8. The Ledger
The Ledger
The window of opportunity opened three mornings later, when Nathan kissed me goodbye and left for a meeting he said would last until noon.
I watched from the balcony as his car pulled out of the parking garage, tracked its progress down the street until it disappeared around the corner, and then waited an additional thirty minutes—just in case he'd forgotten something, just in case he came back early the way he had when I'd been in his study.
He didn't.
The laptop sat on his desk, closed and waiting. I opened it, and the password screen glowed to life.
This time, I didn't bother guessing. I pulled the USB drive from my pocket—the one I'd prepared after my first visit, loaded with a keylogger program I'd found on a security forum and modified with skills I hadn't known I possessed until I needed them.
I inserted it into the port, waited for the indicator light to blink green, and then typed a random password.
The screen shook its head at me—incorrect password—but the keylogger had already captured the keystrokes from the login screen's security protocol.
It would give me what I needed, but not yet.
The program required time to burrow into the system, to map the encryption architecture, to find the backdoors Nathan had either overlooked or considered too obscure to matter.
I had time. Not much, but enough.
The desk drawers yielded more than they had on my first visit.
Either Nathan was getting careless, or he'd decided the locked study door was sufficient security.
The paper files were still there—personnel dossiers, intelligence reports, financial records—but now I had the presence of mind to photograph each page with my phone, creating a digital archive I could examine later.
One file caught my attention immediately.
It was labeled "Acquisition Costs," and inside were spreadsheets detailing payments made to various entities over the past three years.
The amounts were staggering—hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, transferred to accounts identified only by code numbers.
But it was the dates that made my blood run cold.
Three years ago. Two and a half years ago.
Eighteen months ago. Payments that corresponded, with unsettling precision, to the timeline of my own conditioning at the Institute.
And more recently—six months ago, four months ago, two months ago—payments that aligned with the "consulting" trips Nathan had taken since we'd been together.
I photographed every page. Then I photographed the personnel files, the intelligence reports, the map of trafficking routes that covered half the east coast. By the time the USB drive beeped its completion signal, my phone's storage was nearly full and my hands were trembling with the effort of keeping my breathing steady.
Don't jump to conclusions, I told myself. Wait for proof. Wait for something undeniable.
But the photograph of Nathan and Gabriel as children was still hidden in my underwear drawer, and the name "Cross" was still echoing in my memory from Volosin's dying confession, and the pieces were assembling themselves into a picture I desperately didn't want to see.
I removed the USB drive, closed the laptop, and locked the study door behind me. The key went back into Nathan's nightstand. My phone went into my pocket. And the smile I'd been practicing for weeks went back onto my face.
By the time Nathan came home, I was in the kitchen, seasoning salmon fillets and chopping vegetables for the dinner I'd planned.
The domestic tableau was perfect—candles flickering on the table, wine breathing in its decanter, soft jazz playing from the speakers.
I'd even changed into the dress he liked best, a pale blue sundress with thin straps that made my shoulders look delicate.
"There she is," he said, setting down his briefcase. "Something smells incredible."
"Lemon dill salmon. Your favorite." I tilted my face up for his kiss, and he gave it freely—warm, possessive, everything a fiancé should be. "How was the meeting?"
"Productive." He loosened his tie, watching me move around the kitchen. "New client, corporate security consultation. Should be a good contract."
"That's wonderful." I poured him a glass of wine—the Pinot Noir he'd been saving for a special occasion—and handed it to him with a smile that had become second nature. "You work so hard for us."
"For you." He took a sip, his eyes never leaving mine. "Everything I do is for you."
The words should have been romantic. Instead, they made me think of the ledgers. The payments. The timeline that aligned so perfectly with my own destruction.
Everything I do is for you.
Including, perhaps, the things I was only beginning to understand.
Dinner was an exercise in performance. I asked about his meeting—the details he was willing to share, the clients he'd be working with, the timeline for the project.
He asked about my day—the bar shift I'd taken to cover Matt's inventory, the book I was reading, the walk I'd gone on through the park.
We talked about wedding plans, honeymoon destinations, the house we'd buy someday with a garden and a study and a nursery.
It was all so beautiful. So perfectly constructed. So exactly what I'd wanted to believe.
After dinner, I led him to the bedroom with a hand gentle on his wrist. "You've been working so hard," I murmured. "Let me take care of you tonight."
He didn't argue. He never argued when I offered to take the lead—another pattern I'd catalogued, another weakness I'd learned to exploit.
I undressed him slowly, letting my fingers trail across his skin with deliberate reverence.
The scars on his chest. The muscle of his shoulders.
The trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath his waistband.
"Lie back," I said, pressing him onto the mattress. "Just relax. Let me do everything."
I started at his neck, pressing soft kisses along the line of his jaw, feeling the stubble scrape against my lips.
My hands moved across his chest, tracing patterns that made his breath catch, finding the places where his body responded most intensely.
I'd memorized these places over months of careful observation—the spot behind his left ear, the curve of his collarbone, the sensitive skin just above his hip bone.
"God, Bunny." His voice was already rough. "You're incredible."
"I know." I smiled against his skin. "That's why you love me."
I moved lower, my mouth tracing the path my hands had mapped.
His stomach tensed under my lips. His hands found my hair, not guiding but holding on, the way a drowning man holds onto driftwood.
By the time I reached his hips, he was already hard, already leaking, already trembling with the anticipation I'd so carefully built.
"Look at me," I said.
His eyes met mine, dark with want, and I held his gaze as I took him in my mouth.
The technique was flawless. Gabriel had trained me to be flawless, and Nathan had never complained about the results.
I used every trick I'd learned—the slow descent that made him gasp, the hollowing of my cheeks that made him curse, the rhythmic swallowing that made his hands tighten in my hair.
I worked him with the patience of a sculptor, building his pleasure layer by layer until he was shaking with the effort of holding back.
"Bunny, I'm going to—"
I pulled back just before the edge, letting him cool down, then started again. The denial was calculated—Gabriel had taught me that too—but Nathan didn't seem to mind. His head fell back against the pillows, his chest heaving, his control crumbling with every pass of my tongue.
"Please," he finally gasped. "Please, I need—"
"What do you need?" I asked, my voice sweet as honey.
"Your mouth. God, your mouth. Please don't stop."
I gave him what he asked for. I took him deep, deeper than was comfortable, and hummed against his length in a way that made him cry out. When he came, it was with my name on his lips and his hands fisted in the sheets, his whole body shuddering with the force of his release.
I swallowed everything. Gabriel had trained me to do that, too.
Afterward, I crawled up his body and rested my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow from frantic to steady. His arms wrapped around me, and he pressed a kiss to my forehead with a tenderness that almost felt real.
"You're amazing," he murmured. "I don't deserve you."
"I'm the one who doesn't deserve you," I said, and the words were true in ways he'd never understand.
We lay in comfortable silence, his fingers tracing idle patterns on my shoulder. I could feel him drifting toward sleep, his body heavy and sated, his defenses lowered by pleasure and wine and the illusion of safety.
"Hey," I said softly. "Can I ask you something?"
"Mm?"
"When we were going through the Volosin files, you mentioned a name. Monika, I think. Who was she?"
The question was casual. Almost sleepy. But I felt his body tense beneath me, just for a moment, before relaxing again.
"Monika?" His voice was carefully neutral. "She was part of a case I worked a few years back. Trafficking victim. She helped us bring down a ring in Miami."
"What happened to her?"
"Witness protection, last I heard. She's fine. Why do you ask?"
"I just... the name sounded familiar. I thought maybe I'd met her somewhere. One of the shelters, maybe."
"No." His hand resumed its lazy stroking on my shoulder. "She was before your time. Before I even knew you existed."
Before I even knew you existed. The phrase hit something in my chest—a chord that resonated with implications I couldn't quite name. Nathan had never mentioned a Monika before. Had never mentioned Miami. Had never mentioned any trafficking cases he'd worked before he found me.
I filed the name away with the photograph and the ledgers and the pill in my medicine cabinet. Pieces of a puzzle I was only beginning to assemble.
"I love you," I whispered.
"Love you too, baby." His voice was slurred with approaching sleep. "More than anything."
Within minutes, his breathing had evened out into the deep rhythm of unconsciousness.
I lay beside him, staring at the ceiling, my mind racing through the data I'd collected.
Monika. Mercy Logistics. The payments. The timeline.
The photograph of two brothers who'd grown up to become very different kinds of monsters.
Who are you, Nathan Cross? I thought. And what have you done to me?
The answers were out there. The answers were in the encrypted files on his laptop, in the contacts I hadn't yet traced, in the network of lies and half-truths that surrounded my life like a cage I'd never noticed because it was painted in such beautiful colors.
Tomorrow, I'd decrypt the files. Tomorrow, I'd trace the contacts. Tomorrow, I'd keep digging until I found the truth—no matter how much it hurt.
Tonight, I just lay in the arms of the man who'd saved me, and I wondered if he'd been the one I needed saving from all along.