CLAIMED BY THE RUTHLESS DON

The phone kept ringing.

Dominic crossed the study in three strides and snatched it up before the fourth ring could finish.

“What,” he said, no greeting, no patience left for pleasantries.

Elena watched his face change in real time. The ice she’d seen at the door hours earlier was nothing compared to what settled over his features now, something colder, something carved from stone.

“When,” he said flatly.

A pause. She strained to hear the voice on the other end but caught only fragments, urgent and clipped.

“And Tony Vitale is where, exactly?” Dominic asked, his eyes flicking to Elena, and her stomach dropped straight through the floor.

“What’s happening?” she demanded, stepping forward. “Is that about my brother? Dominic, tell me what’s happening.”

He held up a hand, silencing her without a word, and she hated him a little for how effective it was.

“Keep him breathing until I get there,” Dominic said into the phone. “If a single Castellano touches him before I arrive, I want to know their name before I want to know their excuse.”

He ended the call and set the phone down with a precision that felt more dangerous than if he’d thrown it across the room.

“Dominic,” Elena said, voice shaking now, “what happened to Tony?”

“Castellano’s men picked him up outside the hospital.”

Dominic was already moving, shrugging into a jacket that had appeared from somewhere, his whole body shifting into a mode of controlled urgency she’d never seen on him before, not even seven years ago.

“A show of force. A reminder that the debt didn’t disappear just because you walked through my door.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Not yet.” Dominic’s jaw tightened. “That’s the operative word. Not yet.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said, already reaching for her shoes.

“No, you are not.”

“He’s my brother!”

“And you are the reason Castellano has any interest in this at all,” Dominic said, rounding on her, and there it was again, that flash of fury she’d glimpsed at the door, barely leashed.

“You think Giovanni doesn’t know exactly why Tony’s debt suddenly matters? You showing up here made you a target too, Elena, and I am not walking you into a building full of armed men who would love nothing more than to use you as leverage against me.”

“So I just sit here?” she yelled, her voice cracking with fear and fury in equal measure. “While my brother is God knows where, surrounded by God knows who, and I just wait by the phone like some obedient little wife?”

“You are not my wife,” he said, low and rough.

“Then stop treating me like property!”

“I will treat you,” he said, closing the distance between them until she had to crane her neck to hold his gaze, “exactly the way I need to in order to keep you both alive. If that looks like control to you, so be it. I’d rather you hate me and breathe than love me and be a corpse in the East River.”

The words hung there, brutal and honest, and Elena felt something crack open in her chest, something that had nothing to do with anger anymore.

“Marco,” Dominic called, and the man appeared at the study door so fast Elena wondered if he’d been listening the whole time. “Get the car. And two men, armed, no exceptions.”

“Already done, sir,” Marco said. His eyes flicked to Elena, and for the briefest moment, something almost like sympathy crossed his face before it vanished behind the familiar wall.

“Car’s out front.”

“Good.” Dominic turned back to Elena, and his expression softened by a fraction, just enough for her to see the man underneath the Don.

“Stay here. Lock the study door behind me. There are men posted at every entrance, and nothing gets past them, I promise you that.”

“Dominic…” Her voice broke on his name.

“I will bring him back,” he said, and for one heartbeat he reached out and brushed a stray piece of hair from her face, a gesture so achingly familiar it stole the breath right out of her lungs.

“I made you a promise once, a long time ago, that nothing in this world would ever touch you or yours as long as I had breath in my body. That promise didn’t expire just because you did, Elena.”

Before she could respond, he was gone, his footsteps fast and sure down the hallway, and the front door slammed with a finality that rattled the windows.

She stood alone in the study, heart pounding, and realized her hands were shaking so badly she could barely close them into fists.

The waiting was the worst part.

Elena paced the length of the study twice, then three times, then gave up counting altogether. The fire had burned down to embers, and still no word came.

She thought about calling Sofia, her friend, her anchor, the one person in this city who didn’t come attached to armed men and blood debts, but her phone sat upstairs, forgotten in the chaos.

Instead, she found herself in the kitchen an hour later, unable to sit still, boiling water for tea she had no intention of drinking, just to have something to do with her hands.

That was where Marco found her, having slipped back into the house so quietly she nearly dropped the kettle.

“You’re back,” she said, whirling around. “Is Tony… is he…”

“He’s fine,” Marco said quickly, holding up both hands like he was trying to calm a spooked animal. “Bruised. Scared out of his mind. But fine. Dominic’s with him now, settling things with Giovanni’s men before he brings him home.”

Relief crashed through her so hard her knees nearly buckled.

“Thank God.”

“Yeah,” Marco muttered, but he didn’t leave. He lingered in the doorway, shifting his weight, his eyes doing that thing again where they refused to quite land on her.

“You keep looking at me like that,” Elena said carefully, “like you want to say something.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, too fast.

“Marco.” She set down the kettle and turned to face him fully.

“Seven years ago, something happened.

Something that made Dominic go cold overnight, cold enough that I barely recognized him when I finally worked up the courage to try and see him one last time before I left the city for good.

And every single time I look at you, you flinch like I’m about to ask you something you’ve spent seven years hoping nobody would.”

Marco’s face went carefully, deliberately blank.

“You should get some rest, Elena. It’s been a long night.”

“Marco, please.” Her voice softened, pleading now instead of accusing. “If you know something, if there’s a reason he believes I betrayed him, I need to know. I never did anything to hurt Dominic. Not once. Not ever.”

Something flickered behind Marco’s eyes, guilt and grief tangled together so tightly she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

For one suspended moment, she thought he might actually tell her, that seven years of silence might finally break open right there in the kitchen with the kettle screaming behind her.

“I have to go,” he said instead, voice rough.

“Dominic will be back soon. You should be here when he arrives.”

He turned and left before she could stop him, but not before she caught the words he muttered under his breath, so quiet she almost missed them entirely, words that turned her blood to ice water in her veins.

“God forgive me,” Marco whispered to himself in the hallway, unaware she’d heard him at all. “Seven years, and I still don’t know how to tell her the truth without destroying us both.”