Page 28 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

I’d built my entire career on not reacting. “Interesting.”

“Interesting? You sure about that?”

“I mean, it sounds considerably less boring than my documentation.”

“You’d be surprised.” She grabbed her coffee.

“Try me,” I said, intentionally repeating her exact response to the same words I’d said earlier.

She stared at me as she slowly sipped her drink, her eyes crinkling at the corners. This was a subtle hint that she was smiling into her cup.

“Most of it’s just numbers that don’t add up in ways nobody bothers to ask about.” She broke the brief silence between us. “Eastern European partnerships, you say.” A pause, her eyes squinting in a whisper. “Which countries?”

Of course, she was going to probe me; it was in her nature to ask uncomfortable questions. But I came prepared.

“Mostly Russia, some Cyprus, occasionally the Baltics,” I replied without hesitation.

Something in her expression sharpened at Cyprus with the specific, controlled interest of a woman filing a fact away rather than reacting to it.

“Hmm. Interesting,” she said, in a tone that suggested she meant something other than interesting.

“How so?” I pressed on, easing into our conversation more than I intended to.

“Cyprus comes up a lot in my research.”

“Really?” I kept my voice level, faintly amused, my eyes discreetly drinking in the details of her face. “It comes up in mine a lot too. Half the shipping routes through that region run through it. Tax efficiency, mostly.”

“Mostly,” she repeated, skepticism lacing her tone.

“You sound skeptical of tax efficiency.”

“No, I sound skeptical of anyone who uses the phrase ‘tax efficiency’ to describe a jurisdiction with four hundred thousand registered companies and a population of under a million.” She said it with a small, sharp smile, no real hostility in it, just the pleasure of someone who enjoyed being right more than she enjoyed being liked. “But I’m sure your work is entirely above board.”

“Trust me.” I let the faintest curve touch my mouth. “I’d be terrible at my job if it wasn’t.”

She laughed—short, surprised out of her, like she hadn’t expected the joke and hadn’t expected to find it funny. In all honesty, I didn’t expect it to be funny either. But it did, and that laugh of hers did something uncomfortable to my chest, a small, involuntary tightening I had no name for and did not examine.

In the silence that followed, we both stared into each other’s eyes. And the longer I held her gaze, the more strange emotions stirred up within me.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “You never said.”

“You never asked,” I replied.

Her lips curled into that beautiful smile of hers. “Well, this is me asking…what do they call you, other than import advisory?”

I laughed.

I actually laughed.

Nothing loud or clumsy. Quiet and composed.

“Anton.” The lie came out smooth, unhesitating, the way every lie I’d told for two decades came out—clean, practiced, indistinguishable from truth in tone. “Anton Vasylenko.”

Her brows arched at the last name.

“Yeah, it’s a mouthful, I know.”

“No, it’s not, actually,” she said, attempting to pronounce it. “Vasylenko.”