CLAIM ME, Don

I should have taken the main road home.

Ten extra minutes on my feet, that's all it would have cost me, but after eight hours of wiping counters and smiling at men who didn't deserve it my body was done. My shoes were killing me, all I wanted was my bed and the pasta in my fridge since Tuesday, so I cut through the alley behind Benedetti Square.

I have regretted it every single day since.

I heard them before I saw anything. Low voices, calm in a way that had nothing to do with peace and everything to do with power. Something in my chest said stop, turn around, take the long way home. I didn't listen.

I kept walking.

Then the gunshot split the night open.

One shot, clean and final, and my hand flew to my mouth before the scream could escape. I spun around and saw him standing under a broken streetlamp at the far end of the alley. Tall, broad shouldered, black suit that cost more than my rent, a gun at his side with smoke still curling from the barrel like it meant absolutely nothing.

Two men behind him. Silent. Still.

A body on the ground between them.

I looked away from the body fast but I had already looked at him, and the moment my eyes found his face he was already looking straight back at me.

Dark eyes. Cold and steady. The eyes of a man with nothing in this world to fear.

Nothing except me. Right now. Because I had just seen everything.

"She saw your face Don," one of the men said quietly.

Don.

That word moved through my body like ice water. Everyone in this city knew what it meant. You learned it young, the same way you learned not to touch fire. Early, once, and permanently.

Dante Marchetti.

I ran.

My heels hit the wet pavement hard and I pushed as fast as my legs would go, but behind me the footsteps were steady and unhurried. Not running. Just walking, like a man who already knew how this ended and saw no reason to rush.

I took twelve steps.

A hand caught my arm and swung me into the brick wall and suddenly he was right in front of me with nowhere left for me to go.

Up close he was worse. Taller and harder, a face built entirely from sharp angles and cold certainty, the kind of face that made you forget for one stupid second what you had just watched him do. His hand was around my wrist and that was all he needed.

"Let me go." My voice came out steady and I was genuinely proud of that.

He looked at me the way someone looked at a problem they were already three steps ahead of solving. "You were at Luca's bar tonight," he said, his voice low and quiet.

"Bar shift. You finish at one."

"How do you know that?"

"I know everything that happens in this city." His thumb moved once against the inside of my wrist, a small absent movement that made my skin feel strange in a way I didn't want to think about.

"Including what you just saw."

"I didn't see anything."

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile, more like a man hearing exactly the lie he expected. "Mia Russo. Twenty four. Carver Street, third floor, unit 7B." He paused just long enough. "You have a cat named Biscuit."

The ground felt completely unsteady under my feet.

"Please." The word tore out before I could stop it and I hated myself the moment it did. "I won't tell anyone, I swear, just please let me go home."

"I know you won't," he said, releasing my wrist and stepping back just enough to give me air, his eyes never leaving my face. "Because you're coming with me."

"No I'm not."

He looked at me for a long moment, no anger, no threat, just the complete certainty of a man who had never once been told no and had it actually stick. "That was not a request Mia."

Behind him a black car sat at the mouth of the alley, engine running, patient as everything else about him. I did the math fast. Couldn't outrun him. He knew my name, my address, my cat. There was no corner of this city I could reach before sunrise where he wouldn't already be waiting.

He watched me work through all of it, read every thought right off my face without blinking, then placed one hand at the small of my back and guided me toward the car.

His hand was warm.

Not the gun. Not the body behind us. His hand was warm and steady and completely certain, like a man who had never once questioned his right to take whatever he wanted.

I got in the car and he got in beside me, the door closing with a soft final click.

The city moved past the tinted windows and I sat completely still, telling myself to breathe, to think, to pay attention, because I was going to survive this.

I told myself that the whole way to his estate.

I almost believed it.