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CHAPTER 97: Independence
publish date:
2026-05-22 21:29:36
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CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 105: Lorenzo
The meeting was on Thursday at two.Lorenzo Voss's club sat in the older part of the city where the buildings were all pale stone and tall windows and the kind of architecture that communicated wealth by never mentioning it. Dante told me on the drive over that Lorenzo had chosen the club rather than his office, which was itself a deliberate choice, the club being the territory where Lorenzo felt entirely himself and visitors were intended to feel slightly less so.I wore the black dress.The one Dante had chosen for the first dinner party with the allied family heads, the one I had been wearing when I read a table of six powerful men before the first course arrived and held my own through three courses and a possessive hand at my back and a slow smile from Rafael that had stayed at my neck for the rest of the night.That dress had done something before and I needed whatever it carried.Dante noticed when I came downstairs and said nothing and offered his arm.We were shown to the tab
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 104: The Voss Problem
Marco arrived at the estate on a Tuesday evening without calling ahead.I heard the car on the gravel at seven and the specific quality of the door closing told me something was wrong before I saw his face, the sound of a man not paying attention to how he was moving because his attention was somewhere else entirely.He came through the front door and Dante was already in the entrance hall, which told me Dante had heard the car too and had read the same thing from it that I had, and Marco stood in the entrance hall and looked at his brother and something in his face that had been held in place for however long the drive had taken let go."Lorenzo Voss called me in this afternoon," he said.Dante said nothing and gestured toward the sitting room.They went in and I went to the doorway and stood in it and listened because standing in doorways and paying attention had served me well in this house from the beginning and I saw no reason to stop now.Marco sat on the sofa and Dante sat acro
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 104: The Voss Problem
Marco arrived at the estate on a Tuesday evening without calling ahead.I heard the car on the gravel at seven and the specific quality of the door closing told me something was wrong before I saw his face, the sound of a man not paying attention to how he was moving because his attention was somewhere else entirely.He came through the front door and Dante was already in the entrance hall, which told me Dante had heard the car too and had read the same thing from it that I had, and Marco stood in the entrance hall and looked at his brother and something in his face that had been held in place for however long the drive had taken let go."Lorenzo Voss called me in this afternoon," he said.Dante said nothing and gestured toward the sitting room.They went in and I went to the doorway and stood in it and listened because standing in doorways and paying attention had served me well in this house from the beginning and I saw no reason to stop now.Marco sat on the sofa and Dante sat acro
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 102: The Name
I decided on a Wednesday morning.Not dramatically and not after a long deliberate process of elimination, just woke up at six with the morning light coming through the curtains and the name sitting in my chest like it had been there the whole time waiting for me to stop looking for it so it could make itself known.I lay in the dark for a moment and held it and turned it over and felt the specific quality of rightness that came from a thing being true rather than chosen, and then I got up and went downstairs.Dante was already in the kitchen with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular morning version of himself that I had come to know as the most honest version, hair not yet entirely assembled, jacket not yet on, the domestic unarmored version that existed between waking and the day properly starting.He looked up when I came in."Giulia's," I said.He went completely still.Not the controlled operational stillness and not the managed neutral and not any of the versions he w
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 101: Buying The Bar
Luca named his number on a Monday.It was fair and we both knew it was fair and there was no negotiation required on that specific point, which was its own kind of respect between two people who had worked together long enough to understand what the thing between them was worth and what it wasn't worth complicating with games.I called him back on Tuesday with my terms and he listened to all of them without interrupting, which was Luca's version of approval, and when I finished he was quiet for a moment and then he said the terms were acceptable and I said good and we agreed to meet with the lawyers on Thursday.I told Dante the number on Tuesday evening at dinner.He looked at me steadily across the table for a moment and then he nodded once and said what do you need from me and I told him and he said all right and we ate the rest of dinner and talked about other things and that was the entire conversation, which was exactly the right length for it to be.Thursday arrived and we went
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 100: A Quiet Night
It started with nothing.No particular moment that could be pointed to afterward, no conversation that led somewhere specific, no residue of fear or relief driving anything. Just a Tuesday evening in the library where the lamp was on and Biscuit was on the desk and I was in the armchair with my feet tucked under me and Dante was at the reading desk doing whatever he did at the reading desk in the evenings, and at some point I looked up and found him already looking at me.We looked at each other for a moment.Then he pushed back from the desk and held out his hand and I got up from the armchair and took it and we walked out of the library together with no urgency behind any of it, just two people moving in the same direction because that was where both of them wanted to go.In my room the lamp was low and the fountain was audible from outside and the estate was settled into its nighttime quiet and we stood facing each other in the low light and he reached for me the way he always reac
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 22: Giulia
I found it on a Wednesday afternoon.I had been working my way along the lower shelves of the library, the ones I hadn't reached yet, pulling books out and reading the inscriptions and putting them back. It had become a habit without my meaning it to, learning the woman who had lived in this room t
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 19: The Truth
Marco was in the sitting room when we found him.He was stretched out on the sofa with a glass of wine and a book open on his chest and he looked up when we walked in with the easy unbothered expression of a man with a completely clear conscience, which told me immediately that he had been expectin
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 14: The First Fight
I found out by accident.Elena mentioned it without thinking, somewhere between clearing the breakfast plates and asking if I wanted more coffee. She said something about the boxes from my apartment being stored in the east corridor if I needed anything from them, and she said it the way you mentio
CLAIM ME, DON CHAPTER 24: He Returns
I wasn't supposed to be in the hallway.I had been in bed, or trying to be, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling the way I had been doing on and off for three days while the estate held its breath around me. I had told myself at midnight that I was going to sleep. I had told myself the same thi
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