All Chapters of CLAIM ME, DON: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

On the ninth day I stopped counting the days.I didn't decide to. It just happened somewhere between the morning walk with Nico and the afternoon in the library, when I looked up from a book and realized I had no idea what time it was and for one whole minute I genuinely hadn't cared.That bothered me more than I wanted to admit.I had been spending my afternoons in the library since the third day, working through his mother's shelf one book at a time. Italian poetry first because it was beautiful and I needed something beautiful. Then the novels. Then a history of the Sorrento region that turned out to be more interesting than it had any right to be, and also explained quietly some things about the kind of power that had been sitting in this family's hands for generations.There was something about the room that made the hours pass differently. Quieter. Less like waiting and more like just existing somewhere that didn't feel hostile. I hadn't expected that, and I wasn't entirely sure

He arrived on a Thursday like a weather event.I heard him before I saw him, a voice in the entrance hall below carrying the kind of energy that didn't ask permission before filling a room. Warm and loud and completely unbothered about either. I was coming down the main staircase when he appeared at the bottom of it and looked up at me with a grin that arrived before anything else about him did.He was younger than Dante by several years, and where Dante was all clean controlled edges, this one was color. Dark eyes that laughed before his mouth did, jaw that hadn't met a razor in three days, dressed well but wearing it loosely like a man who had been told he was handsome too many times to feel the need to try anymore.He looked up at me on the stairs and spread his hands wide."Well," he said. "Nobody told me.""Marco." Dante's voice came from the study doorway, even carrying a very specific kind of warning in it."I'm just saying hello." Marco looked back up at me completely unbother

The thunder woke me at half past two.I didn't bolt upright or gasp or do any of the dramatic things people did in stories when something startled them awake. I just opened my eyes and lay completely still and listened to the rain hitting the windows in sheets and the thunder rolling in long low waves across the countryside and felt the familiar cold feeling move through my chest that had lived there since I was seven years old.I had never told anyone about the thunder thing.It wasn't something I was proud of. A grown woman who bartended until one in the morning and threw glasses at dangerous men and planned escape routes from locked rooms should not be undone by weather. And I wasn't undone exactly. I just couldn't sleep through it and lying in the dark listening to it get closer wasn't something my body was willing to do calmly.I got up.I pulled on a cardigan over my pyjamas and slipped out into the corridor and walked, not toward anything in particular, just away from the room

It happened on a Wednesday afternoon and I almost missed it. I was coming back from the library taking the long corridor behind the main staircase when I heard Marco's voice drifting around the corner. Low and conversational, the way he talked to everyone, and I slowed without thinking because I heard my name and when you hear your name in a voice that isn't calling you, you stop. "He'll deal with her once this is over," Marco said. "That's always been the plan." A guard's voice, too quiet to catch the words. "She saw something she wasn't supposed to see," Marco continued. "When the Viktor situation resolves she becomes a liability. You know how he operates. Clean. No loose ends." I stood completely still. The corridor was empty on my end. Just me and the wall and those words hanging in the air like smoke that wouldn't clear. No loose ends. I didn't move for a long moment. I just stood there and let it land and made myself process it clearly because panicking right now would c

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 expecting this.Dante closed the door.He didn't slam it. He closed it quietly and that quiet was somehow louder than anything else in the room. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked at his brother and the quality of that look made the air in the room feel different. Thinner. Like something had been removed from it.Marco sat up slowly and put the wine down."She heard you," Dante said. His voice was completely level. Not raised, not hard, just completely and utterly still in the way of something with enormous pressure behind it being held very carefully in place. "This afternoon in the east corridor. She heard everything you said to the guard."Marco looked at me briefly and then back at h