All Chapters of Claimed by my next door neighbour: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Renato POV:The silence after the kiss didn't last as long as I wanted it to.I pulled back slightly, catching the faint trace of spice still clinging to his skin, garlic, something citrus underneath it, the unmistakable evidence of an actual meal he'd cooked with actual effort. For Jack. I filed that particular detail away with more irritation than the situation probably deserved."So." I let my gaze drift toward the kitchen, toward the abandoned plates still sitting there. "Blondy gets a home cooked meal. I get nothing. Ouch.""That's not—" Felix started, flustered, color rising fast up his throat."No, no. I understand completely." I stepped back a pace, hands raised slightly, entirely too pleased with how flustered he'd gotten over something this small. "Some men simply rate higher than others.""Renato."My phone rang before he could finish whatever half formed protest he was building. I checked the screen, saw the name, and felt my whole posture shift automatically, years of habi

Felix POV:I found a quiet stretch of corridor past the ballroom's outer wing. My mask was still on, and my pulse was only just settling.My mind wouldn't stop going back to him.I knew his name. I knew how he took his coffee and the low way he laughed when something got past his guard. I knew the shape of his hands.I didn't know anything real. I didn't know why his men stood like soldiers when he spoke, or why a ship full of criminals and billionaires treated his word like law.And he belonged here. Completely."Earth to Felix."Jack's voice cut through my earpiece, dry and sharp. I'd been standing still for too long."Felix. Get your head in the game. We can't afford to flop this."That did it.I need to stop this. We weren't a couple. We weren't even fuck buddies. We were two people who had slept together twice and kissed in a hallway. He didn't owe me an explanation, and I didn't have the right to want one."I'm here," I said, low. "Where am I going?""Left at the end of the hall

 Renato POV: My man had barely turned to relay the order when the screens came alive again. 

Renato POV:The screens changed before my men had even reached the doors.White light again, hard and clean, washing across the ruined hall and the people still crouched behind overturned tables. The music box came back with it, that slow, sick little melody, and I felt the whole room hold what was left of its breath.Then the number appeared.ONE BILLION USD. FOR FELIX LUCIANO. ALIVE.I read it once. Then again, because my mind refused to let the word at the bottom pass quietly. Alive. Not the diamond. Not a body. A man, breathing, delivered whole, as if whoever had written those letters had already decided what they meant to do with him and did not want him damaged first.The Lucerna Nera was priceless in the way old things become priceless. But before tonight, the highest estimate I had heard placed it under fifty million. Someone had just offered twenty times that for Felix.Nobody pays twenty times for a thief. They pay it for the one thing no one else can give them.The hall had

Felix POV:She's dead. She's been dead for over twelve years.I couldn't move. My whole body had locked somewhere between the word and the memory it dragged up, a voice that shouldn't anymore, yet that same tender voice was reaching through a speaker that had no right to know how my mother sounds like."Felix."I didn't answer. I couldn't find the part of me that knew how.Hands closed on my shoulders and shook me, hard "Felix. Snap out of it."Something in me came back online all at once, rough and too fast, like surfacing from underwater. I shoved his hands off and stepped back, putting space between us before I'd decided to."Don't touch me."He raised both hands, unbothered, something almost amused flickering across his face despite everything. He actually snorted."There he is," he said, low. "Thought I'd lost you for a second.""I'm fine.""You weren't fine ten seconds ago.""I said I'm fine." My voice came out colder than I meant it to, flat and clipped, the version of myself