Page 29 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

“Not bad,” I replied, a small grin tugging at my lips. “A little off. But not bad at all.”

She let out a quiet chuckle, extending her hand. “I’m Aria. Aria Bennett.”

I took it. Her palm was smaller than mine, the grip firmer than I expected, no hesitation in it at all. I held it exactly as long as a stranger should and not a fraction longer, though every part of my discipline had to be deployed to manage that exact restraint.

“So,” she said, settling back, coffee in both hands now, watching me over the rim of it with an attention that felt less like flirtation and more like cross-examination, “do you know anything about holding company structures that own pieces of multiple shell entities simultaneously?”

It wasn’t a subtle question. She didn’t intend it to be subtle. She was testing the floor again, harder this time, watching for the specific way I’d respond to a question aimed almost precisely at the architecture I’d spent fifteen years building.

“Generally, yes. It’s a fairly standard structure for risk diversification.” I held her gaze without flinching, the same way I’d held the gaze of men far more dangerous than a twenty-two-year-old with a notepad and an instinct she hadn’t learned yet to distrust. “Why do you ask? Are you planning to start laundering money, Miss Bennett?”

I watched the question land. I watched her decide, in real time, whether I’d said it as a joke or as something sharper. I watched her choose, deliberately, to treat it as a joke while her eyes told me she hadn’t fully decided that it was one.

“Would you tell me if I asked you to help?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“How much money you got,” I said, then dropped my voice to a low whisper. “I bill by the hour. I’m not cheap.

“That’s…comforting.” She studied me for a long moment, her eyes discreetly sweeping over my appearance.

I was familiar with that look. She was cataloging me, analyzing my dressing, and filing every detail away.

“Nice watch,” she said, glancing down at it.

That piece of jewelry cost more than her tuition fee and whole year’s rent combined.

“Thank you.”

A pause.

“You don’t talk like an import consultant.”

I raised my brows. “I didn’t realize there was a certain way import consultants talk.”

“Well, they’re mostly nervous. Apologetically. Like they’re worried someone’s going to ask them a real question.” She set her cup down.

“Since I don’t talk like them, I’d like to know who or what you think I talk like.”

She hesitated. “You talk like someone used to being the most informed person in every room he walks into.” A pause. “Someone important. Confident. Someone who’s used to calling the shots.”

Her observation skills were impressive.

It took genuine effort not to let that land on my face the way it landed somewhere lower, somewhere I’d stopped acknowledging existed in any professional context years ago.

She wasn’t afraid of me. She had not been afraid of me at any point in this conversation, not even when I’d deliberately tested the edge of how much she suspected. Not even when I’d made a joke about laundering directly to her face that any reasonable, self-preserving person would have found at minimum unsettling.

Every other person who had ever sat across from me in any capacity—business partners, rivals, men who knew exactly what I was capable of—carried some version of the same wariness in their posture, the careful stillness of someone managing a threat.

Aria sat across from me with her elbows on the table, and her chin tilted, treating the entire exchange like a puzzle she intended to solve rather than a danger she intended to survive.

“Careful,” I said, lighter than I felt. “You’re flattering me.”

“I’m assessing you. There’s a difference.” She picked her cup back up, eyes still on mine over the rim of it. “Occupational habit.”

“Mine, too, as it happens,” I replied.