Chapter 14
Kit
Ivan Morozov was already there when I arrived, which should have annoyed me.
It did annoy me, technically, but not in the way I wanted.
I had shown up eight minutes early because I believed in controlling entry points and also because arriving exactly on time to coffee with a man like him felt like stepping into a room someone else had arranged.
I expected to beat him there. Expected to choose the table, map the exits, order first, and decide how much of my attention he was allowed to have before he walked through the door.
Instead, he sat at a table near the back wall with a view of the entrance, the side corridor, and the long row of windows facing the street.
Not my first-choice table. My second. Which was also annoying.
He had a paper cup in front of him, a closed notebook beside it, and no phone visible. That last detail bothered me more than it should have. Men like him always had a phone somewhere. A missing device was either respect, confidence, or a performance of both.
Ivan looked up as I entered like he knew I had arrived. My hand tightened once around the strap of my bag, and his gaze flicked to my fingers before returning to my face.
“Kit.”
For some reason, my body seemed to like being recognized by him.
The last time I’d been this close to him, I hadn’t been across a table at all—I’d had my back to a sink and his hand in my panties, and I’d come hard from nothing more than his thumb dancing over my clit.
Now every ordinary thing he did was contaminated by it from the slight smile on his lips to the way my gaze dipped to his hand holding his coffee cup.
Do not bring it up, I told myself. Whatever you do, do not be the one who brings it up.
“Morozov,” I said.
His mouth moved in what looked like the tiniest smile.
“Ivan,” he corrected.
“You sure? Morozov has a little more menace. Better brand identity.”
“You think I need help with menace?”
“No. That’s why I’m calling it brand identity.”
He smiled and stood as I approached the table and I blinked before I could stop myself.
I wasn’t used to that. Not in a patriarchal, chair-pulling, allow-me-to-perform-manners-at-you-until-you-feel-owned way.
He didn’t make a production of it. He simply stood because I was arriving, as if the room had shifted and it would be rude not to acknowledge the change.
Do not make that mean something, I told myself. My brain did not respond, which meant it was busy making it mean something anyway.
I sat across from him, choosing the chair that gave me the best angle on the windows and the register line. He waited until I settled before sitting again.
Noted.
“What do you drink?” he asked.
“Coffee.”
“That narrows it down.”
“I’m efficient.”
“You’re evasive.”
“Only before caffeine.”
The look he gave me said he didn’t believe the limitation applied, but he didn’t push.
That was becoming one of the more irritating things about him.
Ivan Morozov had the patience of a predator and the manners of a man who knew exactly how close he could stand before a person noticed the knife in his hand.
He lifted his cup. “I haven’t ordered for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because assuming how a woman takes her coffee after one conversation would be arrogant.”
“And you’re not arrogant?”
“No.”
I almost laughed and it must have shown, because his eyes flickered with amusement behind his glasses.
“Confident,” he said. “Not arrogant.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Arrogance requires an audience.”
“That is either the best answer I’ve heard this week or the most alarming.”
“Both can be true.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
I went to the counter and ordered a black coffee because cream felt too revealing today for reasons I refused to unpack.
When I came back, Ivan was exactly where I had left him.
Same posture. Same cup. Same contained stillness that made the rest of the café look slightly undisciplined by comparison.
The place was small, warm, and expensive. Morning light came through the front windows in pale strips, catching on steam, glass, and the frames of Ivan’s glasses. The room smelled like espresso, cinnamon, and decadent pastries baking in the oven.
I sat down and he glanced at my cup. I waited for him to say something about my choice of black coffee. He did not. Another point to him. Possibly against him. I had lost track.
He watched me over the rim of his cup, unhurried.
“You’re thinking about what I did to you yesterday in the restroom, aren’t you?”
I held his gaze and refused to drop it, because dropping it would tell him he was right. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“Yes,” he said. “You do.”
Bastard.
My gaze dropped to his hands again and I forced myself to swallow back my shame and act normal.
“So,” I said, folding my hands around the cup. “Do you always make professional acquaintances argue before breakfast?”
“Only the interesting ones.”
“I assume you have a low threshold for interesting.”
“I have a very high threshold actually.”
“You’re doing it again,” I said.
“What?”
“Answering like you already know where the conversation is going.”
He leaned back slightly. “Do I?”
I narrowed my eyes. “See, that.”
“That was a question.”
“That was a trap with punctuation.”
His mouth curved. “You object to traps?”
“I object to other people setting them badly.”
“And when they set them well?”
I took a sip of coffee to buy myself time, which was a bad idea. It was hot enough to punish me for my impatience.
“I make a note,” I said finally.
“Of the trap?”
“Of the person.”
His gaze rested on me, steady and pale and far too attentive. “And what have you noted?”
“About you?”
“Yes.”
“Vague. Controlled. Doesn’t waste words. Possibly allergic to small talk. Knows more than he lets on.”
“Accurate.”
“That’s not the denial I expected.”
“No.”
I waited and he let the silence just sit there.
Most men would have filled it. Most men would have tried to defend themselves and turn the conversation back on me before the silence got too intimate.
Ivan did none of that. He sat across from me in a café full of people and let me decide whether I wanted to follow the thread.
That should have felt like pressure, but it didn’t.
It felt like even ground, which was infinitely more dangerous.
I picked up my coffee again and gave myself permission to run the test I’d planned before leaving the apartment.
“I’ll be honest,” I said, which was usually a sign that I was about to lie selectively. “Most of my work is less exciting than people think. Defensive assessments. Compliance cleanup. Client handholding. I don’t do much active attribution anymore.”
Ivan’s expression did not change.
Good.
“Too much guesswork,” I continued. “Too much narrative built around incomplete data. I prefer confirmed indicators. Hard artifacts. Things that hold up under pressure.”
What I was telling him was incorrect; I wanted to see if he’d correct me, but I could tell that he knew what I was saying was wrong. I didn’t know how I knew that he knew. I just did.
He did not correct me. Instead, he took a slow drink of coffee, set the cup down, and asked, “Then how do you handle a case where the confirmed indicators only exist because someone wanted you to confirm them?”
My fingers tightened around my cup. There it was. The question only worked if the thing I’d said were true.
Which meant he knew it wasn’t.
Which meant he had seen the test and stepped around it without making me feel foolish for setting it.
I didn’t confront him. Instead, I smiled faintly and said, “Then I ask who benefits from my certainty.”
A flicker of approval moved through his eyes. It was there and gone so fast I might have missed it if I hadn’t spent my entire life watching people try not to reveal things.
“And if the answer is everyone?” he asked.
“Then I assume the truth is somewhere no one wants me looking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“Useful one.”
“Those are often the same.”
“Are you worried about me, Ivan?”
I meant it lightly. Mostly.
His gaze held mine for one beat too long, and a knot beneath my ribs tightened with the specific unpleasantness of realizing I had just brushed a live wire.
“Yes,” he said.
Just like that.
My mouth went dry. I looked down at my coffee because eye contact had become suddenly very expensive.
“That’s a strange thing to say to someone you barely know.”
“Barely,” he repeated.
I looked back up. “Do you barely know me?” I asked.
His face gave me nothing.
His silence gave me more.
For a second, the café noise thinned around us. All of it blurred beneath the weight of Ivan Morozov looking at me like he had been asked a question with only one honest answer and had decided not to give it yet.
“I know your work,” he said finally.
“Convenient.”
“True.”
“Those are often the same too.”
His mouth lifted in the faintest glimmer of a smirk, but his eyes stayed serious. “You are exposed.”
I sat back. “That sounded less like coffee and more like a warning.”
“It is both.”
“Multifunctional. Very efficient.”
“Kit.”
My name again, but he’d said it lower this time. I did not like how effectively it interrupted me. Actually, I did like it. That was the problem.
“You work alone,” he said. “You prefer it. You control the environment, the tools, the pace, the assumptions. That makes sense for certain kinds of work.”
“Is this where you tell me I need a team?”
“No.”
“Good, because I was preparing to leave.”
“You need a perimeter.”
I blinked. “I have a perimeter,” I said.
“Not for the type of file you are circling.”
There it was. He definitely knew more than he was letting on. My pulse started to race.
“You’re making assumptions.”
“Yes.”
“Do you usually warn people based on assumptions?”
“No.”
“Then why me?”
He studied me for a long moment. “Because your assumptions are really good.”