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I get my battle station ready: curled up on my couch with my laptop balanced on my knees and a glass of cheap wine sweating on the coffee table. The search results load. I scroll.

And scroll.

And keep scrolling.

The first page is all corporate stuff. Bland press releases and board announcements. I find a few articles from businessmagazines with milquetoast titles like “Lazarev Global Expands Into Southeast Asian Markets”and “Chairman Steps Back, Son Takes Helm.”

The photos are what I expected, too. Whether he’s shaking hands with a senator or cutting a ribbon for some new development, he’s dressed to the nines, massive, and unsmiling.

The second page is more of the same. So’s the third. But on the fourth page, there’s one photo that makes me pause. It’s older. The colors are faded and the resolution is grainy. Lukas is younger in it, maybe mid-thirties, and he’s standing next to a woman.

She’s beautiful, with thick, dark hair swept into an elegant updo and pale skin luminous against a deep red gown. She’s not smiling, either.

The caption reads:Lukas Lazarev and wife Elena at the 1998 Metropolitan Opera Gala.

Wife.Lukas’swife.My pulse quickens for reasons I either can’t or won’t explain.

I click around some more, until I find an obituary from 2007.

Elena Lazareva, wife of businessman Lukas Lazarev, passed away on March 15th after a brief illness. She was 42.

That’s all there is. There are no details about what kind of illness took her so young. Grieving family members offer no memories of what a generous or brilliant or gorgeous woman she might’ve been. According to this, she lived a full and complete life that just so happens to fit into two of the most boring sentences I’ve ever read.

I do the math in my head.Eighteen years ago.Kir would have been what, eleven? Twelve? There’s no mention of him anywhere that I can see.

I keep digging, though I’m suddenly feeling a little seasick. Wikipedia has a page on Lukas, but it’s painfully short and mostly focused on the company. Born in Russia. Immigrated in the late Seventies. Built Lazarev Global from a small shipping operation into a multinational conglomerate with cash flow out the wazoo.

There’s basically nothing before 1979. It’s like he didn’t exist until he showed up in New York with a duffel bag and a dream.

For a man who runs a billion-dollar company, he’s a ghost.

I try different search terms, using all the Google Fu that Jillian has forced into my brain over the years. Lukas’s name in quotes. His name plus “scandal.” His name plus “controversy.”

It turns up nothing useful. There are a few conspiracy-theory threads on Reddit that mention him, but it’s mostly anonymous tinfoil hats blabbering about alleged, highly speculative ties to organized crime. One commenter insists that his wife’s death had suspicious elements that the police ignored, but it got downvoted to hell and nobody else bothered to chime in.

Strangely, the second I click on the poster’s profile, I get a blank page.

And when I click back…

The post has been deleted.

I try another. Same thing. Post vanishes. Account goespoof.

That’s really, really weird.

I close my laptop and drain the rest of my wine. I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row, but the alcohol isn’t helping. Also, I can’t stop replaying this morning in my head.

To say it was one of the weirdest days of my life is a massive understatement. Mr. Lazarev knew about Gideon, for God’s sake! The exact dollar amount of my debt, down to the penny.

And then what was all that about cooking and sleeping and boyfriends? What kind of job interview isthat?

Then there’s Kir’s ominous warning. I’ve never seen him be anything less than brash and confident in eighteen months as his E.A. But his handsshookwhen he grabbed me in the shadows and whispered,My father collects things he finds interesting.

I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them tight.

What’s so interesting aboutme?

When you add it all up, I’ve got way more questions than answers. The job description is still a mystery. The documents on my new computer he mentioned were just standard HR forms and corporate policies, nothing that explains why the chairman of a billion-dollar company needs a personal assistant who can make pasta, doesn’t sleep well, and has never had a serious boyfriend.