Page 31 of His Ruthless Obsession

Killian’s office is unsurprisingly closed, but what baffles me is that his door is actually unlocked. Does he usually not lock it, or has he gotten distracted since I’ve been here?

I push those thoughts back. I can wonder about it later when I’m safe in my room again.

The door opens soundlessly, and I have to look away. I tiptoe inside his office, feeling around the wall for a light switch that might illuminate the space, but I don’t find one.

Maybe there is a lamp somewhere inside that I can turn on—

My fingers tap a small button, turning on the lights overhead. I blink a few times, adjusting my sight to the sudden change. His office looks the same as the last time I’d been in here. Still clean and well-kept with barely a speck of dust in sight.

I leave the door open and head over to his desk, the dark wood gleaming against the warm lights above me. I pass the couch that I’d woken up on only a few short days ago, back when I didn’t know how drastically my life was about to change.

Killian’s desk doesn’t have much on it, save for a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I bend down and look at the drawers on the sides, tugging on a few of them. They were locked.

“Damn,” I mumble to myself and stand again. My voice sounds so hoarse it makes me wince.

He really did a number on my poor throat.

I run my hand over the glossy surface of the tabletop and wind my hand down around its edge. The tips of my fingers prod the space where his chair had been pushed in. I notice a small notch in the wood on the underside of the desk, and I kneel to get a better look at it.

If I wasn’t looking for it, I would think it’s unintentional. Some kind of dent from manufacturing or transportation or something like that… but I’m the daughter of a Don, and I know it has to be some kind of false bottom.

I press up onto it with my other hand, sliding the small panel away from the desk and unlatching it to show the hidden drawer inside. I practically grin to myself.

“Bingo.”

There is a thick file inside of it, pressed up against the far side of the drawer where I can barely see the page edges. I grab it and slap it onto the desk, leaving the false bottom on the floor by my feet. I can feel a sort of hunger swell within me, knowing that if Killian went to such great lengths to hide this, ithasto be good.

My fingers find the edge of the manila folder and flick it open.

I blink in surprise, seeing a few pictures of me sitting on top. There are various candid shots of me out and about in the streets of Chicago. I can’t really tell when they’re from, given that there is no timestamp on any of them, but they are all different days.

I push them aside to look at the documents underneath.

The first thing I see is a profile of me with a breakdown of what I look like, as well as typical people I interact with on a daily basis. I flip the page, seeing my recent google calendar with all of the color coding I’d painstakingly taken the time to do while I’d been waiting for Etta to get her hair done at the beginning of the month.

I flip the pages again, and it’s more from my google calendar. Except it’s spanning backmonths.

It makes me shake my head in disbelief. So, he’s been planning this for a while. At least, he’s been stalking me in order to figure out how close I am to my family to use me against them. Next are profiles on the men I’ve dated since college—their scarcity is almost laughable.

How did he get any of this?

“I want to say I’m mad,” comes a voice from outside the doorway, “but really, I’m just disappointed.”

I freeze in place, feeling myself stop breathing altogether. I don’t want to move, for some reason, hoping that he’ll just pass by without another word and let me be.

Of course, I’m not that lucky.

I hear the door shut with a firmness that spikes my nerves. Bravely, I turn to look up at him, seeing his hands buried in the pockets of his sweatpants. He’s shirtless, his skin giving off a soft tanned glow under these warm lights.

I swallow hard, my fingers curling around the pages in my hand. I hadn’t even gotten halfway through it. I can’t imagine what else he’d dug up on me that I didn’t get to see.

That I might never get to see.

He stops in front of the desk, his shoulders rolling back while he tilts his chin up with an unkind expression. He doesn’t bother glancing down at the file as he knows exactly what I’ve found.

I remain still, trying to reel in my sudden anger. I can’t believe he so casually had such an in-depth file on me. What the hell is wrong with him? Does he think that I’d somehownotfreak out about someone having this kind of information?

I can feel my fingers tighten around the pages, wrinkling them in my hands.

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