CLAIM ME, DON

I should have taken the main road home.

Ten extra minutes on my feet was all it would have cost me. But after eight hours of wiping counters and smiling at men who didn't deserve it my body was completely done. My shoes were killing me and all I wanted was my bed and the pasta waiting in my fridge since Tuesday, so I took the shortcut through the alley behind Benedetti Square.

I have regretted it every single day since.

I heard them before I saw anything. Low voices carrying that particular kind of calm that has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with men who have never had a reason to be afraid of anything. Something in my chest told me to stop walking and turn around, and take the long way home like a sensible person but I didn't listen and I kept walking.

Then the gunshot split the night open.

One shot clean and final like a door slamming shut on someone's entire life, and my hand flew to my mouth before the scream could get out. I spun around and that's when I saw him standing under a broken streetlamp at the far end of the alley. Tall and broad shouldered in a black suit that probably cost more than my rent with a gun held loosely at his side and smoke still curling from the barrel like it meant absolutely nothing to him. Two men stood behind him silent and still and on the ground between them was a body.

I looked away from the ground fast but I had already looked at him and the moment my eyes found his face he was already looking straight back at me.

Dark eyes. Cold and steady. The eyes of a man who had nothing in this world to fear except me right now because I had just seen everything.

"She saw your face Don," one of the men said quietly and that word moved through my whole body like ice water, because everyone in this city knew what that word meant. You learned it young the same way you learned not to touch fire. Early and once and permanently.

Dante Marchetti. Head of the most powerful crime family in Sorrento City. The man police didn't question and politicians didn't cross and ordinary people didn't look at directly if they had any sense at all.

I had just looked directly at him so I ran.

My heels hit the wet pavement hard and I pushed my legs as fast as they would go but behind me. I heard footsteps that were steady and unhurried, not running at all. Just walking like a man who already knew exactly how this was going to end, and saw no reason to hurry toward it. I made it exactly twelve steps before a hand caught my arm and swung me hard into the brick wall, suddenly he was right in front of me and there was nowhere left to go.

Up close he was worse than from a distance. Taller and harder with a face made entirely of sharp angles and cold certainty that made me forget for one stupid second what I had just watched him do in that alley. His hand was wrapped around my wrist and that was all he needed.

"Let me go." My voice came out steady and I was genuinely proud of that.

He looked at me the way someone looks at a problem they are already three steps ahead of solving, and said "You were at Luca's bar tonight. Bar shift. You finish at one." His voice was low and quiet.

"How do you know that?"

"I know everything that happens in this city." His thumb moved once against the inside of my wrist and it was such a small absent movement, but it made my skin feel strange in a way I didn't want to think about. "Including what you just saw."

"I didn't see anything."

Something shifted in his expression then. Not quite a smile but more like a man who had heard exactly the lie he expected. "Mia Russo. Twenty four. Carver Street third floor unit 7B." He paused just long enough to make it hurt. "You have a cat named Biscuit."

The ground felt completely unsteady under my feet.

"Please." The word tore out of me before I could stop it and I hated myself the moment it did. "I won't tell anyone I swear I won't say a single word about tonight just please let me go home."

"I know you won't," he said releasing my wrist and stepping back just enough to give me air while his eyes never once left my face. "Because you're coming with me."

"No I'm not."

He looked at me for a long moment with no anger and no threat and just that complete total certainty of a man who had never once in his life been told no and had it actually stick. "That was not a request Mia."

Behind him a black car sat at the beginning of the alley with the engine running and I did the math fast. I couldn't outrun him and he already knew my name and my address, including my cat. There was no corner of this city I could reach before sunrise where he wouldn't already be waiting. So I watched him read every single thought right off my face without blinking and then he placed one hand at my back and guided me toward the car.

His hand was warm.

The city moved past the tinted windows and I sat completely still and told myself to breathe and think and pay attention because I was going to survive this.

I told myself that the whole way to his estate and I almost believed it.