All Chapters of In Love With The Most Dangerous Mafia Boss: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The rest of the afternoon passed in quiet, controlled routines.Ryan kept Dave close, never allowing him out of arm’s reach. They remained mostly in the private east wing of the mansion, where the luxury felt almost deceptive. Soft lighting, expensive furniture, and the faint scent of polished wood filled the air, but Dave couldn’t ignore the armed guards stationed at the ends of every corridor or the way conversations stopped the moment Ryan appeared.“Rule number four,” Ryan said calmly as they sat in a sunlit sitting room overlooking the manicured gardens. “When others are present, you speak only when I give permission. You keep your eyes lowered unless I tell you otherwise. It shows respect to me and to the order of this house.”Dave sat stiffly on the edge of the leather couch, the silver pendant cool against his skin. He wanted to snap back, to tell Ryan this was humiliating and wrong. But the memory of last night the way his body had responded despite his mind’s protests made t

The morning routine had settled into something almost predictable.Dave woke before Ryan now. It had started happening without him noticing, his body quietly adjusting to the mansion’s rhythms the way it might adjust to a new season — reluctantly at first, then completely. He lay still in the grey pre-dawn light, Ryan’s arm heavy across his waist, and stared at the ceiling he had memorised crack by invisible crack over the past days.The pendant rested cool against his collarbone.He touched it without thinking, the way he always did in those first unguarded seconds before his mind fully woke and reminded him to be angry.He pulled his hand away.Ryan shifted behind him, breathing still deep and even. In sleep, the hard edges of his face softened.The constant calculating awareness behind his eyes disappeared entirely, and for those quiet minutes before the mansion stirred, he looked almost like an ordinary man. Dave had caught himself watching more than once. He hated himself for it

Ryan was already dressed when Dave woke.That was unusual. Most mornings Dave surfaced first, slipping out of bed while Ryan still slept, stealing those quiet minutes in the bathroom mirror before the day’s routines began. But this morning Ryan stood at the far side of the room buttoning his shirt, his back to the bed, already somewhere else in his mind. The city outside the windows was pale and grey, the sun not yet fully up.Dave watched him for a moment without speaking.Ryan turned as he reached for his jacket, catching Dave’s eyes across the room. He didn’t look surprised to find him awake. He never looked surprised by anything.“Stay in the east wing today,” Ryan said. “I have matters to deal with in the west wing. I’ll be unavailable until this afternoon.”Dave sat up. “The whole day?”“Until this afternoon,” Ryan repeated, which was not quite an answer. He picked up his phone from the nightstand and checked the screen once, his expression giving nothing away. “Elena will be ne

Dave found the piano by accident.He had been given more freedom in the mansion over the past two days not unlimited, not unmonitored, but enough that he could move through certain parts of the main floor without Elena two steps behind him. Ryan had said it simply that morning, the way he said most things: “You know the boundaries. Stay within them.” And then he had gone to his study and closed the door, and Dave had stood in the corridor for a moment understanding that this too was a test of a different kind.He had walked.Not toward any exit. Not toward the west wing corridor or the heavy door with the palm panel. Just through the parts of the mansion he was permitted, the gallery, the foyer, the long sitting room with its leather couches and fully stocked bar that he had visited once with Ryan in the early days.The piano was in the far corner of the sitting room, half-hidden behind a tall Japanese screen he hadn’t noticed before. A grand piano, black and immaculate, its lid close

Three days passed before Dave asked.He didn’t plan the delay It wasn’t a strategy. It was simply that the question felt different in daylight than it had at three in the morning with Ryan’s hand in his hair and the city glowing through the windows. In the dark, it had slipped out naturally, loose and unguarded, and Ryan’s four seconds of silence had told him something without telling him anything. In daylight, the question had weight and consequence and required him to be certain he wanted the answer before he asked for it.He spent three days deciding that he did.It was a Tuesday morning. He knew the days of the week now, which was something he hadn’t bothered tracking in the early weeks of the mansion when time had felt suspended and formless. Ryan was at the desk in the bedroom study area, working through something on his laptop, jacket off, sleeves rolled, the focused stillness he carried when he was processing information rather than managing people. Dave sat in the chair near