MINE TO CLAIM

CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST NIGHT

Ava didn’t go down for dinner.

Instead, she stood on the balcony of her room—her prison? her sanctuary?—watching the sun set over Dario’s estate. The grounds were beautiful in the fading light, all manicured gardens and artistic landscaping.

A pool glimmered in the distance, surrounded by what looked like a guest house.

This was his world. Wealth, power, control over everything he surveyed.

And somehow, she’d just walked into it willingly.

Her phone buzzed for the hundredth time. She’d turned off the sound after the first fifty calls and messages, but she couldn’t bring herself to power it down completely.

Cowardice, maybe. Or the last thread connecting her to her old life.

She finally looked at the screen. Seventy-three missed calls. One hundred and forty-two text messages. Most from her mother, her father, Leandro. A few from friends who’d been at the wedding. Jackie from the hospital.

All variations of the same questions: Are you okay? Where are you? What were you thinking? Please come home.

One message from Leandro stood out, sent just ten minutes ago:

“I know you’re scared. I know he’s got you confused. But I’m coming for you, Ava. I promise. You don’t have to do this alone.”

The guilt hit her like a bullet. Leandro thought she’d been coerced, manipulated, stolen against her will. He was probably assembling his detective friends right now, building a rescue mission for a woman who didn’t want to be rescued

.

Who’d chosen this.

A soft knock on the door made her jump.

“Yes?”

“It’s Maria, miss.” A woman’s voice, accented and warm. “I brought dinner. Mr. Santos thought you might prefer eating in your room tonight.”

Ava opened the door to find a woman in her fifties holding an elegant tray. Her smile was genuine, her eyes kind—not what Ava expected from someone working for a man like Dario.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Mr. Santos said you’d say that.” Maria moved into the room with the ease of long familiarity, setting the tray on the small table by the window. “He also said to tell you that not eating won’t change anything except making you weak, and you’re far too smart to give up your strength as a bargaining chip.”

Despite everything, Ava felt her lips twitch. “He said that?”

“He knows you’re angry. He said you have every right to be.” Maria began uncovering dishes—soup, salad, pasta that smelled incredible despite Ava’s claim of no appetite.

“But he also said hunger strikes only work if the other person is willing to negotiate, and he’s already given you everything you asked for.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Didn’t you?” Maria’s eyes were sharp despite her warm demeanor. “Mr. Santos told me what happened at the cathedral. Said you walked away from a wedding in front of three hundred people. That takes courage, miss. Or certainty. Maybe both.”

“Or insanity.”

“Perhaps.” Maria smiled. “But I’ve worked for Mr. Santos for fifteen years. I’ve seen him with many women—beautiful, accomplished, eager to be part of his world. He was never interested. Not really.” She paused, studying Ava.

“Then three weeks ago, he came home from the hospital. Obsessed, yes, but also… alive in a way I’d never seen. He talked about you like you were air itself.”

“That’s not romantic. That’s terrifying.”

“Sometimes the most terrifying things are the most real.” Maria moved toward the door, then paused. “The soup is butternut squash—your favorite, according to Mr. Santos’s research. The pasta is his family’s recipe. His grandmother’s. He doesn’t share that with just anyone.”

After Maria left, Ava stared at the food for a long time. She should throw it away out of spite. Should maintain her anger, her resistance.

Instead, she sat down and took a bite of soup.

It was perfect. Exactly how she liked it.

Damn him.

She woke to darkness and the sound of her own screaming.

The nightmare had been visceral—the cathedral, the shocked faces, Leandro’s expression as she walked away, her mother’s sobs echoing endlessly. But worse than that was the dream-version of herself, standing at the altar and going through with the wedding, watching her life narrow down to safe, comfortable, slowly suffocating normal.

“Ava!” Her door burst open, and Dario was there in pajama pants and nothing else, a gun in his hand, eyes scanning for threats. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

She couldn’t speak, just shook her head as tears streamed down her face. The reality of what she’d done crashed over her like a wave. She’d destroyed her wedding. Broken Leandro’s heart. Humiliated her family.

Thrown away everything she’d built.

For what? A feeling? An obsession from a man she barely knew?

“Breathe.” Dario set the gun on her dresser and approached slowly, hands visible, movements careful.

“Just breathe, little bird. You’re safe.”

“Safe?” The word came out harsh, broken. “I ruined everything! My family, my reputation, my life—I destroyed it all!”

“No.” He sat on the edge of her bed, close but not touching. “You chose yourself. That’s not destruction.

That’s bravery.”

“It was selfish!”

“Yes.” His agreement surprised her into looking at him. “It was selfish. And necessary. And right.”

“How can you say that? You don’t know—”

“I know that you were slowly disappearing.” His voice was gentle but certain. “I know that every day in that life was another day of pretending to be smaller, quieter, more manageable than you really are. I know that you were building a cage of ‘supposed to’ and ‘should’ and calling it love.”

“Leandro loved me!”

“I’m sure he did. In his way.” No jealousy in Dario’s voice, just patient truth. “But love isn’t supposed to make you smaller, Ava. It’s supposed to make you more yourself, not less.”

She wanted to argue, to defend her choices, to somehow justify going back to the safe path. But the words wouldn’t come because deep down, buried beneath the guilt and fear, she knew he was right.

She had been disappearing.

The tears came harder, ugly and real. She’d held them back all day, maintaining her anger like armor. Now it all crashed over her—grief and relief and terror mixed together until she couldn’t tell them apart.

“Come here.” Dario opened his arms, an invitation not a demand.

She should refuse. Should maintain boundaries, should remember that he was dangerous, that this whole situation was insane.

Instead, she collapsed into his embrace.

He held her while she sobbed, one hand stroking her hair, the other wrapped securely around her shoulders. He didn’t tell her to stop crying, didn’t try to fix it, didn’t make promises about everything being okay.

He just held her like she was precious. Like she was worth the chaos.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered against his chest. “I don’t know if this is right or if I just made the worst mistake of my life.”

“Neither do I.” His honesty was oddly comforting. “But we’ll figure it out. Together.”

“What if we can’t? What if this whole thing is just… madness?”

“Then it’s the most honest madness either of us has ever felt.” His lips pressed against the top of her head, gentle and reverent. “Sleep, Ava. Everything else can wait until morning.”

“I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see—”

“I know.” He shifted, settling more comfortably against her headboard, pulling her with him. “So don’t close your eyes yet. Just… rest. I’ll stay.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” His arms tightened slightly. “Let me do this one thing right. Let me keep the nightmares away.”

She should send him away. Should maintain distance, should remember that this man had upended her entire life.

Instead, she let herself relax into his warmth, let herself feel safe for the first time since walking out of that cathedral.

Then she found herself asking, “What happens now?”

“Now?” His smile was gentle. “Now you sleep. Tomorrow, we talk. We negotiate. We figure out what this is and what it could be. And every day after that, you decide if you want to stay or go.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” His hand never stopped stroking her hair, soothing and steady. “I’m not your captor, Ava. I’m not your kidnapper. I’m just a man who wants you to choose him. And I’ll spend every day earning that choice if I have to.”

“Even if I never do? Even if I decide this was all a mistake?”

Pain flickered across his features. “Even then. Though it would destroy me.”

The raw honesty in his voice, the absolute vulnerability of that admission, cracked something open in her chest. This wasn’t a game to him. Wasn’t strategy or manipulation. He was offering her his heart and trusting her not to shatter it, even though she had every reason to.

Even though he’d given her the weapons to do it.

“I can’t promise anything,” she whispered.

“I’m not asking you to. Not yet.” He pressed another kiss to her forehead. “Just promise you’ll stay long enough to find out. Long enough to see if this feeling between us is real or just the aftermath of trauma and adrenaline.”

“And if it’s just trauma?”

“Then I’ll take you home and spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been.” His voice was steady, certain. “But if it’s real, Ava… if even a fraction of what I feel is mirrored in you… that’s worth fighting for. Worth risking everything for.”

She wanted to argue, to point out all the ways this was wrong, impossible, insane. But exhaustion was pulling her under, and his warmth was too comforting, and somewhere beneath all the fear and guilt was a tiny spark of something that felt dangerously like hope.

“Stay,” she heard herself whisper. “Just for tonight. Keep the nightmares away.”

“Always.” His arms tightened around her. “For as long as you’ll let me.”

As she drifted off to sleep, safe in the arms of the most dangerous man she’d ever met, Ava’s last conscious thought was this:

She’d made her choice at the cathedral.

Now she just had to figure out if she could live with it.

Or if living with it might be the most honest thing she’d ever done.