“And if I refuse?”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
“I still protect you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because your blood is in me.”
The words should have sounded like superstition.
They did not.
They sounded like a vow already made.
Owen grabbed Clara’s hand.
“You can’t.”
She looked at her brother. At his pale face, his frightened eyes, the blanket around his shoulders. She saw every night she had chosen medicine over food. Every bill hidden in a drawer. Every future narrowing around them like a noose.
Then she looked at Leo Salvatore.
Danger in a black shirt. A man half-made of command, half-made of secrets.
“You said I decide,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then I have conditions.”
Matteo’s eyebrows lifted.
Nico looked offended.
Leo only said, “Name them.”
“Owen gets treatment. Real treatment. No strings.”
“Done.”
“He finishes school. He chooses his own future.”
“Done.”
“No one hurts anyone in front of him again.”
Leo glanced at the unconscious prisoner. “Done.”
“I keep my own room.”
A pause.
“Done.”
“And you don’t touch me unless I say so.”
Leo’s expression did not change, but something in the room seemed to inhale.
“Done,” he said softly.
Clara looked down at her shaking hands.
Then she forced them still.
“I’ll go with you.”
Owen’s grip tightened. “Clara—”
“Not because I trust him,” she said. “Because someone put our names into this nightmare, and I want to know who.”
Leo watched her with a look she could not name.
Admiration, perhaps.
Or hunger.
An hour later, Clara left her apartment with one suitcase, one terrified brother, and the terrible knowledge that her old life had ended without asking permission.
The Salvatore mansion received them like a mouth closing.
Owen was taken to a guest suite with a private nurse who spoke gently and checked his oxygen levels while he pretended not to be impressed by the size of the room. Clara refused to leave him until he was settled, medicated, and finally asleep beneath sheets that probably cost more than their monthly rent.
Only then did she allow Matteo to guide her through the mansion’s quiet halls.
“You are handling this well,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You have not screamed.”
“I’m saving it.”
He gave a low chuckle.
At the end of the corridor, he opened a door.
Clara stepped into a bedroom larger than her entire apartment. Pale walls. Tall windows. A fireplace. Fresh flowers on a table. A wardrobe already filled with clothes in her size.
She walked to the wardrobe and touched the sleeve of a blue dress.
Of course.
Of course he knew her size.
She shut the wardrobe hard.
“Where is he?”
Matteo did not pretend to misunderstand.
“In his study.”
“Take me.”
“He needs rest.”
“So did I.”
Matteo considered her, then stepped aside.
