All Chapters of The Don's Contracted Husband : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Jesse stiffened, his knuckles turning whiteas he stepped in front of Alessandra, shielding her behind his back. Diego moved beside him, his jaw clenched. “What are you doing here?” Jesse demanded.The man's smile widened, but before he could take a single step forward, the men who had been scattered around the hallway suddenly dropped their act.Two moved away from the vending machines. The other two who were pretending to be busy with their phones, slipped it into their pockets and joined them.At the front was Andres.Jesse’s blood ran cold as he realized that Donato already had eyes on him. He hadn’t been left alone for even a second.The man stopped when he saw them. His gaze passed over the men before settling on Andres. “Andres,” he said with a mocking smile. His eyes shifted back to Jesse. “We only wanted a word with Donato's husband.”Andres stepped between them, his bulky frame blocking Jesse from his view.“What are you doing here, Edoardo?”Jesse pushed past him. He wasn'

A few days passed after the breakfast incident.Donato avoided Jesse. Not openly, he never gave Jesse the satisfaction of knowing he was avoiding him; he simply became busy.The casino still needed his attention. Meetings filled his schedule. There were shipments to oversee, and the problems within his organization that suddenly seemed important enough to demand his personal attention.The space was just what he needed to get his thoughts under control. But control was a lie he kept telling himself.The memory of that morning still tormented him. Jesse's teasing voice, the short robe that exposed his smooth thighs. The way Jesse looked at him. And worse—the reaction Donato had tried very hard to ignore.The way Jesse had knelt beside him, wiping the coffee from his thighs. The way his fingers had brushed against him. He could still recall how Jesse's smile had died down, he had replayed the moment a thousand times. And the worst part?Jesse hadn't said a word about it after. Not one t

The next morning, the mansion was buried in a freezing silence. The argument from the night before had seeped into the walls.Donato sat alone at the head of the long table. His coffee had gone cold an hour ago. The newspaper sat folded beside him, untouched.He hadn't slept a wink. He'd told himself it was work. Numbers that weren't adding up. That was the lie he'd fed himself at three in the morning when he was still staring at the ceiling.It had nothing to do with the boy upstairs.The boy who had danced with another man like Donato wasn't even there. Who had looked him dead in the eye and done it anyway, daring him to react.He wasn't a whore. Donato knew that much. Jesse was a lot of things, reckless, stubborn, infuriating, but not that.He had been provoked. That was the truth of it. Jesse had engineered the whole night like a chess move, and Donato had walked right into it.And still, he should have been the one to walk away.He was thirty-four years old. He had buried men who

The leather interior of the luxury car felt suffocatingly quiet. Jesse sat beside Donato, unusually silent, staring out at the passing landscape as the driver navigated the winding roads away from the Cascio estate. After everything that had unfolded, Jesse had barely uttered a word.Donato didn’t question his silence. He kept his attention on the road ahead until he noticed Jesse’s seatbelt was still unbuckled.Without a word, he reached over to fasten it.Jesse flinched and pressed himself against the door.Donato’s hand paused in midair.Jesse stared back, caught off guard by his own reaction, as though he had only just realized what he had done.Something tightened in Donato’s chest, but he chose to ignore it. He grabbed the strap and pulled the seatbelt across Jesse’s chest, clicking it securely into place.“Your seatbelt.”Jesse looked down, then back at him. His cheeks flushed slightly. “Oh. Thank you.”Donato pulled his hand back and settled into his seat. For a moment, the c

Jesse's fingers found Sergio's zipper.The room had gone so quiet he could hear his own breath. His hand shook and he hated that.The metal teeth of the zipper under his fingertips made him shiver. The heat underneath it, the way the whole room was watching and no one was stopping it.He hated the smell of cigar smoke and liquor, including the low hum of the bass coming through the walls from the main floor.Jesse pulled the zipper down, slowly. He felt his heart was going to break his ribs.Sergio shifted, and Jesse's hand moved up, going inside, into the dark heat of the trousers. The wrongness of it hit him like cold water. However, this was real. He was actually doing this, in a room full of men, while his so-called husband was sitting close by and not looking.His eyes flicked toward Donato.Donato was still sitting there, seemingly uninterested. That bothered Jesse more than it should have.His hand stilled inside the trousers. He was about to take it further when a voice cut th