Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Evelina didn’t watch Dante as she left. She watched the perfect, silent heels of the assistant. The woman had no name, no expression. Just a black, tailored shell of a human being. The silence of the hallway was worse than the office; it pressed the air out of her lungs. She felt like a fish pulled onto a dock, still breathing but already knowing it was over. Her hand was stiff, the muscles aching from the forced, steady signature she’d applied to the contract. She hadn't just signed a paper; she had signed away five years of her life, five years of being Evelina Thorne. Now she was just a placeholder, an asset, a line item in Dante Valenti’s ledger. The thought didn't make her cry. It made her feel brittle, like dry wood. If she broke, she knew Dante would use the sharp pieces to build something useful for himself. The elevator ride down wasn’t long enough. They weren't going down out of the tower, but down to a lower residential level. The floors here were hushed. Thick, expens

Evelina sat in the small, glass-walled office, staring at the monitor. The Valenti Collection database glared back at her, a chaotic mess of expensive assets. She was still wearing the silk clothes from the fitting the black fabric felt scratchy and wrong, clinging to her skin. It was an hour past the time Dante had scheduled for her to be working, and she hadn't moved. She was paralyzed by the coffee packet incident. He hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't touched her. He had simply crushed something small and cheap, and in doing so, he had crushed a piece of her. It was the calculated cruelty she feared the most. He didn't just want her to obey; he wanted her to surrender her will, even her petty tastes. The rage was cold, not hot. She wasn't going to scream or throw the vase. That was a childish move, and Dante would just clean it up and bill her the price. She was going to fight him where he was weakest: his ego. She opened the digital file for the contemporary abstract he’d

The penthouse was silent. It was a cold, cutting silence that felt heavier than the noise of the city they had just left. The ride back up in the private elevator had been the longest twenty seconds of Evelina’s life, two people trapped in a glass box, smelling the lingering trace of expensive scotch on Dante’s breath and the scent of the heavy black silk she still wore.He didn’t say a word when the elevator doors opened. He simply walked straight through the living area, past the crooked pen that was now her monument of failure, and into his private study. The door clicked shut, the sound sharp and final.Evelina stood in the middle of the immense living room, rooted to the spot. The energy that had kept her standing straight and smiling for Sforza was completely gone. She felt hollowed out, like a carved-out pumpkin.The silk felt disgusting now. The feeling of his mouth, the bruising dominance of the kiss it wasn't passion; it was a punishment, a public demonstration of her lack o

Evelina stared at the screen. The secure laptop felt cold beneath her gloved hands. It was 14:00 exactly. The clock in the corner of the monitor wasn't just digital; it was a visible, ticking countdown, red numbers flashing: 60:00.Dante had given her a bomb and told her to disarm it in an hour. He expected her to spend every second tracing the weak provenance of the ancient artifacts from London. He expected her to be a diligent, terrified asset.He was wrong.She wasn't going to look at the Roman coins. She wasn't going to worry about the Sforza deal. She was going to look for the thing that controlled the man who controlled her.The rules were clear: deviate from the research parameters, and the laptop would be wiped. And then, Chloe. Evelina’s throat felt dry. The cold fear that had settled in her chest now a throbbing, electric urgency. She couldn't afford to waste time on caution.She opened the Valenti Collection database, pretending to run a complex search for "unverified orig

The chime on the suite door was a sound of reprieve, and immediately, terror. It was 09:00 on the morning of the fourth day. The three days of silence were over. Evelina was clean, dressed in the approved work suit, grey wool, stiff, and utterly impersonal.Her hands were steady, but her pulse hammered a frantic rhythm against the silk collar. The fear wasn't paralyzing anymore; it was cold and sharp, motivating her. She knew too much now. She knew about "The Thorne Contingency."She smoothed the front of her suit, hiding the tiny, traitorous flash drive that was now taped securely to the underside of the heavy marble counter in the kitchen. It was close enough to retrieve, but safe from casual search.The door opened. It wasn’t Dante, but Maria, the silent assistant, followed by two different security guards, one man, one woman. They were just as large and just as cold as the previous ones.“Mr. Valenti requires your presence in the main office now,” Maria said, her voice a low monot