There’s a professional headshot attached to the file. Blonde hair swept into a sleek ponytail, warm brown eyes that reveal nothing, perfect red lips curved into what passes for sincerity among people paid to lie.
So different from the woman with her legs wrapped around my waist, head thrown back, throat exposed.
Beneath the corporate bullshit lies my real work—a separate folder I’ve cultivated over the past week. I tap it open, and Raven’s life unfolds before me in exquisite detail.
Born Lena Raven Carter in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Upper middle class, not wealthy enough to be untouchable but comfortable enough to be soft. Her parents are still married—how fucking quaint.
Father: Henry Carter, investment banker at Weston Financial Group.**
Mother: Victoria Carter, part-time art gallery coordinator.
Twin brother: Leo Carter, architect.
The asterisks next to her dad immediately catch my attention, and I scroll to the bottom for the footnote.
Henry Carter served in the army. He left when wife Victoria Carter was five months pregnant.
Skills: knife retention and survival knife usage.
I scroll through financial records, medical histories, school transcripts. Every life leaves a paper trail, and hers is far from the first I’ve followed to its source. Her credit score is excellent. Her dental work was extensive during adolescence. She had her appendix removed at sixteen.
The next folder contains surveillance photos—nothing sophisticated, just what my men could gather on short notice.
Henry Carter leaving his office building, briefcase in hand, checking his watch with the punctuality of a man who’s never had to worry about whether he’ll make it home alive.
Victoria Carter in gardening gloves, kneeling among flowers that probably have names I don’t give a fuck about.
Leo Carter exiting an architect firm.
The pictures are my insurance policies. Pressure points. Places where, if I press hard enough, Raven will feel the pain from miles away. But it doesn’t need to come to that. Still, it’s nice to be prepared.
My eye socket throbs beneath the patch, a dull ache that’s become as familiar as my own heartbeat. I remove the patch, rubbing at the hollow where gray used to mirror gray. The prosthetic sits in its case beside me—I only wear it in public.
Here alone, I prefer the honest emptiness.
I crack my neck, roll my shoulders back, and feel vertebrae shift and realign. One week of obsessing over this woman. One week of thinking about the curve of her ass, the heat of her cunt, and the audacity of her theft.
No woman’s been in my home before her. I don’t bring women here—I fuck them in hotel rooms, in the private rooms above the Leone Room, in their own beds before I leave them wondering if they dreamed me.
But Raven… I brought her here. Gave her access to my private space. And she thanked me by taking the one thing that mattered. Fuck, the recklessness of her actions has me hard all over again.
Waiting one week for her to come back hasn’t settled the inferno inside me. If anything, I’m obsessed with Raven by now. I want to know everything there is to know about her, sink my cock into her again, and hear her thank me for letting her live.
My phone buzzes again with another text from Vito.
Vito: Lights on in the apartment. Looks like she’s staying in.
Me: Is she alone?
Vito: I believe so.
Me: Full surveillance until Monday’s meeting. I want to know everyone who enters or leaves. If she so much as orders takeout, I want the delivery guy’s name.
Vito: You got it, boss.
I close the tablet, slide it into the desk drawer. Two days until the meeting at Holston PR. Two days until I watch those brown eyes widen with recognition, with fear, with the slow-dawning horror of realizing exactly what she’s done.
“Monday, Little Thief,” I murmur to the empty room, standing to slip on my jacket. “We’re going to have such fun together.”
