All Chapters of The Ceo’s Unwanted Claim: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

I sat on the bare mattress in the darkness of the townhouse. The room was freezing. The air was heavy with the smell of old dust and my own stale fear. I had wrapped my arms around my legs to stop the shaking but the tremors were bone deep. They started in my marrow and rattled my teeth.The door opened at 11:00 PM exactly.Dante stood there.He was dressed in black. A black tactical turtleneck under a black trench coat. He looked like a shadow that had detached itself from the wall. He looked like the reaper.He held a pair of shoes in his hand."Put them on," he said.He threw them onto the mattress. They were sneakers. Practical. Sturdy. Not the high heels he usually forced me to wear."We are going to a bridge," he said. "You need traction."I stared at the shoes."Are you going to kill me?" I asked. My voice was a whisper. It was scraped raw from screaming.Dante walked into the room. He did not turn on the light. The hallway glow illuminated the sharp planes of his face. He look

The warehouse in Queens looked like a tombstone made of corrugated steel.It sat at the end of a dead end road near the airport. The roar of jet engines overhead masked the sound of our arrival. The rain was still falling. It washed over the windshield of the SUV in gray waves that distorted the world outside.I sat in the back seat. My teeth were chattering. It was a physical reaction I could not stop. The adrenaline from the fall off the bridge had turned into a cold shock that settled in my marrow.I was alive.I had fallen. I had waited to die. And I had been caught.Dante sat next to me. He was checking his gun again. He ejected the magazine and slid it back in with a metallic click that sounded too loud in the confined space.He did not look at me. He was in war mode. His face was a mask of concentration. The man who had held me on the bridge and whispered do you trust me was gone. In his place was the soldier."Stay in the car," Dante said.It was the same order he had given me

The car sped away.I looked down at my sister. She was asleep now. Or unconscious. Her breath was shallow.I looked at her hand. The blood was seeping through the bandage staining my dress.I looked at the front seat.Dante was wiping the blood off his face with a handkerchief. He looked calm. He looked like he was just finishing a business meeting."Tanaka got away," he said to Luca."We will find him," Luca said."He left the girl," Dante said. "He left her as a message. He took the finger to show he could. He left the girl to show he was done with her."He turned in his seat to look at me."You disobeyed me," he said.I looked up. My eyes were burning."I don't care," I whispered."You walked into a kill zone," Dante said. "You could have been shot.""She is my sister," I said. "I would do it again."Dante stared at me. The streetlights flickered over his face."I know," he said.He turned back around."That is the problem."We drove in silence.We arrived at the clinic. It was a n

The syringe was a silver flash in the dim light of the office.It did not look like a medical instrument. It looked like a viper's fang. The needle was long and thin and the liquid inside was clear. It was death distilled into five milliliters of fluid.Bianca lunged.She moved faster than I expected. She was wearing heels but she didn't stumble. She covered the distance between the door and the desk in two strides. Her face was twisted into a mask of pure hate. It wasn't the cold professional disdain she usually wore in the boardroom. This was raw. This was the face of a woman who had been waiting to kill me since the day I walked into the elevator.I didn't think. I didn't breathe. My body reacted on instinct born of terror.I swung the letter opener.It was a heavy silver blade meant for slicing paper but in my grip it became a dagger. I didn't aim. I just slashed downward in a frantic arc to put steel between her and my skin.Bianca gasped and jerked back. The tip of the letter op

Blood or loyalty."She goes to the basement," Dante said. "Tie her up. Wake her up. I want to know everything. I want to know where Tanaka is going. I want to know where Vance is.""And then?" Luca asked."Then," Dante said, "you decide.""Decide what?""If she is still your sister," Dante said. "Or if she is a liability."Luca didn't flinch. He nodded."Understood."He bent down. He picked up Bianca’s unconscious body. He threw her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He didn't look at her face. He didn't brush the hair from her eyes.He walked out of the room.I watched him go. It was the coldest thing I had ever seen. He was carrying his own flesh and blood to a torture chamber because his boss told him to.Dante turned to me."Are you hurt?" he asked. "Did the needle touch you?""No," I said. "I'm okay.""You are not okay," Dante said. "You are trembling."He picked me up. He carried me out of the office. He carried me to the bedroom.He sat me on the bed. He went to the bathro