Page 39 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

“I hadn’t, until recently.” I cleared my throat, keeping my voice conversational. “Hargrove holds a minority position in three entities I’ve been tracking. All three routes through the same intermediary structure in Cyprus.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. Not alarm—nothing so obvious—but a recalibration. It was swift and contained, the same quality I’d watched grown men in boardrooms fail to fully hide when a number didn’t match what they’d hoped I wouldn’t notice.

He didn’t fail to hide it, exactly. He simply let me see precisely as much of it as he wanted me to see.

“Cyprus is a common jurisdiction for risk diversification,” he said. “Half the firms in this room could tell you the same thing if you asked them.”

“I’m not asking half the firms in this room. I’m asking you.” I sipped my champagne.

His lips curled into that sexy smirk again. “Why me specifically?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I teased, mirroring his grin. “It’s because you’re the only person in this room I’ve already had a conversation with about Cyprus. And you didn’t flinch then either.” I watched his face closely. “That’s starting to feel less like coincidence.”

“I don’t flinch at geography, Miss Bennett. It seems like an odd thing to hold against a person, don’t you think?”

“It’s not the geography. It’s the timing.” I kept pressing because backing off had never once been a skill I’d successfully developed. “An import consultant who happens to be doing compliance work for a firm that happens to sit two layers above three shell entities I’ve been tracking for months. That’s a lot of ‘happens’ for one man.”

He let out a quiet chuckle. “Coincidences happen more often than journalists like to admit, Miss Bennett.” A pause. “It would make your job considerably less interesting if they didn’t.”

“Hmm.” I hesitated. “Is that what this is? A coincidence?”

“What else can it be?”

“I don’t know; you tell me.”

Then came that smug smirk again.

“I think,” he said, voice dropping slightly, “that you’ve already decided what this is, and you’re asking me questions hoping I’ll either confirm it or talk you out of it. I’m not sure which outcome you actually want.”

That landed closer to the truth than I wanted to admit, and the fact that he’d identified it so precisely unsettled me more than any answer he could have given.

He’s deflecting. Smart. But smart in this context means “lies.”

“I want the truth,” I said. “Whichever direction that happens to point.”

“I can offer you the truth, but it most certainly will be less dramatic than what you’re hoping for,” he replied, his gaze never leaving mine. “I review compliance documentation. I’m not the architect behind it.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“I’m afraid it’s the only one I have.”

A photographer drifted past us, camera raised, scanning for a usable shot among the cluster of donors near the bar.

Anton moved away from the camera lens, his hand finding the hollow of my back in a heartbeat. Before I’d registered the photographer as a problem at all, Anton guided me half a step sideways, out of frame.

The motion was so smooth and unhurried that it could have passed, to anyone watching, as nothing more than a man making space for a woman to move past a waiter.

His hand didn’t return to his side immediately.

It settled instead at my waist, light, deliberate, lingering a beat longer than the maneuver required.

That touch was strangely familiar, and I felt the warmth of it through the fabric of my dress. This was the first time Anton had his hand on a part of my body that wasn’t my hand. Yet it felt like he’d held me like this before, even though I didn’t remember that ever happening. At least not with him.

My mind flashed back to my mystery man—that night in the alleyway, the other night at the festival on campus, and the café incident. These were the only other times I felt this same touch.

What the…?

I looked up at him, a hint of shock and disbelief dancing in my gaze.