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Chapter 22
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2025-12-01 00:05:00The morning light did not bring clarity; it brought exposure.
Evelina woke up in the massive bed, her body stiff, curled on the far edge of the mattress as if gravity were trying to pull her off the side.The space beside her was empty, the sheets cold. Dante was already gone.She lay there for a moment, staring at the grey silk wall covering, the memory of last night crashing down on her like a physical weight.The phone call. Chloe’s voice, so full of hope and innocence. And Dante’s hand…She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the wave of nausea.She had let him touch her. She had lied to her sister while he invaded her body, and she hadn’t fought him. She had stayed silent. She had traded her dignity for five minutes of a voice on a speakerphone.You are complicit now.The thought was a cold, hard stone in her stomach.The bedroom door opened.Evelina flinched, pulling the duvet up to her chin
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The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 38
The victory tasted like ash.I sat in the passenger seat of the limousine, the rain drumming a frantic rhythm against the roof. We were heading back to the penthouse. The black folder—the one containing the Tanaka dossier, the one filled with evidence Kenji Sato had handed me like a poisoned apple sat on the leather seat between us.Dante hadn’t opened it since we left the office. He hadn’t spoken. He stared out the window at the blurred city lights, his profile carved from granite.He was too quiet.Usually, Dante’s anger was a physical thing. It filled the room. It had a temperature. But this silence was different. It was a vacuum. It sucked the air out of the car until I felt lightheaded.“Are you… are you happy with the file?” I asked. My voice sounded small in the quiet car.Dante didn’t turn his head.“Happy is a pedestrian word,” he said. “I am… intrigued.”He reached out and tapped the leather cover of the folder.“It is a remarkable piece of work, Evelina. Detailed. Specific.
The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 37
The carpet in Dante’s office was rough against my knees. It was a high-grade wool blend that probably cost more per square foot than my first car but down here on the floor it felt like sandpaper.I did not look at Dante. I looked at the polished leather of his shoes. I looked at the sharp crease of his trousers. I focused on the physical details because if I focused on the reality of what I was doing I would shatter.I was kneeling.I was kneeling in a glass office in the middle of Manhattan in broad daylight with the door unlocked.Dante sat on the edge of his desk above me. He was silent. His hand rested heavy and hot on the crown of my head. It was a benediction and a curse all at once. He stroked my hair with a slow and rhythmic motion that made my scalp tingle.“You want the card,” he said.His voice was not angry. It was contemplative. He sounded like a scientist observing a rat in a maze who had finally found the cheese.
The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 36
Time did not exist in the box.There was no sun. There was no wind. There was only the hum of the ventilation system and the glowing blue light of the security screens.I sat on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest. My back was pressed against the cold steel of the wall. I had stopped crying hours ago. Tears required hydration and I had none. My throat was parched. My tongue felt like a piece of sandpaper in my mouth.I watched the screens.I watched Dante.He was a silent movie villain. I watched him work. I watched him sign papers. I watched him drink coffee. He did not look at the bookshelf. He did not look at the hidden door. He acted as if I had simply ceased to exist.At one point Bianca came back in. She sat on the edge of his desk. She laughed at something he said. She touched his shoulder.I scratched at the floor with my fingernails until they bled.I hated him.It was a pure and distilling h
The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 35
Breakfast was not a meal. It was an interrogation disguised as dining.Dante took me to a small bistro two blocks from the tower. It was the kind of place where the eggs cost thirty dollars and the silence cost even more. He sat across from me in the booth and watched me with eyes that felt like physical weights pressing on my skin.He had not let go of my hand since we left the Archives.He held my fingers trapped against the white tablecloth. His thumb rubbed over my knuckles in a slow and rhythmic circle that was meant to be soothing but felt like a threat. He was checking for a pulse. He was checking for a tremor. He was checking for the lie he knew was hidden somewhere inside me.I tried to eat the toast on my plate. It tasted like sawdust. Every time I swallowed, I felt the phantom sensation of the sticky note burning against my chest even though I had left it hidden in the box.I had left the address of the Yakuza front in a cardbo
The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 34
The shredded remains of The Book of Tea were gone when I returned to the Archives. The cleaning crew had swept away the leather binding and the cream pages as if they had never existed. The floor was spotless and gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights.It was as if the violence of the morning had been erased by a vacuum cleaner.I sat at my desk and stared at the empty space where the book had been. My hands were resting on the cold laminate surface. I tried to summon the anger I had felt earlier, the hot spark of rebellion that had made me want to scream at him.But I could not find it.Dante had replaced the anger with something much heavier. Fear.The images from the black binder were burned into my retinas. The woman with the wire around her neck. The man with no hands. Every time I blinked I saw them. Dante had terrified me on purpose. He had shown me the monsters outside the gates so that I would stop looking for a way out.
The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim Chapter 33
Chapter 33: The Weight of Stone The ride back from the auction house was a suffocating exercise in silence. The partition was up, sealing us into the leather-lined capsule of the limousine. The air smelled of Dante’s cologne sandalwood and cold ozone and the metallic tang of my own fear. Outside the tinted windows, New York City was a blur of rain-streaked lights, but inside, time seemed to have stopped. I sat pressed against the door, my body still humming with the confusing, shameful aftershocks of what had happened in the hallway. My lips felt swollen. My skin felt raw where his beard had grazed me. The gold dress, which had felt like armor an hour ago, now felt like a casing I wanted to shed. Dante sat on the other side of the seat. He was calm. Terrifyingly calm. He held a black velvet box on his lap. The jade necklace. The Qing Dynasty artifact he had just purchased for four million dollars,
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