Chapter Thirteen
I stepped into the hall in a red dress that hugged me in all the right places. The fabric accentuated my curves and contours, my heels making me look inches taller.
My blond hair wasn’t messy tonight; it was styled into a neat bun on my head, loose strands framing my face. My stilettos clicked against the floor as I moved through the crowd of guests dressed to impress. Men in tailored suits. Women in elegant dresses.
This was the closest I’d gotten to something with an actual public face attached. A gala. A guest list. Real people in a real room, instead of numbers moving between accounts that didn’t exist anywhere except on paper.
I had my buddy Jimmy, a tech genius, get my name on the list of personnel invited to this event. It wasn’t an easy task to pull off. But Jimmy was good at stuff like this. He even got me an invite in case things went south.
Unlike everyone else in this space, I was here with one goal: to gather as much information as I could for my research. On the surface, this gala looked like an annual investment summit of some sort, but I knew better. It was a gathering of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Every individual in this room was linked to one financial crime or the other, making me the odd one out. My voice of reason had warned me against coming here. But as always, I chose curiosity over reason.
I’d traced one of the shell companies I’d been looking into to its parent organization. Hargrove Capital Partners. I knew if I could get close to a couple of people and ask just the right questions, I’d find the answers I was searching for.
I reached out, helping myself to a glass of champagne from a nearby waiter’s tray. I cradled it for a moment, my eyes scanning the room for the perfect man to approach. Men were easier targets for missions like this because they were easily swayed by a pretty girl.
The plan was to find one, get chatty, and gradually find my way into his head. Shouldn’t be so hard. While I stood there analyzing the crowd, I noticed some of society’s most prominent figures mingling with these devils in suits.
Politicians.
Philanthropists.
Humanitarians.
College professors.
Some A-list celebrities weren’t left out as well. And that opened my eyes to a harsh reality I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
These people would openly condemn corruption and pretend to hate it with every fiber of their being, when in fact, they were in bed with the same people they criticized.
Hypocrites!
I scanned the room for forty minutes before I saw him—someone I least expected to see in a setting like this. The second I spotted him, my entire mental script for the evening rearranged itself without my permission.
Anton Vasylenko.
What was he doing here?
He stood near the far windows in a black suit that fit him the way everything about him seemed to fit—too precisely to be accidental. His dark hair was combed to perfection, those steel-gray eyes cold and observant.
Something was different about him. Familiar. Yet different.
From where I stood, it seemed like he was calculating outcomes no one else could see but him. My brows drew together as I watched him closely. At first, I wasn’t sure whether to reveal myself or continue observing him in secret.
His presence here sparked my curiosity in ways that made my palms suddenly sweaty. I couldn’t understand what he was doing here and why he didn’t seem out of place at all. He stood there like he was familiar with this setting, like it wasn’t his first time at a gathering like this.
The man exuded an air of confidence and composure, the kind that comes with some insane amount of power and influence.
He wasn’t holding a drink. He wasn’t performing the small, restless choreography everyone else in the room seemed to be doing. He simply stood, and the room organized itself loosely around him without seeming to notice it was doing it.
I felt my pulse do something complicated and unhelpful.
“Import consultant, my ass,” I whispered to myself, thinking he might not be the man he said he was.
I watched him from across the room with the focused attention I usually reserved for documents that didn’t add up. Import consultants weren’t invited to Hargrove Capital’s annual summit. They didn’t reek of wealth and power either.
My voice of reason asked me to hide and not reveal myself yet. And for the first time, my voice of curiosity actually agreed. However, before I could make any moves, he looked in my direction, and we locked eyes in a split second.
Shit. My heart skipped a beat, and my breath ceased.
His face remained neutral, as though he wasn’t affected by seeing me here. Two thoughts formed in my head: Either he’d somehow expected to see me here—which was highly unlikely—or he was good at masking his surprise. Which was the luckiest guess? My money was on the latter.
There was no use trying to hide anymore; he’d spotted me already. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. At least now I could engage him in a conversation and ask him a few questions as planned. He wasn’t supposed to be my target, but now that he was in my way, I didn’t see why not.
I drew a deep breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth. After summoning the courage I needed, I walked over to him, my footsteps slow and measured.
“Anton.” I halted in front of him, my voice low and even. “What—what’re you doing here?”
His lips curled into a faint grin. “Miss Bennett. Small world.”
“Small world, indeed,” I said. “I mean, what are the odds of running into you at an event like this, right?”
A waiter paused beside us, and he helped himself to a glass from the young man’s tray.
“Forgive me, but uhh…isn’t this a fairly exclusive guest list for an import consultant?”
He raised his brows, a hint of surprise flickering in his gaze. “That’s ironic coming from a journalism student who shouldn’t have made it past security.”
Fair enough, I thought to myself.
“If you must know,” he began. “Hargrove uses my firm for compliance work on a few of their international partnerships.” The words came out smoothly, without hesitation. “I’m here in a professional capacity.” He lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip. “What about you? What’re you doing here?”
“Press.” I held his gaze.
“Press?” He arched his brows in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I replied, sounding as confident as I could. “I’m covering the summit for an independent publication. Hargrove’s come up in some research I’ve been doing.”
“You don’t say.” He didn’t ask what kind of research, which, in itself, was a kind of answer.
I sipped from my glass, my eyes discreetly taking him in. His height. His build. The scent of his cologne and the coldness of his steel-gray eyes.
He’s hot.
I hated myself for entertaining the crazy thoughts forming in my head at a time like this.
“I assumed you were investigating trade compliance violations across the Midwest in general. I didn’t realize you’d narrowed it down to a specific firm.”
His voice sliced through my thoughts like a knife.
“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.