A man in a dark suit with sharp eyes and a trimmed beard introduces himself as Hudson Stone, KOAN’s managing director.Beside him stands a tall man with a shaved head.But it’s the woman next to them who erases the air from the room.
Blonde hair, sleek and straight, parted and tucked behind one ear.Eyes the blue of the Mediterranean?—
The scent hits me first.Jasmine.Not perfume—something lighter, more intimate.Shampoo, maybe, or body oil.The same fragrance that clung to the yacht’s sheets; the same fragrance that I searched for in every hotel lobby and high-end boutique for months after.In Monaco casinos.Paris perfumeries.London art galleries.Always chasing a ghost.
Sophie.
Every concern about The Sanctuary vanishes under the weight of memory: Monaco, moonlight, the weekend I thought I stumbled on something authentic in a life built on carefully constructed facades.
The intimacy Crawford hides in shame, I remember as something else entirely—desire that felt unmanufactured, uncorrupted.The difference between appetite and connection.
Three years searching.Six months of investigators scouring Europe for an art consultant who didn’t exist.The search turned up nothing.No passport.No employment history.No digital footprint.Vapor.
And yet here she is.In a conference room in Manhattan.Alive.Real.
Her eyes widen—yes, she recognizes me.And I’m unexpected.
She steps forward with professional composure, extending her hand.“Brie Anderson, KOAN Security.”
The voice—controlled, cultured, achingly familiar—strikes like a blow.I take her hand, electricity sparking through contact.
For an instant, we’re back on that yacht, her laugh carrying over the water, my certainty that I’d found something true in a life built on illusion.Her fingers tighten just slightly before she pulls away, mask intact.But I saw it—the widening of her eyes, the careful step back.She remembers.
“Mr.d’Avricourt,” she says, and the sound of my formal name in her voice nearly undoes me.
Heat crawls up my neck.Unprofessional.Unwelcome.
I force my breathing to steady, force my hands to remain still when what they want is to reach for her—to confirm she’s real, solid, here.The desire that surges through me feels intrusive, almost violent in its intensity.
I’ve spent three years learning to separate want from need, performance from authenticity.Built an international firm on understanding the mechanics of desire.And in three seconds, she’s reduced me to raw appetite.
I clear my throat.“Ms.Anderson.”
But she’s not Brie Anderson.She’s Sophie Dubois—the woman who disappeared without a trace, leaving me to wonder whether that perfect weekend had been real at all, or only another illusion—beautiful, fleeting, and gone.
ChapterThree
Brie
Shock hits me with clinical clarity: throat tight, fingers trembling, vision narrowing.Training catalogs the symptoms, but nothing prepared me for this.I never thought I’d see him again, and now time itself feels fractured—slowed—while I stand outside myself, the lone observer.
I study him the way one studies brushstrokes in a painting only ever seen in textbooks.Subtle silver threads his dark hair, his beard trims the angles of a jaw I once knew bare, his suit immaculate.He looks nothing like the carefree man in sun-bleached linen with wind in his hair and salt on his skin.And yet—it’s him.Those eyes.Once rimmed in gold, catching every glint of light.Today they’re darker, green edged with suspicion, a man accustomed to wariness.
But beneath the wariness, I see heat.No, I feel it, pooling low in my belly, unwelcome and undeniable.I’ve spent my career learning to compartmentalize emotions, to treat my body as a tool.But some memories are too powerful to lock behind walls without cost.His jagged moans.The scrape of his five o’clock shadow against my inner thigh.The way he’d said my name in his sleep.
“Brie?”My colleague’s slight touch on my arm snaps me out of the initial shock of running across Adrien d’Avricourt.
I break free from Adrien’s locked stare and lean toward my colleague, seeking comfort in his steady presence while I gather myself.
“You okay?”
I inhale deeply, clearing the fog and quelling the trembles, and force the smile I’ve practiced in mirrors.“Yes, just…had a moment.”
As the others take their seats, I can excuse myself now—retreat, regroup—or I can sit and learn why Adrien d’Avricourt is in the United States, or more importantly, why he’s in this meeting.
Hudson provided a list of attendees and Adrien d’Avricourt was most definitely not on it.
But the man hasn’t confronted me in front of the others, so stay.Learn.
