All Chapters of CLAIMED BY MY MAFIA BODYGUARD: Chapter 21 - Chapter 26

SERENA’S POVMarko held the chair for me with quiet courtesy and waited until I was settled before taking the seat across from me. His eyes moved over the red dress once, steady and appreciative without ever dropping lower than necessary.“That color suits you,” he said. “It makes you look confident and completely at ease. You look so good.” The compliment made me feel at ease. There was no lingering stare, no remark about how the fabric clung or how much skin it showed. Other men would have turned the same dress into something cheap within the first thirty seconds. Marko simply noticed and moved on, and the restraint won more ground than I wanted to give him. I had chosen this outfit specifically to make him uncomfortable, to push him into the kind of judgment that would let me walk away clean. Instead he treated it like ordinary elegance and the first crack in my plan appeared before the water even arrived. “So I heard from your Father that you are into writing,” he said with gen

SERENA’S POV The car stopped so suddenly that my body shifted hard against the seatbelt and the world tilted for a second before settling again. My head felt heavy and warm from the alcohol I had poured into myself on purpose, yet the edges of everything stayed sharp enough that I understood exactly where I was and who was speaking. Stefano’s voice cut through the quiet interior with a roughness I had not heard from him before.“How could you go on a date with another man and look that happy about it?” I forced my eyelids higher and found his face turned toward me from the front seat. The question made so little sense that a short confused sound left my throat before any real words formed. He had spent the entire day watching me with Marko and had done nothing to stop it. He had driven me there. He had sat twenty feet away while another man made me smile. Now he sounded angry that I had looked happy.My tongue felt thick and the words came out slower than I wanted, each one sliding

SERENA’S POV “AHHHGGGGGGHH…” I groaned and pressed both palms against my temples as if pressure alone could hold the pieces together. The room tilted when I forced myself upright. My stomach rolled and my mouth tasted like ash mixed with last night’s whiskey. Soft morning light filtered through the curtains yet even that gentle brightness made my eyes water. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to piece the evening back together. The last clear memory was the question I threw at Stefano in the car. ‘Do you actually feel anything for me, or am I just something you pick up and put down when it suits you?’After that everything blurred. But I could remember that somewhere in that haze I saw him standing outside the open door, tall and still, his mouth moving as if the words mattered more than anything else in the world. But what was he saying? Was he confessing his feelings for me? “Damn you, Serena,” I groaned in frustration. “Why the fuck did you get yourself so drunk like that?”