“I’ve known you for fifteen years, Drew. I know exactly what I’m talking about.” He refilled both our glasses, his expression shifting from amused to serious. “Whatever’s happening between you and Cassandra Miller, it’s not just professional surveillance. You need to figure out what it actually is before it becomes a problem you can’t contain.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that this was purely business, that I was simply doing my job by keeping tabs on a security risk. But sitting there in that booth, vodka burning in my stomach and Kirill’s knowing eyes studying me, I couldn’t maintain the lie.
Cassandra Miller had gotten under my skin in ways I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. She was a threat to Rafael’s organization, possibly to the entire Chicago Bratva operation. She was hiding things, stealing information, operating with an agenda I hadn’t yet uncovered.
She was also the most compelling thing I’d encountered in years, and that terrified me more than any threat she might pose.
“Six more weeks,” I said finally, more to myself than to Kirill. “Then I go back to Russia and forget any of this happened.”
“Sure you will.” Kirill raised his glass in a mock toast. “Just like you forgot about her tonight. Just like you’ll forgettomorrow, and the day after that, and every day until you finally admit what’s actually happening here.”
I didn’t respond, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t prove him right.
Instead, I drank my vodka and tried not to think about pale skin and calculating brown eyes and the way Cassandra had looked when she’d laughed—unguarded and real and dangerously beautiful.
Tried not to think about how much I wanted to know what had made her that way, what had carved her into something sharp enough to cut herself on.
Tried not to think about how six weeks suddenly felt both too long and not nearly long enough.
Kirill’s comment had pissed me off more than anything else in recent memory, mostly because it was true. I didn’t hate Cassandra Miller.
I was fucking obsessed with her.
Chapter 4 – Cassandra
Drew Kamarov was ignoring me, and it wasn’t the passive kind of ignoring where you’re distracted or busy. This was deliberate, calculated. The kind of silence that said I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to acknowledge my existence.
For three days, he’d moved through Rafael’s office like I was furniture. When I spoke, he’d respond to the air beside my head. When I entered a room, he’d continue whatever he was doing without so much as a glance in my direction. He behaved as if I were invisible, a ghost haunting space he barely noticed.
And that pissed me off more than anything he could have actually said.
I’d survived worse than silent treatment. Had endured years of being nobody in that orphanage, months of being invisible to drunk assholes in Seattle bars. But this? This felt different. Personal. Like Drew had decided I didn’t deserve even the basic human courtesy of recognition.
Like he’d seen something in me that made me unworthy of his attention.
The thought gnawed at me during meetings where he’d address Rafael and the rest of the room but skip over me entirely. Clawed at my composure when he’d accept documents from my hands without meeting my eyes. Twisted in my chest like a knife when he’d leave the office at precisely the moment I entered.
By the third day, I was ready to burn the entire building down just to get a fucking reaction.
***
I found him in his temporary office late afternoon, the setting sun casting long shadows across the floor. He sat behind the desk with his tablet, fingers moving across the screen with that precise efficiency that suggested he was reviewingsomething important. Security protocols, maybe, or surveillance logs.
Maybe logs of me doing things I shouldn’t be doing.
The thought made my pulse spike, but I pushed it down. I was done with his calculated silence, done with being treated like I didn’t exist in the space we both occupied.
“If this is one of your games—” I started, my voice sharper than I’d intended.
“Leave.” He didn’t look up from the tablet, didn’t acknowledge my presence beyond that single word. “I don’t want to talk to you, Cassandra. I’m not playing any game.”
Something inside me snapped.
I’d spent three years perfecting the art of control, of keeping my emotions locked so far down that nothing could shake them loose. But Drew’s dismissal, his absolute refusal to even look at me, cracked something fundamental in that careful construction.
I crossed the room in three strides and shoved him. Hard.
His shoulder rocked back slightly, and for the first time in three days, those steel-gray eyes met mine. There was a warning in them, cold and absolute.
