All Chapters of CLAIM ME, DON: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

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 s

I expected a warehouse or maybe a penthouse somewhere cold and anonymous with concrete walls, and no windows because that was the kind of place you put people when they become a problem you hadn't solved yet. But as the car turned through iron gates at the end of a long private road lined with cypress trees standing like soldiers in the headlights I understood immediately that I had been completely wrong about what kind of man Dante Marchetti was.The estate rose up beyond the gates and I forgot for one whole second to be afraid.Three stories of pale stone with dark windows and ivy climbing the entire east side like the building had been standing long enough for nature to start claiming it back and a fountain in the circular drive lit from underneath, so the water glowed silver in the dark. And formal gardens spread out on both sides further than I could see in the night. Guards positioned at intervals trying to look like they weren't guards and only halfway succeeding.The car stopp

He came back that evening with a bottle and two glasses. I was sitting at the window watching the last daylight drain out of the garden, when the door opened without a knock again. I was starting to think it was simply something Dante Marchetti did because every door in this place already belonged to him, so why would he knock on his own things.He set the glasses on the small table between the two chairs near the window, and poured the drink. He sat the bottle down then looked at me with those dark steady eyes.I looked at the glass and then at him. "Is this where you explain the rules?""Yes.""Then I'll have the drink."I picked up the glass and waited. He turned the glt once in his hand which was the first thing I had ever seen him do that looked anything close to restless."The grounds are yours between six in the morning and nine at night and a guard will be with you outside not to restrict you but to make sure nothing happens to you. And you eat dinner with me at eight and if y

On the third day I found the library on the second floor, at the end of a corridor I hadn't explored yet. And Nico had walked me as far as the corridor, and settled at the end of it without being asked. Present enough to do his job and distant enough to let me breathe.I pushed the wide double doors open and stepped inside, and the room stopped me completely.Floor to ceiling shelves on two full walls with a rolling brass ladder running the length of both, tall windows dressed in heavy green curtains pushed all the way back to let the afternoon in. A reading desk near the window, a deep armchair in the corner with a small table beside it and a lamp on the table with a hairline crack running down its shade, like someone had knocked it once a long time ago and simply never bothered replacing it.The room smelled like old paper and something sweeter underneath it. I stood still for a moment trying to place that smell before I saw the painting on the east wall. Small frame dark wood and a

He offered it on the sixth morning without being asked.I was in the library working my way through his mother's shelf when Elena appeared at the door, told me the Don would allow one phone call, supervised, three minutes maximum, in his study downstairs. I closed the book and followed her before she finished the sentence.His study was large and serious, walls lined with files, a desk that looked older than most of the buildings I had grown up around. Dante stood near the window with his back half turned to the room, and a man I didn't recognize sat in the corner with a small recording device on the table in front of him. He didn't introduce himself and I didn't ask.Dante held out the phone without looking at me. "Three minutes. Don't say where you are or describe the location."I nodded and dialed.Carlo picked up on the second ring and that stopped me cold before I had even said a word. My father was not a man who sat near phones. He left his phone in other rooms, missed calls, ca