All Chapters of CLAIM ME, DON: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

I found it on a Wednesday afternoon.I had been working my way along the lower shelves of the library, the ones I hadn't reached yet, pulling books out and reading the inscriptions and putting them back. It had become a habit without my meaning it to, learning the woman who had lived in this room through the things she had left behind.The photograph was tucked inside a book of Italian poetry, slipped between the pages like a bookmark someone had forgotten to retrieve. Small and slightly faded at the edges the way photographs got when they had been handled many times over many years.I almost put it back without looking properly.Then I looked properly.Dante was young in it. Twenty maybe, possibly younger, standing somewhere outside with bright afternoon light and his jacket off and his head thrown back laughing. Not the almost smile I had learned to watch for. Not the careful almost-something he allowed himself on rare occasions. A full real laugh, the kind that came from somewhere

I wasn't supposed to be in the hallway.I had been in bed, or trying to be, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling the way I had been doing on and off for three days while the estate held its breath around me. I had told myself at midnight that I was going to sleep. I had told myself the same thing at one and at two and at some point between two and three I had given up entirely, gotten up and pulled on a cardigan and gone to sit in the corridor outside my room because at least in the corridor I wasn't pretending.I heard the car on the gravel at three.One vehicle. Moving at normal speed, not urgent, not fleeing anything. Just arriving. I stood up from where I had been sitting against the wall and listened to the front door open and close and footsteps crossing the entrance hall below and then coming up the stairs.He appeared at the top of the staircase and stopped when he saw me.For a moment neither of us said anything.He looked terrible.Not broken, not defeated, nothing like

I woke up alone.I had known I would. Somewhere between falling asleep and waking I had understood that this was how it would be, that he would leave before morning properly arrived because that was how he managed things that were too significant to face without preparation.His side of the bed was cool but not cold. He hadn't been gone long.I lay still for a moment and looked at the ceiling and took stock of how I felt.Different. That was the most honest word for it. Not changed exactly, more like something that had been slightly out of alignment for weeks had quietly settled into its correct position overnight and the absence of that friction was so complete it was almost disorienting.I got up and showered and dressed and went downstairs.The dining room held one place setting.Elena poured my coffee and said good morning and asked if I wanted eggs and said nothing else and her face said nothing else and I appreciated her more in that moment than I had since the day she told me

She arrived on a Friday without warning, same as before.I was coming down the main staircase when I saw her in the entrance hall below, already inside, already making herself at home in the specific way that said she considered home to be the operative word. Same polished appearance. Same cream clothing. Same practiced warmth that lived entirely on the surface and went nowhere near her eyes.Elena was behind her with the expression of a woman who had opened a door she hadn't wanted to open and was managing the consequences with professional dignity.Sophia looked up and saw me on the stairs.Her smile arrived immediately. "Mia. How lovely, you're still here."The still here carried everything she intended it to carry."Sophia," I said, and came the rest of the way down the stairs at exactly the pace I had been moving before I saw her, which was not hurried and not slowed, because giving her the satisfaction of either reaction wasn't something I was willing to do.Dante appeared from

His name was Fen.I had seen him around the estate for weeks without thinking much about him. Mid thirties, quiet, the kind of man who occupied space without drawing attention to it. He worked logistics, schedules and routes and the movement of people and vehicles, which meant he knew things that most of the guards didn't.He had known enough to sell.I found out the way I found out most things in this house, by paying attention when people didn't know I was paying attention. Elena's face at breakfast. The absence of two guards who were usually at the east gate. Nico arriving at my door twenty minutes earlier than usual with a flatness in his expression that told me something was already resolved and the resolution hadn't been clean."Stay in the library today," he said."What happened?" I asked."Stay in the library," he said again, gently and without room for negotiation.I stayed in the library.For three hours I sat in the armchair with a book I wasn't reading and listened to the