Page 5 of Sinful Obsession (Broken Vows #3)

CHARLOTTE

We stood in silence, forty mafia heirs aligned in ten columns—four per row—inside a vast iron hall that felt more like a weapon than a room.

The metal walls were forged with brutal intention, tall and cold, as if they’d seen blood and kept the memory. Harsh industrial lights lined the ceiling, casting sharp shadows that fractured every movement.

At the entrance, a sign in bold, rusted letters made one thing brutally clear:

“ Speak without permission and die first.”

No one dared break the silence.

The air was thick with tension—fear, maybe—but I wasn’t scared. Not in the way they wanted. Beneath the adrenaline, something fiercer pulsed through me.

Readiness.

And a hunger—to understand this underworld, to conquer it, to carve my place into its bones.

I’d chosen this over marrying a Moretti.

And I’d be damned if I let it break me.

I stood in my column, my bruised nose throbbing faintly, my boyish disguise feeling flimsier by the second.

The walls hummed with an eerie kind of discipline. This wasn’t a school. This was a battlefield before the first shot, a coliseum waiting for the lions to feast.

And then—light.

A spotlight blinked to life, illuminating the raised platform before us. Three shadows emerged from the edges of the hall, walking with the casual dominance of men who had no need to run. Each one took a position on the stage—left, right, center.

The first, on the left, was unmistakable: Dmitri.

He was monstrous in size, his sheer mass matched by a brutish elegance. Sharp-jawed, barrel-chested, his suit strained across shoulders that looked carved from granite. His stare was calm, cold, used to death. He didn’t walk like a man. He moved like a tank.

From the right stepped a man I didn’t recognize, but his aura was no less commanding.

He was leaner than Dmitri, with a wiry strength that suggested speed as much as power. His black suit was tailored to perfection, accentuating a frame that moved with lethal grace. His face was angular, almost gaunt, with piercing blue eyes that seemed to dissect everything they touched.

He carried himself like a blade, sharp and ready to cut.

But it was the man at the center who stole the air from the room, who made the hall itself seem to bow.

Dressed in a pristine white suit, he stood in stark contrast to the others, a figure of almost divine menace. His build a perfect balance of strength and elegance.

His face was a study in cold beauty. His jet-black hair fell in loose waves, framing a face that was both angelic and demonic, a devil incarnate who exuded an aura so potent it seemed to pulse in the air around him.

And when I really looked at him, my mind faltered.

A fog rolled through my thoughts, disorienting, as if I knew him. But how could I? This was my first day in this underworld, my first glimpse of its rulers.

And yet...

The sight of him stirred something dark. A sliver of memory—or maybe a nightmare. A fragment torn from those missing three years.

A flash: me in a wedding gown.

A voice like iron, promising pain.

Chains.

And then nothing.

My gaze dropped before the memory could fully form, heart pounding with a fear I couldn’t name.

Then Dmitri’s voice echoed through the silence, hard as the steel beneath our boots.

“Welcome to this year’s contest of the House of Devils,” Dmitri’s voice boomed, amplified by a microphone, though the hall’s acoustics would have carried a whisper.

His gaze swept the room, pausing on me for a fleeting moment, his expression as unreadable as stone. “From the moment you arrived until this moment, you’ve had your only taste of freedom. From now on, you abide by the rules of this house, or you die.”

The silence deepened, oppressive. “Today, January 1, 2028, marks the start of a year-long trial,” Dmitri continued, his voice a low growl that vibrated through the iron hall.

“Until the last day of November, you are no longer who you were in the outside world. You are ghosts, fighting for your lives. Only one of you will survive to claim victory.”

He turned to his left, gesturing to the man in the black suit. “I am the third boss of this house, Dmitri. This is the second boss, Misha.” Then he pointed to the man in white, whose face was a mask of ice, his presence a cold so piercing it could flay skin from bone. “And this is Cassian.”

That name—Cassian.

It struck like a blade, slicing through my composure.

My breath hitched, a wave of déjà vu crashing over me, stronger this time. I’d heard that name countless times, hadn’t I? In whispers, in screams, in the dark corners of a life I couldn’t remember.

He stood like a soldier, gallant and unyielding, his blue eyes staring into the void as if he could see through time itself.

The flashes came again—his voice, low and venomous, promising ruin; his hand, steady... wielding my leash like it belonged there, my own fear, choking me.

I blinked, hard. Shoved the images down where they belonged—in the dark, my heart racing. I didn’t know him. I couldn’t know him.

But the dread coiling in my gut said otherwise.

He stared ahead like a statue, as if none of us existed.

He didn’t need to speak. His silence screamed enough.

Dmitri’s gaze returned to us, his voice cutting through the silence. “The book of rules is being distributed by our soldiers, along with your uniforms.”

“You will study it. Obey it. And remember one thing: Ignorantia juris non excusat.”

I knew that one. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

The rules weren’t for fairness. They were for power.

He stepped back, and Misha took the podium, his blue eyes scanning us like a hawk.

“Each Den holds four,” he said, his voice clipped and razor-sharp. “Those are your teams—for now. Whether you like it or not, you’re bound together.”

A pause. His gaze sliced through the silence.

“You’ll train together. Fight together. And when the time comes—bleed together. Without unity, you won’t last a week. Your only hope of survival... is each other. Win, or die.”

My gut twisted.

Silas and Sebastian—my psychopathic roommates, my would-be executioners. And now, my teammates?

If we were supposed to be a team, their hatred could either get me killed—or be the one thing that kept me alive. Maybe if they needed me, they wouldn’t try to gut me in my sleep.

God help me.

Misha descended the podium, his footsteps soundless against the iron floor.

He stopped before one of the front teams, lifted the chin of a hulking candidate with a single finger, inspecting him like a butcher might assess a prized bull.

Then, just as wordlessly, he let go.

“I don’t care how powerful you were in your country,” he said, cold and flat. “Here, you are weak. Equal. Untrained. You’ll begin with three weeks of combat conditioning. Learn fast—or bleed.”

A voice cut through the stillness.

“Can we ask questions?” a voice blurted from the ranks, desperate and foolish.

Misha froze. Before I could blink, a gunshot cracked through the hall, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

A collective gasp rippled through us, but I didn’t just gasp.

I froze.

My lungs locked. My knees buckled just enough to scare me. I gripped the hem of my shirt to stop my hands from shaking.

The boy’s body lay two rows over—arms twisted beneath him, blood slowly creeping across the floor like it had all the time in the world. Eyes wide. Lifeless.

I nearly screamed. Bit it back so hard my teeth ached.

I had never seen someone die before. Not like this. Not inches away. Not mid-sentence, with the echo of their voice still lingering in the air.

My palms turned clammy. I couldn’t tear my gaze from the crimson slick pooling beneath the dead boy’s skull.

Then silence reclaimed the room, heavier than before.

My eyes darted upward. Snipers. Four—no, five of them, maybe more, stationed like wraiths above us. Rifles poised. Watching. Waiting.

Day one, and we were already down to thirty-nine.

“You don’t yet grasp where you are,” Misha said, his voice a cold blade as he pointed to the dead boy on the floor. “If you cannot obey simple rules, you’ll die in the first week, like him.”

He returned to his place beside Dmitri, his movements deliberate.

Then Cassian stepped forward, his presence a force that seemed to warp the air itself. His blue eyes swept the room, and when they landed on me, my heart stuttered, that déjà vu flaring again, sharp and disorienting.

“You... you... and you,” he said, his voice a low, commanding rumble, each word a decree that brooked no defiance.

His finger pointed at three of us, landing on me last. “Run forward.”

I sprinted, my life hinging on every stride, my boots pounding the iron floor.

The other two jogged behind me like they still hadn’t processed the danger, their hesitation a fatal error.

Cassian’s eyes narrowed as they reached the podium, late. “When I say run, you run,” he said, his voice a quiet storm, lethal in its calm.

He gestured for me to step aside, and I obeyed instantly, my pulse hammering.

“Your names?” he demanded, his tone sharp enough to cut.

“Thiago, sir,” the first said, his voice steady but tight.

“Bruno... sir,” the second mumbled, fear creeping into his words.

Cassian motioned to a table lined with razor-sharp blades, their edges glinting like promises of death under the chandeliers. “Run over there and pick up a knife.”

They bolted this time, grabbing knives and returning to their positions, their breaths ragged.

Cassian’s lips curled into a faint, cruel smile, his eyes gleaming with a dark hunger. “You have sixty seconds to kill your opponent. Time starts now.”

A gasp echoed through the hall. Even the air recoiled.

What?

Thiago and Bruno froze, their eyes wide, as if the command was a nightmare they couldn’t wake from.

For jogging instead of running? The brutality of it sank into me, a cold weight in my chest, but I kept my face impassive, refusing to show weakness.

The two hesitated.