"Maksim Besharov," I managed. My voice came out strangled, too quiet, barely more than a whisper. "I'm here to see—I have an appointment."
The woman's expression shifted. Something changed behind her professionally neutral eyes—her spine straightened slightly, her smile became less assessing and more . . . careful. Almost nervous.
"Of course," she said, and her tone had lost its edge entirely. "Mr. Besharov is waiting in the private viewing room. If you'll follow me?"
She didn't follow me. She pointed toward a hallway at the back of the gallery, and something in the way she did it suggested she wasn't invited to venture there herself.
Whoever Maksim Besharov was, he mattered here. He mattered enough to make receptionists nervous.
I filed that information away and started walking.
The hallway stretched before me like a gauntlet. My legs felt increasingly unsteady with each step, the fluorescent lights pressing down on me like physical weight. I counted my steps because counting helped—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—and wished desperately that I'd brought Ghost despite the impracticality.
Ghost would have leaned against my leg. Ghost would have given me something to touch, something warm and real and grounding. Ghost would have looked at the too-white walls and the too-bright lights with that particular whippet skepticism that always made me feel less alone in my reactions.
But Ghost was at home, probably sleeping in the patch of sunlight by my worktable, and I was here alone.
I knew, with the certainty of long experience, that I had approximately forty minutes before the fluorescent lights and the watching eyes and the relentless whiteness sent me into shutdown. Maybe less, depending on how stressful the conversation turned out to be.
The viewing room door appeared at the end of the hallway. Closed. Expensive-looking.
I stopped in front of it and tried to remember how to breathe.
You can do this, I told myself.In and out. You've done harder things.
I had done harder things. I'd survived worse environments, managed worse conversations, navigated worse socialminefields. I was good at my job. I was an expert in my field. I belonged here as much as anyone.
The pep talk felt hollow, the way it always did.
I opened the door.
He was already there, standing in front of a small Kandinsky with his hands clasped behind his back, and my first coherent thought—arriving several seconds after I'd frozen in the doorway—was that photographs don't do him justice.
Or rather, that single grainy charity gala image had been a deliberate misdirection, because the man in front of me was magnetic in a way cameras clearly couldn't capture. Tall—not towering, but tall enough that I'd have to look up to meet his eyes. Lean in the way of someone who used their body deliberately, every movement economical and precise. Dark hair pushed back from a face that was too sharp to be classically handsome but was somehow more compelling for it.
Then he turned at the sound of my footsteps, and his eyes met mine.
Oh no.
The thought arrived with a flush of heat that started in my chest and spread outward, up my throat, across my cheeks, down my arms. Warm brown eyes—intelligent, assessing, holding mine with an intensity that made me feel suddenly, terrifyingly seen.
Not seen in the way the receptionist had seen me, calculating my net worth and social status. Seen in a different way. Like he was looking past all my armor, past the tight hair and the structured blazer and the professional expression I was desperately trying to maintain, and finding something underneath worth examining.
He wore an expensive charcoal suit that fit like it had been sewn directly onto his body. The kind of tailoring that cost more than my monthly rent and somehow managed to look effortless,as though he'd simply reached into his closet and grabbed the first thing his hand touched. His face was all angles—sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, a mouth that curved slightly at one corner as if he was perpetually on the verge of a smile.
Beautiful. He was beautiful in the way that dangerous things were beautiful—a storm front, a cliff edge, a painting you can't afford.
And he was looking at me like I was a puzzle he was already halfway to solving.
I should run. Some primitive part of my brain was screaming it—run, hide, you're not equipped for this—but my feet had apparently taken root in the expensive concrete floor.
"Miss Hart," he said.
His voice was low and warm, and the accent snagged at my brain with a strange sense of recognition. Eastern European, smoothed by expensive education, the consonants slightly harder than American English would produce. Russian, maybe, or Ukrainian, or somewhere in that Slavic linguistic family I could identify but not pinpoint.
"Thank you for coming," he continued, apparently unbothered by my silence. "I know this is unconventional."
He gestured toward the Kandinsky behind him. A small piece, maybe eighteen by twenty-four inches, all geometric shapes and emotional color. The gallery's lighting was doing it no favors—those fluorescents washed out the subtleties—but even poorly lit, the painting commanded attention.
