga walked in, and a hundred and fifty heads turned, and he crossed that hall in dead silence-

-straight past the table.

Straight to me.

He stopped in front of me, close enough that only I could hear him, and for the first time since the third

floor he let me see his eyes without the shutters.

They were devastated. And furious. And absolutely/incandescently certain.

“Forgive me for the silence,” he said quietly.

“Nikolai-”

“They had someone inside my house. I needed them to believe they’d won.” His jaw tightened. “You heard

me on the phone Thursday night.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I saw you in the hallway,” he said. “Letting you walk away believing that was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. That call was bait, Elena. The mole reported it in nineteen minutes. Your sister moved in six hours. Exactly as designed.”

The floor tilted under me.

“Then this the Table – you’re not-”

“Giving you up?” Something crossed his face that was almost a smile, and it was the most dangerous thing I have ever seen on human being.

He took my hand. Laced his fingers through mine. Turned us both to face a hundred and fifty of the most dangerous men in the city,

“Elena,” said my husband, “I’m about to commit the only reckless act of my entire life.”

“Stand still and let me burn them down.”