Page 41 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

Was I tripping?

Was I overthinking this?

I was angry about this whole uncertainty. Genuinely angry, the kind that made me grip the steering wheel harder than necessary.

Not entirely at him.

At myself, for being unable to fully solve this puzzle. Anton was messing with me. He wasn’t the man he said he was. I just didn’t have any proof. But not for long.

If he was truly my mystery man, I was going to find out.

Then what? my voice of reason asked me. What’re you gonna do when you find out the truth?

I ignored the voice, started my car, and drove out of the parking garage.

Chapter 14 – Rodion

I had been unable to stop thinking about Aria and how she looked so gorgeous in that red dress at the gala. Each time I closed my eyes, she was all I saw in my head. The more I tried to focus on something else, the more I found myself drifting back to that event.

At this point, nothing she did surprised me anymore because the girl had proven countless times that she wasn’t someone to be underestimated.

In all sincerity, I hadn’t expected to run into her the other night. She wasn’t even on the list of the people I least expected to meet at the gala. And that’s why her presence almost caught me off guard.

For someone who had been closely monitoring her movements and schedules, I couldn’t understand how I missed her plans to show up at the Hargrove Annual Summit. Speaking of hows—how’d she even manage to secure an invite? That gathering was for specific individuals with specific skills in specific areas of corruption.

But as I said, nothing she had done, would do, or would do in the future would surprise me again. I admired her resilience, her spunk, and her inability to back down from an investigation.

Even after tampering with the files on her computer that I was certain would implicate me, fate still somehow found a way to put me right in the middle of what she was investigating.

The suspicion in her eyes when she spotted me in the hall almost disoriented me. However, that wasn’t my first time in a sticky situation. I’d signaled Yuri to wait after she began walking toward me.

He was already in motion, on his way to deliver a message to me. I couldn’t risk her seeing him around me because to her, I was Anton Vasylenko—an import consultant. She shouldn’t see a Bratva member reporting to me.

Did she know Yuri was a Bratva member? Probably not. But given how unpredictable she was, there was no telling if she would somehow recognize him as the man who scared Daniel Whitfield half to death at the café.

Too risky.

Yuri understood the message and stayed away.

I maintained a neutral expression, refusing to let my composure crack even a little. Yet, Aria still wasn’t convinced that this was a coincidence. The kind of questions she asked clearly indicated that she was starting to doubt who I said I was.

The more I tried to avoid her inquiries, the more she pressed on. Luckily for me, I’d rehearsed my lines and had all the right answers on the tip of my tongue.

It still wasn’t enough.

Aria didn’t believe a word I said—instead, my responses seemed to have stirred her curiosity.

The conversation wasn’t loud, nor was the back-and-forth heated. However, the accusation was clear as day. She didn’t say it to my face, but it was implied. Aria doubted my stance as an import consultant, and that skepticism was plastered all over her face.

I was sitting at my desk the next afternoon when the door opened, and Yuri walked inside.

“Boss.” He cleared his throat, halting in front of my table.

I looked at him, reclined in my chair.

“We have a problem,” he said.

Unfazed by this announcement, I asked softly, “What kind of problem? Did the Irish do something stupid to jeopardize the peace treaty between our organizations?”