Chapter 3 – Drew
Rafael had leaned back in his leather chair, cigar smoke curling around his face like a living thing, and said the words that gave me both freedom and responsibility: “I don’t care how you get it done. Work like you do in Russia. Use your instincts. I only want the damn result.”
He’d lit that cigar like he didn’t give a fuck about the world burning around him, which was probably accurate. Rafael Kamarov had built his empire on the ashes of other men’s mistakes, and he wore that power like a second skin.
“You’re family,” he’d added, gray eyes meeting mine across the desk. “That means I trust you to see what needs seeing, handle what needs handling. No filters. No politics. Just results.”
I’d nodded, understanding the subtext beneath his words. He was giving me permission to dig, to investigate, to question anything that didn’t feel right. He was also absolving himself of responsibility for whatever I might discover.
Smart. Ruthless. Exactly what I’d expect from a Kamarov.
What he didn’t know, what I hadn’t told him, was that I’d already found something that didn’t feel right. Something that moved through his building like a shadow with access to every locked door and confidential file.
Someone named Cassandra Miller.
***
The pattern emerged during my second week. Every time Rafael left the building—meetings, site visits, business dinners—she transformed. The efficient assistant who moved with military precision became something else entirely. Something calculating and deliberate and fucking suspicious.
I’d started staying late, hiding my presence behind darkened office windows and security feeds I’d quietly accessed. Watching her move through the building when she thought no one was paying attention.
No knock. No hesitation. She’d moved through Rafael’s private office like she owned it, fingers flying over his computer keyboard with practiced ease.
Then to the security office, where she’d entered a code that made the guard on duty conveniently disappear for a smoke break he hadn’t planned on taking.
She’d opened locked drawers, photographed documents with a phone she kept separate from her work device, copied files onto drives that vanished into her bag like they’d never existed.
Professional. Methodical. Absolutely not authorized.
What bothered me most wasn’t what she was doing—industrial espionage was common enough in our world. It was the timing. The precision. The way she only operated when Rafael was guaranteed to be elsewhere, like she’d memorized his schedule down to the minute.
Like she’d been doing this for a very long time.
I should have told Rafael immediately. Should have compiled evidence, built a case, handed him proof that his trusted assistant was systematically betraying him. But something stopped me—instinct, maybe, or the nagging certainty that I was missing pieces of a larger puzzle.
I was temporary here. The outsider. The stand-in for Maxim, who’d vanish back to Russia in six weeks. This wasn’t my organization to protect, wasn’t my battle to fight.
But I made damn sure Cassandra knew I was watching.
It became a game I hadn’t agreed to play. Every time she turned a corner, I was there. Every time she tried to slip into a restricted area, I materialized in her peripheral vision. No words. No accusations. Just my presence, constant and unavoidable.
She didn’t flinch—I’d give her credit for that. But her jaw would tighten, muscles tensing beneath pale skin like she was preparing for impact. Her fingers would curl slightly, that tell she probably didn’t know she had, the one that said she was calculating distances and exits.
I’d catch her eyes across the office and hold her gaze just long enough to make my point clear: I see you. I’m watching. Whatever you’re doing, I know.
The first time I’d done it, she’d stared back with those brown eyes gone cold as winter, silently asking what I intended to do about it. When I’d simply smiled—not friendly, not warm, just acknowledgment—something had shifted in her expression.
Recognition, maybe. Or the beginning of real fear.
I found myself enjoying it more than I should have. The way her carefully controlled composure would crack just slightly when I’d appear where she didn’t expect me. The tension that crackled between us like static electricity, dangerous and magnetic in equal measure.
She was trying to maintain her routine, trying to act like my surveillance didn’t affect her. But I could see the cracks forming. The slight hesitation before entering certain rooms. The way she’d check over her shoulder more frequently. The calculation behind every movement.
I was ruining the peace of her life, and some fucked-up part of me loved it.
***
“You look like shit,” Kirill had said when I’d walked into Nocturne that Friday night, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Two weeks of late nights watching security feeds and trailing Cassandra through Rafael’s building had left me running on caffeine and spite. But I’d agreed to meet my best friend for drinks because even I recognized when I needed to step back from an obsession before it consumed me.
The club assaulted my senses immediately—noise, neon, vodka, perfume thick enough to choke on, and smoke that hung in the air like fog. Bodies moved on the dance floor with varying degrees of coordination, and the bass line vibrated through my chest like a second heartbeat.
Kirill had secured a private booth in the back, elevated enough to see the entire club while maintaining some distance from the chaos. He’d already ordered vodka—the real stuff, not the watered-down shit Americans called premium.
“Two weeks, and you’re already embracing Chicago’s nocturnal lifestyle,” he said, pouring two glasses with the ease of long practice. “How’s the assignment treating you?”
“Like a curse disguised as family obligation.” I accepted the glass, downing half in one swallow. The burn was familiar and grounding. “Rafael wants results but no details. Everyone else wants details but no responsibility. And his assistant—”
I stopped, because speaking about Cassandra felt like giving her power she didn’t deserve.
“His assistant, what?” Kirill prompted, too curious for his own good.
But I didn’t answer, because that’s when I saw her.
She walked through Nocturne’s entrance like she owned every inch of space her body occupied, and something in my chest tightened with recognition that felt dangerously close to hunger.
Black dress that hugged curves I’d been trying not to notice, hair pinned up to expose the pale column of her neck, heels that added height she didn’t need and made her legs look endless.
She moved beside Rafael, the perfect professional companion, but there was something different about her here. Looser. More relaxed. Like she’d shed the armor she wore in the office and replaced it with something equally dangerous but less defensive.
Rafael stopped to speak with someone near the entrance, and Cassandra kept walking. Straight to the bar, where a girl with dark hair and sharp eyes greeted her like they were sisters separated at birth.
I watched her order a drink. Watched her laugh at something the bartender said, head thrown back slightly, exposing more of that pale throat. Watched her raise her arms to adjust a pin in her hair, and the movement made the dress shift, showed skin that made my jaw clench involuntarily.
She didn’t care. Didn’t seem to notice or give a damn that half the men in this club were watching her with the kind of attention that made my hands curl into fists. She was careless, exposed, had no business looking that relaxed in a crowd where predators outnumbered prey three to one.
“Drew.” Kirill’s voice cut through my spiral. “You all right, брат?”
“Fine.” The word came out rougher than intended.
“You don’t look fine. You look like you want to start a war.”
I forced myself to look away from Cassandra, to focus on my friend instead of the woman who’d been fucking with my head for two weeks straight. “Rafael’s assistant. She’s a problem.”
“Cassandra Miller?” Kirill’s eyebrows rose. “What kind of problem?”
“The kind that goes through confidential files when her boss isn’t looking.
The kind that has access codes she shouldn’t have and uses them when she thinks no one’s watching.
” I poured another vodka, needing something to do with my hands that didn’t involve crossing the club and removing every man’s eyes from her exposed skin. “I hate her.”
Kirill had the audacity to laugh. Actually laugh, like I’d told the funniest joke he’d heard all year. Then he turned to look at Cassandra, studying her with the analytical precision that made him one of the best intelligence officers in our organization.
When he turned back, his expression was knowing in a way that made me immediately defensive.
“You don’t hate her,” he declared with absolute certainty.
“The fuck I don’t—”
“Your face lit up like a firecracker when she walked in.” He gestured with his glass, vodka sloshing slightly. “You’ve been watching her like she’s the only person in this entire club, and not with the expression of someone conducting surveillance. That’s something else entirely.”
“That’s bullshit.” But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Knew that Kirill had seen something I’d been refusing to acknowledge to myself.
“Is it?” He leaned back, studying me with those sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. “When’s the last time a woman got under your skin like this? When’s the last time you gave a shit about someone being ‘careless and exposed’ instead of just documenting it for later use?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Couldn’t remember the last time a woman had occupied this much space in my thoughts, couldn’t remember ever feeling this particular combination of frustration and fascination and something darker I refused to name.
Across the club, Cassandra laughed again at something her bartender friend said, and the sound carried over the music like a fucking beacon. I watched some asshole in an expensive suit approach her, watched her body language shift subtly—still friendly but with barriers suddenly in place.
Good. At least she had some sense of self-preservation.
The guy said something, and she smiled—polite, distant, absolutely not interested. He persisted, moving closer, and I was halfway out of my seat before I realized what I was doing.
Kirill’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Easy, brother. She’s handling it.”
He was right. Cassandra had leaned in to say something that made the guy’s expression shift from confident to embarrassed, and he retreated quickly.
She turned back to the bar without a second glance, like she’d dealt with and dismissed more dangerous things than a drunk businessman with delusions of charm.
“See?” Kirill said quietly. “She doesn’t need you to protect her. So why do you want to?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Why did I care if random men approached her in a club? Why did it bother me that she was here, relaxed and laughing, when I’d spent two weeks watching her betray Rafael in carefully calculated increments?
She should have been the enemy. The problem to solve. The security risk to eliminate.
Instead, she was the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about.
***
An hour later, Cassandra left the club with her bartender friend and another girl I didn’t recognize. I watched them walk out into the Chicago night, their laughter trailing behind them like smoke.
The tension in my chest loosened immediately, and I let out a breath ’I’d been holding.
“There it is,” Kirill said softly, his tone knowing and slightly amused. “Relief.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were scared she’d leave with someone else. That she’d go home with one of those men who’ve been watching her all night. That’s why you’re relaxed now—because she left alone.”
His words hit like physical blows, each one landing with accuracy that made me want to break something. Preferably his face, but Kirill was my best friend and probably right, which made it worse.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, but the words carried no conviction.
“I’ve known you for fifteen years, Drew.
I know exactly what I’m talking about.” He refilled both our glasses, his expression shifting from amused to serious.
“Whatever’s happening between you and Cassandra Miller, it’s not just professional surveillance.
You need to figure out what it actually is before it becomes a problem you can’t contain. ”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that this was purely business, that I was simply doing my job by keeping tabs on a security risk. But sitting there in that booth, vodka burning in my stomach and Kirill’s knowing eyes studying me, I couldn’t maintain the lie.
Cassandra Miller had gotten under my skin in ways I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. She was a threat to Rafael’s organization, possibly to the entire Chicago Bratva operation. She was hiding things, stealing information, operating with an agenda I hadn’t yet uncovered.
She was also the most compelling thing I’d encountered in years, and that terrified me more than any threat she might pose.
“Six more weeks,” I said finally, more to myself than to Kirill. “Then I go back to Russia and forget any of this happened.”
“Sure you will.” Kirill raised his glass in a mock toast. “Just like you forgot about her tonight. Just like you’ll forget tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day until you finally admit what’s actually happening here.”
I didn’t respond, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t prove him right.
Instead, I drank my vodka and tried not to think about pale skin and calculating brown eyes and the way Cassandra had looked when she’d laughed—unguarded and real and dangerously beautiful.
Tried not to think about how much I wanted to know what had made her that way, what had carved her into something sharp enough to cut herself on.
Tried not to think about how six weeks suddenly felt both too long and not nearly long enough.
Kirill’s comment had pissed me off more than anything else in recent memory, mostly because it was true. I didn’t hate Cassandra Miller.
I was fucking obsessed with her.