Page 40 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

“Apologies,” he whispered, his fresh breath warm against my skin. “Photographers tend to make assumptions about anyone seen in conversation too long at events like this.”

“Is that why you dodge them like bullets?” I asked.

His response was a sly grin.

“What kind of assumptions do these photographers tend to make?”

He hesitated. “The kind that ends up in the papers, attached to names that would rather not be attached to each other.”

Why did the way he avoided the camera remind me so much of a certain someone I was still investigating?

His eyes moved over my face with the same unhurried, cataloging attention he’d given my questions. “I assumed you’d prefer not to be photographed beside me, given the angle of your questions tonight.”

“Are you sure this is about me? Because I can handle being photographed.”

“I don’t doubt that.” A pause, his hand still at my waist, neither of us moving to correct it. “I’m less sure I’d prefer it.”

“So, this is about you then.” It was more a statement than a question.

He stepped back, the distance between us returning to something the room would have called appropriate. It didn’t feel that way to me, though, not with my pulse still doing something erratic and my skin still carrying the ghost-print of his hand.

Again, the aftereffects of his touch reminded me of my mystery man.

“I should let you get back to your evening,” he said. “I imagine you have several more people to corner before the night’s over.”

“I had several more questions lined up for you…specifically.” The slight pause came when I looked right into those steel-gray eyes of his.

“I’m sure you did,” he answered with his usual calmness. “However, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you again.” He inclined his head, that same small, formal gesture that melted my heart. “Miss Bennett.” Anton had barely taken two steps forward when he stood in his tracks, glancing back at me. “Oh.”

I held his gaze, feeling something I didn’t have the guts to name.

“You look amazing tonight.”

My cheeks flushed at his remark before I could even stop myself from blushing. “Thank you.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

His lips curled into his signature smirk, and he walked away before I could think of something else to say. I watched him cross the room toward a cluster of men near the bar, his footsteps unhurried.

I stood there for a full ten seconds, doing absolutely nothing useful with the opportunity except watching him go.

I didn’t get a single concrete answer out of that conversation. Not one number, not one name, not one thread I could pull and follow back to anything I could put in print.

What I got instead was confirmation of something messier: The same man kept appearing everywhere this investigation led, under the same vague, well-dressed cover story.

And every time I pushed, he gave me just enough to keep talking and nothing at all to actually use. That wasn’t innocence. Innocent men got annoyed, or defensive, or bored.

Anton Vasylenko did none of those things. He simply absorbed every question like he’d already anticipated it and answered like a man reciting a script he’d rehearsed long before I’d ever asked.

An import consultant didn’t get invited to a summit two layers above a laundering structure. An import consultant didn’t stand in a ballroom like he owned the air in it.

Whoever Anton Vasylenko actually was, “import consultant” had stopped being a credible answer days ago.

Soon after he left the building, I felt the urge to do the same. So, I went after him, hoping to at least see the car he’d arrived in—get his license plate or something. However, by the time I stepped outside, he was already gone. Vanished without a trace.

I looked around for even a glimpse of his back, but saw no one that resembled him. How did he disappear so fast?

I sat in my car in the parking garage for several minutes before I trusted myself to drive. My hand pressed briefly against my own waist, against the place his hand had rested a beat too long.

The possibility of Anton being my mystery man made my pulse race. And with that came lots of unanswered questions that tugged at my mind.