Because in that knowing gaze, I saw every rule I was about to break.
CHAPTER 3
Kara
I told myself I still had a choice.
It was the same lie I’d been repeating since the moment I stepped into this tower of glass and gold. Every breath I took in his orbit made it harder to believe, but I kept whispering it in my head anyway—You can still walk away, Kara.
Except I couldn’t.
Not until I got what I came for.
Somewhere in this penthouse—maybe locked behind that obsidian-paneled office door, maybe hidden inside the electric veins of his network—was the data I needed. Files tied to a drone shipment, allegedly ‘security models’ destined for a private consortium. ARCHEON’s intel said otherwise. Modified firmware, blacklisted code, the kind of programming that could turn a city into a pile of ash overnight.
It was supposed to be simple: gain his trust, gain access, exfiltrate the data, vanish. I’d done it before, but Roman Markov wasn’t like the others.
He was standing inches from me now, the dark ocean glinting in his windows behind him. The low jazz had slipped into a slower melody now. His thumb still brushed the hollow of my throat, slow and patient, tracing the rhythm of my heartbeat as if he owned it.
“You’re thinking again,” he said, voice impressively even.
“I do that sometimes,” I murmured.
His smile tilted knowingly. “You’re trying to decide whether to trust me.”
I laughed under my breath. “You’d hate my answer.”
“I already know it.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because you’re not very good at lying to yourself.”
I felt my chest tighten.
I’d built my life on lying—to everyone, even myself—and yet with him, the words caught in my throat. The air between us grew heavier, dense enough that I could almost taste the tension between us.
“This shouldn’t be complicated,” I said, my voice soft but frayed around the edges.
“It isn’t,” he replied. “Unless you make it so.”
He leaned in a little, and instinct made me pull back half an inch, but his hand slid to the small of my back again. He didn’t drag me forward; he simply waited. The heat of his palm seeped through the lace of my dress until I couldn’t tell whether the shiver running up my spine belonged to me or him.
I could end this now.
I could excuse myself, laugh it off, slip down the elevator, ghost out of his world before morning.
But walking away meant failing the mission.
I never failed.
My training whispered:Stay close. Distract him. Get into the office. Find the data.
That was the plan.
That was the only reason I was still here.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
