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“Have you ever even had a boyfriend, Davina?”

The question is so unexpected that I can’t control my reaction. My face burns. My hands clench at my sides. I want to slap him, scream at him, do something to wipe that knowing look off his face.

Instead, I push against his chest.

My palms connect with solid muscle beneath the fabric of his shirt, and I shove as hard as I can. He lets me move him, but he doesn’t step back far enough. I slip past him and walk to the other side of the room, putting as much distance between us as the space allows.

“That’s not your concern,” I say, my voice shaking despite my best efforts.

“Isn’t it?”

“No. It isn’t.”

I can hear him moving behind me, but I don’t turn around. I can’t look at him right now. If I look at him, I’ll see that look in his eyes again.

“You’re very defensive about this,” he says.

“You’re interrogating me about my personal life like it’s relevant to anything.”

“It’s relevant to understanding who you are. Who you are is relevant to understanding why you’re here.”

I turn around. He’s standing near the couch now, his hands in his pockets, his posture deceptively relaxed. He looks like a man having a casual conversation, not like someone who just cornered me against a wall and asked about my romantic history.

“I’m here because you had me kidnapped,” I say. “That’s the only reason.”

“You’re here because you breached my systems. That’s the proximate cause, but there’s something else, isn’t there? Something that made you accept a job you didn’t fully understand, something that made you willing to work for people who didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

“I needed the money.”

“Please.” He almost smiles. “You’re a CEO of a successful company. You don’t need money.”

“Then I needed the challenge.”

“There it is.” He takes a step toward me. “The challenge. The system you couldn’t resist trying to understand.”

I don’t say anything. He’s right, and we both know it.

“You’re like me,” he says. “You see something complex and you want to take it apart. You want to know how it works, what makes it function, where the weaknesses are. You can’t help yourself.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“No?” He takes another step. “Then why are you still standing here, arguing with me, instead of sitting on that couch and waiting for me to leave? Why are you engaging, trying to figure out what I want from you?”

“Because I want to get out of here.”

“You can’t help yourself.” He stops a few feet away from me. “I think you want to understand me the same way you wanted to understand my systems. That’s what scares you.”

My pulse is thudding in my throat. He’s too close, too perceptive, too much. I can feel his presence like a physical weight, pressing against my skin, making it hard to think clearly.

“I’m not scared of you,” I say.

“Your mouth says one thing. Your face says another.”

Then he steps back, breaking whatever spell had settled over the room. He moves toward the door with that same controlled grace, and I realize with a start that he’s leaving.

“I’ll have dinner sent to you,” he says, his hand on the door handle. “And Davina?”

I don’t respond.