All Chapters of The Don's Forbidden Claim: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

54 Chapters

Wait! What? A third!

"You expect me to surrender?" I stared at my twin, at the cold precision of her posture, at the way her eyes tracked me without blinking. "I didn't walk through a war to kneel at your feet."Celeste's laughter echoed across the marble steps. "Bold words from a girl who stumbled into power by accident. You think you've earned your place at Dante's side? You were a pawn the night you walked into the wrong suite, and you're a pawn now. The only difference is that I'm offering you a choice.""Alessio offered me choices too. They were all lies." I stepped forward, feeling Dante's presence solid at my back. "What makes yours any different?""Because I don't need to lie." Celeste placed her hand on Elara's shoulder, and the girl remained perfectly still. "Your sister has been trained for twenty-two years to replace you. She knows every detail of your life—your foster homes, your relationship with Enzo, the night you walked into Dante's penthouse. She's studied you the way an artist studies a

The third child

"A third child?" My mother's voice shattered the silence on the marble steps. "That's impossible. I only gave birth twice, Enzo, and then the twins. There was no third pregnancy."Elara pulled her hand from mine, her eyes still holding that flicker of uncertainty. "That's what Celeste told me. She said there was another baby born the same night as us. A boy. She said Mom wasn't the only woman in that hospital room."I turned toward Celeste, who stood in cuffs with Alessio beside her. Her composure had returned, that razor-thin smile plastered across her weathered face. "You've been waiting to drop this bomb since we arrived. So drop it. Who's the third child?""Your mother wasn't Lorenzo's only mistress." Celeste's voice dripped with satisfaction. "There was another woman at that hospital the night you were born. Another pregnant girl who'd been paid off and discarded. She gave birth in the room next door while your mother was screaming through labor with twins."Enzo stepped forward,

The Mole

"A traitor inside my organization." Dante's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of absolute authority. Every man on the marble steps went still. "Elara, what exactly did Celeste tell you about Viktor's death?" Elara stood between me and Enzo, her posture still rigid from years of conditioning. But her voice, when she spoke, was her own. "She said the bomb at the docks was never meant to kill Viktor. He was supposed to survive. Someone gave him faulty information about the blast radius. Someone who knew exactly where he'd be standing." Enzo's face had gone pale. "I was at those docks. I brought Viktor into the operation. If someone fed him bad intel—" "Then they wanted him dead before he could discover who he really was." I turned toward Marco, who was still reeling from the revelation that he'd raised Viktor in secret. "You said you gave him a different name. A different life. Did Celeste know?" "She must have." Marco's voice was hollow with grief and guilt. "She found out

The Hunted

"Enough," Isabella had said. "More than enough."The words echoed in my skull as Dante pulled me through the smoke-filled corridor, his arm locked around my waist like he could shield me from an army of shadows. Marco's men were already moving, sealing exits, checking corners, but the safe house suddenly felt like a cage. Every wall was too close. Every window was a potential sniper's nest."How many operatives does Celeste have left?" Dante's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. He had Isabella pinned against the wall, his hand at her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a reminder of how easily he could end her. "Give me a number, or I'll make what's left of your life very unpleasant."Isabella's smile was bloodless. "You won't kill me. You need me alive to testify.""I need you breathing. That's not the same as comfortable.""Forty. Maybe fifty." Her eyes glittered with malice. "Celeste spent decades building her network. You've only scratched the surface. Every

The Intruder’s Game

"Celeste sends her regards."The voice slithered through the darkness like smoke, and I felt Dante's body coil beside me—every muscle tensed, every instinct primed for violence. His hand found mine in the black, squeezing once, a silent signal. Stay behind me."Show yourself." Dante's voice was ice, but I heard the undercurrent of fury. "You're in my home. That's a mistake you won't survive."A soft laugh echoed from somewhere near the study door. "I've survived worse than a Don with a pretty hostage. Celeste trained me for years. You think darkness frightens me? I was born in it."The lights flickered back on without warning, flooding the penthouse with harsh white. And there he was, a man I'd seen before, standing in the shadows of the Rossi estate, hovering near Isabella during the chaos. He was tall, lean, with close-cropped black hair and eyes the color of dead ash. In his hand was a gun, pointed directly at my chest."I know you." The memory clicked into place. "You were at the

The face in the basement

"Insurance wearing my face?" Elara's voice cut through the SUV's tense silence. "That's impossible. I'm the only twin. There's no one else who looks like Essa."I stared at the text message, my thumb hovering over the screen. "Someone inside our group sent this. Someone who heard us planning the church raid five minutes ago. That means the mole isn't just embedded in Dante's organization—they're standing right next to us."The SUV's interior went cold. Enzo shifted in his seat, his hand instinctively moving toward his weapon. My mother sat frozen beside Elara, her face pale as bone. Marco, driving, kept his eyes on the road but I saw his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel."Nobody moves until we figure this out." Dante's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of a death sentence. "The message said 'wearing your face.' Plural or singular? Essa's face specifically, or both twins?"I read the text again, dissecting every word. "It says 'your face.' Sent to my phone. It's talking a

The Church of Shadows

"Stay behind me." Dante's voice was barely a breath as the SUV rolled to a stop a hundred yards from St. Agnes. "If there's a duplicate inside, she'll look enough like Essa to fool Marco's men. We can't trust anything we see until we've confirmed identities."I stared at the church through the tinted window. Its stone walls rose against the pre-dawn sky, ancient and forbidding. The stained glass windows were dark, but a faint glow flickered from the basement level—someone was down there, waiting in the crypt where Elara said Celeste kept her secrets."The tunnel entrance is behind the sacristy." Elara's voice was steady now, but I saw the tremor in her hands. "It leads directly to the crypt. If Celeste has the duplicate, that's where she'll be."Dante turned to face us. "Enzo, you're with me. We go through the front. Essa, you stay with Marco and—""No." The word came out sharper than I intended. "I'm not waiting outside while Celeste has someone wearing my face in that basement. I've

The birth certificate

"That's impossible." My mother's voice cracked through the graveyard silence. "I gave birth to Essa. I held her in my arms. Celeste took Elara, but Essa was mine. She's always been mine."I stared at Dante, waiting for him to say it was a mistake, a forgery, another one of Celeste's manipulations. But his face was ashen, and his hand trembled when he reached for mine. "Marco's team found the document in a hidden room. It's dated twenty-two years ago, with a hospital seal and Celeste's signature.""Hospital seals can be faked." Enzo stepped forward, his voice rough. "Celeste has been forging documents for decades. Birth certificates, death certificates, DNA tests. This is just another lie.""Then we prove it." I pulled my hand free from Dante's grip and turned toward the church, where Celeste was being held in Marco's custody. "She's sitting in there with all the answers. Let's go ask her."The crypt had been transformed into a temporary holding area. Celeste sat on a stone bench, her

The Poisoned Truth

"Run the test."The words left my mouth like a death sentence, and I felt the world splinter around me. Dante stood frozen beside the crypt wall, his face carved from stone, but his eyes, those storm-gray eyes that had seen me through every nightmare, held a terror I'd never seen before. Not fear of Celeste. Not fear of death. Fear of losing me to a truth neither of us could control.Celeste's laughter echoed off the ancient stones. "You want science? Fine. But science won't save you, child. Blood is blood. And yours is Moretti blood, whether you accept it or not.""Take her back to the holding cell." Dante's voice was ice, but his hand trembled when he reached for mine. "I want guards on her around the clock. No communication with anyone. She doesn't speak unless I'm in the room."Marco's men moved in, pulling Celeste to her feet. She went willingly, her smile never wavering. "Enjoy your last few hours of denial, Dante. When the results come back, you'll have to look at Essa and see

The Sunset Clinic

"You were never Essa Kane."Marco's words echoed through the phone like a gunshot, and I felt the floor tilt beneath my feet. Elara grabbed my arm, steadying me, but her face had gone pale as ash. The folder she'd brought—the adoption papers, the forged surrogacy agreement, suddenly felt like kindling in my hands. None of it mattered. None of it was real."What do you mean, never?" My voice came out cracked, foreign. "Sarah raised me. She gave birth to me. I have her eyes, her stubbornness, her—""You have someone's eyes, but they're not Sarah Kane's. The lab ran your DNA against the Moretti family database. There's no match to Sarah, no match to Elara, no match to Enzo or Dante or anyone else in that bloodline." Marco's voice was grim, reluctant. "But there is a match. To a woman whose name was purged from the records decades ago. A woman the Moretti family erased.""Who?"A pause. The kind of pause that meant the answer would hurt more than the question. "The file lists her as 'Pati

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