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Except for the files on the desk.

I pick up the first one, and my blood turns to ice.

It’s me. The file is about me. My name, my photo, my company history. Everything from my educational background to my professional certifications to a list of clients I’ve worked with over the years.

I pick up another. More photos: me at conferences, me leaving my office, me having dinner with Sienna at a restaurant I don’t even remember. They’re dated, timestamped, organized with meticulous precision.

Some of them are from before I was kidnapped. Before I ever heard the name Gromov.

Maxim had been watching me.

I flip through the files with shaking hands. Company records. Travel schedules. Financial statements. A psychological profile that details my personality traits, my weaknesses, my likely responses to various forms of pressure.

It’s everything. Everything he could ever want to know about me, compiled and organized like I’m just another target. Just another asset to be used and discarded.

The attraction I’ve been feeling curdles into something else. Something colder.

Who is this man? How does he know so much?

What else has he been hiding?

I drop the files and back away from the desk like it’s on fire. My heart is pounding, my breath is coming in short gasps, and I can feel the fear rising in my throat like bile.

I thought I understood him. I thought I was starting to see the man beneath the monster, the person who shielded me with his own body, who whispered my name like it meant something.

I don’t know him at all. I don’t know anything at all.

Chapter Eighteen - Maxim

I hear her before I see her.

The footsteps in the hallway are too quick to belong to anyone else. By the time my office door flies open, I’m already on my feet, already bracing for impact.

She storms in with fury radiating from every line of her body, and she’s holding something in her hand. Files. My files. The ones I keep locked in this office, which I never leave unattended.

She throws them onto my desk, and photographs scatter across the surface like fallen leaves. Her face. Her life, documented in cold, clinical detail.

“What the hell is this?” she demands.

I don’t pretend to misunderstand. “How did you get in here?”

“The door was open.” She steps closer, jabbing her finger at the photographs. “You were watching me before you kidnapped me. Before any of this. You had people following me, taking pictures of me, documenting every aspect of my life.”

“Yes.”

The word hangs in the air between us. She stares at me like she expected me to deny it, like she was hoping I would have some explanation that would make it all make sense.

“You were stalking me.”

“I was gathering intelligence.”

“On me? A woman you’d never met?”

“On the person who breached my systems.” I move around the desk, putting it between us, but she doesn’t back down. “Once I identified you as the hacker, I needed to know everything. Your skills, your weaknesses, your connections. It’s standard procedure.”

“Standard procedure?” Her voice cracks. “You have photos of me at dinner with my friends. You have my travel schedules, my financial records, a… a psychological profile. That’s not intelligence gathering.”

I should deny it. I should explain that the file was compiled before I ever saw her, before I ever brought her here, before I ever touched her. I should tell her that it’s just business, just strategy, just the way I operate.