Claimed By The Mafia Prince

“You think I didn’t see it?” Cillian’s voice was low behind me, clipped in that way that meant he was holding something back. “I didn’t invite him to stare,” I said. His hand came up anyway, settling at my hip like an anchor I hadn’t asked for. “It becomes my problem when you put yourself in situations where men decide they can touch you with their eyes,” he said. “I can take care of myself,” I shot back, twisting slightly, though his hand stayed firm, steady. His thumb pressed in, a quiet warning. “You don’t get to walk away from me into places that can hurt you.” I lifted my chin. “And you don’t get to decide what I’m afraid of.” For a moment, the air between us felt tight enough to break. Then his other hand came up, fingers brushing my jaw, tilting my face just enough that I had to meet his eyes. I hated the way my body reacted to the nearness, the way he stood there like a wall I could lean into or slam against. “Let go,” I said. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted again. “Say it like you mean it.” *** My father sold me to marry the mafia prince. Yes, sold. No returns, no warranty. So, I did the only reasonable thing a sane woman would do: I ran. With a new name and a quiet life in a small college town, I built something close to normal. It almost worked. Then Cillian Volkov found me. He stepped into my world like he owned the air in it and waited for me to remember that contracts written in blood did not dissolve just because I changed my name. Cillian was calm in the way predators are calm. Controlled. Unimpressed by my attitude. Annoyingly unmoved by my attempts to be invisible. And the worst part? My body reacted to him like it had forgotten which side it was on. I was not a damsel. I was not innocent. I was not interested in becoming a mafia prince’s consolation prize. But in a world where debts did not disappear and men like him did not lose what they claimed, running might not have been the bravest thing I had ever done. It might have been the dumbest.