Page 5 of Sinful Obsession

That’s why I knew there had to be more to his final words—“Marry into the Moretti family.”

There had to be a reason.

I moved to the old trunk by the bed—iron-latched and covered in dust. I cracked it open.

Documents. Hundreds of them. Crumpled folders, brittle pages, and leather-bound ledgers that smelled of rot and power.

I sat on the sunken mattress, brushing hair from my face, hands already caked in dust.

The deeper I dug, the stranger the papers became—contracts with no names, bank transfers routed through ghost accounts, maps etched in red ink.

Hours passed, the slanted light from the window fading to a bruised twilight, and my frustration grew, a tight knot in my chest.

I was about to give up when my fingers brushed something different—a single, dog-eared file buried at the bottom, its pages brittle and stained.

Unlike the others, it was written in shorthand, a cryptic scrawl that stood out like a warning.

My heart quickened. I’d learned shorthand as a teenager, a skill Grandfather had insisted on, and it was one of the few things the fog in my mind hadn’t stolen. Told me it was “a dying language for dangerous truths.”

To hide this amidst a sea of plain English meant it held secrets he didn’t want found.

I unfolded it carefully, the paper crackling, dust falling like ash onto my lap. At the top, in bold shorthand strokes, were the words: HOUSE OF DEVILS.

My breath caught as I began to read, deciphering the terse symbols with a focus that drowned out the cabin’s eerie hum.

The document revealed a chilling truth: Grandfather and the Moretti patriarch, once powerful allies, had built a clandestine empire beneath the surface—a brutal, underground secret competition known as theHouse of Devils.

Hidden far from the eyes of the law, it brought together heirs of the world’s most dangerous mafia families—Colombia, Mexico, Russia, Brazil, and beyond—forcing them to compete in a one-year, blood-soaked gauntlet.

The purpose? To create the deadliest men on the planet.

Out of over five hundred applicants each year, only forty males were chosen—one from each country.

The rules were simple: survive.

Only two could win, walking away with unrivaled wealth, influence, and the kind of power that could buy a small country.

The rest? They never left. Whether shattered by the trials or killed by each other, thirty-eight bodies were sacrificed to crown the victors.

Mafia clans knew the stakes, yet hundreds still vied for a chance at glory.

And then... I saw it.

A clause—written in my grandfather’s personal shorthand, wedged between legal jargon and financial arrangements.

“By December 1st, 2028, if my granddaughter Charlotte Grayson is legally married into the Moretti family, the funds and winnings allocated to the second-place champion shall be diverted to her in full.”

I blinked. Reread it.

What?

This wasn’t about love. This was about money, power and survival.

The amount listed as “second-place reward” was enough to buy a country.

My grandfather had written me into the system—not as a participant, but as a loophole.

A backdoor into a fortune I was never meant to have.