Page 101 of Hunt Me, Daddy

“You like both.”

“Fuck you.”

“Eventually.”

My breath caught. He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes made every thought I had scatter like startled birds.

Not now, that look said.

But not never.

By the time he stepped back, my mouth was swollen, my sweater had slid off one shoulder, and every sensible part of me had abandoned the apartment in protest. Ivan pulled away first, his expression one of abject reluctance.

“I have a call,” he said, voice rougher than before.

“Very professional.”

“It is to my brother, Sergei.”

“Very terrifying.”

“A little.”

He adjusted his glasses, which should not have been hot, but it was for some insane reason.

“I’ll be in the other room,” he said. “Do not do anything reckless.”

I lifted both brows. He looked back at me, his eyes full of warning. Then he walked away.

I stood very still for five seconds.

Then ten.

Then I looked at the door he had disappeared through.

Then at my bag.

This is where a reasonable woman would have sat down, eaten the rest of her perfect food, obeyed the admittedly sound instruction not to take an unsafe route, and accepted that she was, for the moment, safer in Ivan Morozov’s expensive apartment than she was alone in her own.

But… I had never been especially reasonable.

Also, I needed something from my apartment.

Notneededneeded.

Needed in the way a person needed one solid object that belonged entirely to her when everything else in her life had started to feel arranged by a man who knew too much and kissed too well.

I had a backup drive at home. A real one. On it was Daniel’s old data set, plus some material I had never moved into the active Orlov file. I had left it because I hadn’t planned on being extracted from my apartment like evidence in a federal case. That was a good reason. There was another reason too.

I wanted to know if Ivan would actually make good on his threat.

I packed quietly, taking my laptop, my phone, and my knife. Ivan’s voice drifted faintly from the other room, low and Russian and I slipped through the front door. I took the elevator down, left through the side entrance, and used a rideshare ordered through a burner account that had never touched my legal name.The entire trip to my apartment, I told myself I was doing something rational. I needed the drive. I needed my own system. I needed to confirm a piece of Daniel’s timeline that had been sitting just outside my reach all day.

My apartment was quiet when I got there. I grabbed the hidden drive and pulled one handwritten note from the bottom of Daniel’s file. I spent no more than five minutes inside. When I returned to Ivan’s apartment, the place was quiet.

Too quiet.

He sat at the desk, his hands folded loosely in front of him. My stomach dropped, but it wasn’t because he looked angry. He didn’t, which somehow was worse. He looked calm.