Claimed by the Don

Chapter 6: Unrecognizable

Damian had faced down gunmen with less effort than it took to stay away from Elena that week.

He told himself it was surveillance. He needed to know who she talked to, where she went, who looked at her too long. Protective instinct. Nothing more.

It was a lie so thin it embarrassed him.

At the wedding rehearsal she laughed with the groomsmen, head thrown back, throat bare. A man named Marco, one of Luca's cousins, leaned close to murmur something in her ear. Damian's glass cracked in his hand.

"Problem?" Luca asked.

"No." He wiped the blood from his palm. "Who's the cousin?"

"Marco? Harmless."

Nobody is harmless near her.

Later, in the empty hallway outside the library, he found her flipping through a book, shoes dangling from two fingers.

"Do you always lurk?" she asked without turning.

"Do you always walk barefoot where anyone can see you?"

She turned, one brow arched. "Is that concern, Damian? Or an order?"

He stepped closer. He shouldn't have. The scent of her, vanilla and rain, curled around him. "You're not safe here the way you used to be."

"I'm not twelve."

"I'm aware," he said, and the words came out lower than he intended, hungrier.

Color rose in her cheeks. For a heartbeat, neither of them breathed. She tilted her chin up, defiant, her gaze dropping to his mouth the way it had four years ago, only this time she wasn't trembling.

"Careful," she whispered. "You almost sound like you've noticed."

He should have walked away. Instead he lifted one hand and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, slow, deliberate, his knuckles grazing her jaw.

"I've noticed," he said.

Her lips parted.

Then the library phone rang, sharp and violent, and from the other end came a voice he knew too well: "Rossi. We have a problem with the Moretti shipment. Someone's moving on us tonight."