All Chapters of Claimed by his obsession : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Sophia's POVI shouldn't have been in the room for it.That was my first thought when Dominic said sit down and Richard sat and the temperature of the room changed completely. This was a conversation that belonged to five brothers and two parents and twenty one years of damage that had nothing to do with me.I stood up quietly.Damien looked at me."I'll be outside," I said softly.He nodded. Then he caught my hand before I fully moved away and held it for exactly two seconds. Just that. Then let go.I took Mei and Lena with me.The three of us sat in the family room down the corridor. Lena had a paper cup of terrible coffee she wasn't drinking. Mei had somehow produced a packet of biscuits from her bag that nobody questioned."How are you," I said to Lena.She looked at the coffee cup. "I've been better. I've also been significantly worse.""That's fair," I said."She's smaller than I thought she'd be," Lena said. "Diana. I built her into something very large in my head over three ye

Sophia's POVI woke up and didn't know where I was for exactly two seconds.Then I remembered. My room. My bed. Damien beside me, still asleep, which was information I held carefully because he had told me he didn't sleep and yet here he was doing exactly that with the specific defenceless quality of someone who had finally run out of reasons to stay awake.I didn't move.I just looked at him.This was the thing nobody warned you about with falling in love. Not the big moments. Not the kisses or the declarations or the rooftops. The small ones. The way someone looked when they were asleep and didn't know you were watching. The way that felt like something you wanted to protect.He had a small scar above his left eyebrow I hadn't noticed before.I wanted to ask about it.I wanted to ask about a lot of things. All the ordinary things you didn't get to ask when every conversation had an emergency attached to it. What music he listened to. Whether he was a window open or window closed per

Sophia's POVFriday arrived quietly.No emergencies. No unknown texts. No revelations landing at midnight requiring immediate action. Just Friday, the way Fridays were supposed to be, ordinary and unhurried and slightly better than the days before it.Dominic had been discharged Thursday afternoon, two days later than he wanted and one day earlier than the doctors preferred, which felt exactly right for him. He was home now, moving carefully and pretending he wasn't, issuing instructions from the main room couch with the specific authority of a man who had decided that horizontal was simply a different kind of vertical.Lena had dinner with Remy and Elijah on Thursday evening. Just the three of them. Nobody made a big thing of it. Remy had cooked, which apparently meant he had ordered from four different restaurants and arranged it on actual plates, and Elijah had talked about something legal for forty minutes before Lena told him she didn't understand half of what he was saying, and

Sophia's POVSunday morning, Lena was still there.She had fallen asleep on the couch in the main room at some point after dinner, and nobody had woken her. Mei had appeared from somewhere with a blanket, and that had apparently been that.I found her awake at seven, sitting at the kitchen counter with a coffee, looking at her phone with the focused expression of someone reading something they weren't sure how to feel about."Morning," I said."Morning," she said. She put her phone face down, which told me enough.I made coffee and sat beside her and didn't ask.She lasted four minutes."Diana texted," she said.I waited."She wants to meet," Lena said. "Properly. Just the two of them. No brothers, no Mei, no buffer." She looked at her coffee. "She said she understands if I'm not ready and she'll wait as long as I need.""That sounds like the right thing to say," I said carefully."Yes," Lena said. "That's what worries me. That she's saying the right things and I don't know yet if she

Sophia's POVRichard Black came on Wednesday.Not the dramatic arrival I had half expected. No car that announced itself, no entourage, no performance of a man returning to something he had left. Just a knock at the gate at two in the afternoon and Zane letting him through with the specific neutrality of someone who had decided to feel nothing about this until further notice.I watched from the window as he walked up to the estate.He was older than the photographs. Thinner. He walked like someone who had been careful for a long time and had forgotten how to move without it.Damien was beside me.He was watching too.He hadn't said much since breakfast. Not the closed quiet, the wall kind. Just the processing kind. The kind that meant things were moving through him at a pace he was managing privately and I was giving him the room to do that."Ready," I said softly."No," he said."Okay," I said.We went downstairs.Dominic was already in the main room. Seated, which was unusual for hi