All Chapters of Claimed by his obsession : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Damien's POVThe guardianship filing hit the press at four.I watched it happen in real time from my office screens. One outlet first, then three, then twelve, the story spreading the way bad stories always did, fast and confident and carrying just enough truth to make the lie around it stick.The headline most of them used was some version of the same thing.Black brother's reckless behavior raises family concern. New woman at center of BCT crisis.New woman. Like she had manufactured herself and inserted herself into my life for sport.I closed the screens and called Elijah."Counter is filed," he said before I could speak. "Judge Harmon is reviewing. We should have a response by morning.""What's our position.""That the filing is retaliatory, baseless, and transparently coordinated with a Vale family legal strategy designed to destabilise the Black estate." A pause. "It's a strong position. Diana has no recent contact history with you, no established relationship, and no legal sta

Sophia's POVDominic's face when he came back up to the roof told me everything before he said a word.He had been gone twenty minutes. Long enough to make calls, pull information, start rebuilding whatever strategy the Carter revelation required. I had expected him to come back with a plan and a timeline and that particular cold efficiency he wore like a second suit.Instead he came back looking like a man who had just been hit somewhere he didn't know he could be hit."Remy is gone," he said.Damien went completely still beside me."What do you mean gone," I said."His room is empty. Phone on the bed. Car still in the garage." Dominic's voice was controlled but only just. "Zane found blood on the floor. Not a lot. But it's there."Nobody spoke for a moment.The city hummed below us indifferent and enormous and I stood between these two brothers and felt the weight of what had just been said settle over the roof like something physical."How long," Damien said."Two hours. Maybe thre

Sophia's POVThe Vale mansion looked exactly the same.That was the thing that hit me first. I had been gone for six days. Six days that had dismantled and rebuilt everything I thought I knew about my life and the people in it and myself. Six days that felt like six months from the inside.And the mansion looked exactly the same.Same iron gates. Same gravel path. Same lights in the upper windows casting the same yellow glow onto the same perfect lawn. Like nothing had happened here. Like I hadn't stood on that porch in the rain with a cracked suitcase and nothing else while the door slammed behind me.I walked up to the front entrance and rang the bell.Thirty seconds.The door opened.Not a guard. Not Victoria. Not anyone I had been expecting.Carter Moss.I had seen one photograph of him, pulled from Zane's files this afternoon. Mid forties, sandy haired, the kind of face that looked trustworthy because it had been practicing for a long time.He looked at me with an expression that

Sophia's POVI didn't sleep.Not because of Diana or the email or Marcus or any of the things that should have been keeping me up. Those I could compartmentalise. I had spent three years in the Vale mansion learning to compartmentalise things that would have broken most people before breakfast.I didn't sleep because of what Damien had said outside the gate.Especially me.Two words. Said quietly and completely and with the specific certainty of someone who didn't say things they didn't mean. I had been lying in the dark turning them over for two hours and they kept landing the same way every time.Heavy. Warm. Terrifying.I got up at one in the morning and went to the kitchen because that was what I did and I was done pretending otherwise.The lights were already on.Damien was sitting on the counter, not on a stool, actually on the counter, with his laptop open and a coffee that had clearly been there long enough to go cold and his hair doing the thing it did when he had been runnin

Sophia's POVI was out of the car before Damien finished saying wait.He caught my arm. Not rough. Just firm and certain and immovable in the specific way of someone who had decided this."Sophia.""That's my aunt in there," I said."I know," he said. "Which is exactly why we don't run in blind." He looked at the house. Then at the car two houses down. Then back at me. "Give me thirty seconds."I gave him thirty seconds because he was right and I hated that he was right and standing on a pavement at two in the morning outside my aunt's house with every light blazing and the door open was not the moment to stop listening to the person who thought clearly when everything was urgent.He texted Zane. Four words. Sent his location and the word now.Then he looked at me."Here's what we know," he said quietly. Fast and clear. "Someone is in that house or was recently. The car down the street has been running. The door is open which means either Mei left it open deliberately or someone came