Konstantin Ivanov ate like a man who had known hunger—sharp, silent bites, knife and fork held with disciplined precision, posture straight, and not a single crumb left behind. Seraphina watched him from across the table, jaw tight, half-eaten toast forgotten on her plate.
She wasn't sure what irritated her more: the way he sat at her kitchen table like he belonged there, or the fact that he hadn't so much as glanced at her food. No smug glances. No sarcastic comments. Just pure, mechanical efficiency.
He finished his eggs, then his bacon, downed the last of his coffee, and stood without a word. She tracked his every move, suspicion prickling up her spine.
Now what? Is he going to scrub the floor with a toothbrush? Alphabetize the spice rack?
He walked to the sink, rinsed his plate and mug thoroughly—and then placed them carefully into the dishwasher.
Seraphina narrowed her eyes like she'd just caught him committing a war crime.
Was he… tidy?
Not just normal-level tidy. No. This was organized serial killer energy kind of tidy. She could already feel her rebellious nature bristling.
She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, watching him inspect the dishwasher's settings like he was about to disarm a bomb.
> Perfect. I'm stuck in a gothic mansion with a six-foot-two control freak who probably alphabetizes his trauma.
Yes, she kept her kitchen relatively clean, and she wiped the counters most nights. But laundry? Laundry was her battlefield. She'd won wars against fitted sheets that never folded right. And she'd be damned if she was going to be judged for leaving clean clothes on the couch for a few weeks—okay, maybe a month.
She opened her mouth to say something snarky—
And immediately let out a sharp scream.
Something brushed her bare ankle.
She bolted halfway out of the chair, knees bumping the table, her heart punching her ribs like a warning bell.
What the hell—
Then came the unmistakable sound of three simultaneous meows.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," she groaned, looking down.
Rubbing against her legs, tails curling high in coordinated guilt trips, were the three feline overlords of Rosemoor Hollow.
"Archie, Wren, and Poe," she muttered, glaring down at the traitors. "I should've named you Hunger, Whining, and Chaos."
Archie, the large male tabby with a perpetually unimpressed face, sat right on her foot like it was his throne. He was the only one she hadn't picked—he had picked her. Walked into her house one stormy night like he owned the place and never left. He had no known origin, and frankly, she suspected he might've escaped from a mafia family.
Wren and Poe, the twin chaos gremlins, were technically females—but with names that sounded like disgruntled Victorian poets. She'd adopted them from the shelter on a whim after a book signing tour that nearly broke her sanity.
Together, the trio made up the purring, passive-aggressive peanut gallery that ruled her life.
"Your furry friends are hungry," came Konstantin's voice behind her.
His tone was neutral, clipped, annoyingly calm. Like he was just commenting on the weather.
She turned slowly, giving him her best I will fight you in the parking lot look.
"I didn't ask. And I know," she said, stepping around Archie's wide body with practiced ease. "They're dramatic. They scream every morning like I've abandoned them in a desert."
Konstantin raised an eyebrow. "You did forget to feed them last night."
"I was busy being emotionally terrorized by your sudden arrival."
He looked at the cats. "That sounds like a you problem."
She sucked in a breath. "It will be your problem if you touch them."
He held up his hands, then lowered them again—like someone defusing a hostage situation.
"I have no interest in your creatures."
"Good. They don't like authoritarian men."
Poe jumped onto the table with the grace of a ballerina and immediately tried to steal a crumb from Seraphina's plate. She pushed the cat back with one finger and sighed.
"You guys are so dramatic. It's been, what, eleven hours since your last meal? You're fine."
Wren meowed loudly in protest and swatted her ankle.
Konstantin, still watching her from the kitchen doorway, crossed his arms.
"You live alone, yet you willingly adopted three dependents?"
"They're cats. They're not dependents. They're… companions."
"Parasites," he muttered.
She gasped. "How dare you. They're majestic freeloaders. There's a difference."
He didn't respond. Just walked to the coffee machine again and refilled his mug, like this was just another Thursday. Like he hadn't just insulted her children.
Seraphina grumbled under her breath, then grabbed a can of wet food from the cupboard and dropped it into the cats' shared dish. It hit with a loud plop, followed by a symphony of ecstatic purring and impatient slurping.
"See? Now they love me again."
"I'll alert the press," Konstantin said without missing a beat.
She turned toward him slowly. "You're real cocky for someone who broke into my peace and took over my kitchen like a Bond villain."
"I didn't break in. I was assigned."
"Yeah, like a punishment."
He sipped his coffee, watching her with that same maddening stillness. "Do you always talk this much in the morning?"
"Do you always act like the house is a crime scene?"
He didn't answer. But she swore—swore—the corner of his mouth almost twitched. Almost.
And somehow, that irritated her even more.
---
She stormed out of the kitchen ten minutes later with her mug of tea and a new wave of irritation riding shotgun.
Let him be a perfect little agent. Let him scrub the corners and polish the doorknobs and judge her laundry piles. She wasn't going to change her whole damn personality just because Homeland Security decided she needed a live-in terminator with cheekbones.
But still…
She glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where his deep voice was now murmuring something under his breath—to himself or to the coffee, she didn't know.
Still, her heart kicked against her ribs.
And her traitorous brain whispered:
If this is the first day… what the hell is the rest of the week going to look like?
--------
The house had settled again into its usual stillness—the kind that felt too quiet, too deep. The storm had passed sometime before dawn, and the rain left behind a grey veil that clung to the windows. Outside, the trees stood dripping and motionless, the garden paths slick with mud and fallen leaves.
Inside, Seraphina stood at the threshold of her study.
She breathed in. Slowly.
This room was hers. Her sanctuary. Her creative war zone. It smelled faintly of old paper, bergamot, and cat fur. The bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with well-worn novels, dusty first editions, and literary clutter no one else would care about. A soft armchair sat near the fireplace, draped with a plaid blanket she refused to replace. In the center of it all—her desk.
A heavy, walnut beast of a thing with drawers that always stuck and corners she'd bumped into at least a hundred times. Her laptop sat open on it, screen dark and accusing. Her favorite pen lay beside it, along with a half-filled journal and the remains of yesterday's cold tea.
She crossed the room and dropped into her chair, curling one leg under her and pushing her glasses up her nose. The light from the tall arched window spilled across the floor in a muted, sleepy haze.
Okay. Time to work. Time to write something worth the advance she was burning through faster than her patience.
She opened her laptop. The document loaded—her current novel-in-progress. Only forty-something pages in, and most of them made her want to walk into traffic.
She stared at the blinking cursor.
Typed a sentence.
Erased it.
Typed again.
Paused.
Erased again.
"Fucking hell," she muttered under her breath, dragging both hands down her face.
This was worse than writer's block.
This was writer's despair.
Her thoughts wouldn't hold still. Every time she tried to dive into her plot—murders, motives, cliffhangers—her mind dragged her back to him.
The man currently occupying one of her guest rooms.
The fed with a voice like broken gravel and a moral compass that was clearly missing several screws.
The man who had used her kitchen, eaten her food, insulted her cats, and made her feel like an intruder in her own home.
Konstantin Ivanov.
Even his name sounded like the start of a cold war.
She shook her head and tried again. This time, she got through two full paragraphs. Something about a body in a greenhouse. A trail of blood. The detective character was finally saying something useful when—
Click.
The door to her study opened. No knock. No warning.
She jerked her head up.
And there he was.
Of course.
Konstantin stepped into her sanctuary like he belonged there. Dressed in black again—black slacks, black shirt rolled to the elbows, the faintest glint of a gun holster under his arm. He moved without noise, like a shadow with muscle and attitude.
"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped, standing halfway out of her chair.
"I'm here to install cameras," he said, already glancing at the corners of the ceiling like he was mapping out a blueprint in his head.
"In my study?"
"In every room but the bathrooms and bedrooms."
"You didn't ask."
"I didn't need to."
Her jaw dropped. "You don't get to come in here like it's your jurisdiction. This is my workspace—my sanctuary. You can't just barge in and start screwing things into my walls like this is a government facility."
"I can," he said calmly, pulling a small black pouch from his belt and unzipping it. Inside were wires, a mini drill, screws, and tiny matte black security cameras.
"Don't even think about it," she said, stepping between him and the far wall. "I never agreed to cameras in here."
"I never asked," he replied without a flicker of emotion.
She blinked at him.
"That's not how consent works."
He looked at her then—his gaze piercing, sharp, but frustratingly calm.
"You're under federal protection due to circumstances you are not yet fully aware of. Until those details are declassified, my job is to keep you alive. And that means installing surveillance, whether or not your aesthetic sensibilities approve."
"Oh, my aesthetic sensibilities?!" she echoed, aghast.
He opened the drill.
She stepped forward, eyes blazing. "You touch that wall, and I swear I'll shove that thing so far up your—"
His expression finally twitched. Slight amusement. Infuriating restraint.
"You curse a lot for someone who owns three cats named after tortured poets."
"I write about murderers for a living, Ivanov. I could hide a body in this house and no one would find it for years."
"I'd find it," he said coolly.
They stood toe-to-toe in the center of the room, tension coiled tight between them. Seraphina's heart was thudding in her chest like it was trying to warn her of something she didn't want to admit. Not attraction—God, no. Just—
Friction.
And friction, in her experience, always led to fire.
He finally stepped around her, crouched by the wall, and started screwing the first mount into the corner near the ceiling. Seraphina groaned, rubbed her temples, and turned away before she threw something.
"Whatever. But I want one thing clear," she muttered. "My office is off-limits unless I'm here. No creeping around when I'm not looking. No touching my stuff. And don't even think about opening my drafts."
Konstantin didn't answer.
Didn't acknowledge.
Didn't even pause.
She glared at the back of his head.
"Are you even listening?"
"I always listen," he said without looking up.
God, he was exhausting.
She dropped back into her chair and glared at her screen. She couldn't write now. Not with him breathing the same air. Not with his scent—clean, faintly woodsy, and something else distinctly male—invading the room.
Maybe if she ignored him hard enough, he'd vanish like a bad plot twist.
But she had a feeling nothing with Konstantin Ivanov was ever that easy.