FALLEN FOR THE MAN I WAS MEANT TO DESTROY

Chapter 4: The Watch

Xavier's pov

Franco sits across from my desk, spine straight, hands folded in his lap. He's been with me for eight years, long enough to know when to ask questions and when to just listen.

Right now he's listening.

"I need surveillance on my wife." The words taste like ash in my mouth. "Discreet! Professional! She can't know anyone's watching."

Franco's expression doesn't change, but I see his fingers twitch slightly. "How close do you want me to get?"

"Close enough to know where she is going, who she meets, what she—" I stopped, ran my hand through my hair. This is insane. I'm asking someone to follow Natasha like she's a suspect instead of my wife. "Just close enough to see what she's doing when she thinks no one's paying attention."

I slide a photo across the desk. Natasha at last month's charity gala, blonde hair caught mid-laugh, champagne glass in her hand. God! She was beautiful that night. So beautiful. Will always be beautiful, even if everything else is a lie.

Franco picks up the photo, studies it. "When do I start?"

"Tomorrow morning. She usually leaves around ten, always has some excuse about shopping or lunch or—I don't know, whatever she tells me." The words come out bitter. "I want to know if those excuses are real."

"And if they're not?"

"Then I want to know what she's really doing." I lean back in my chair, pressing my fingers against my temples. A headache is building behind my eyes. "And who she's doing it with"

Franco nods, tucks the photo into his jacket. "Anything else?"

"Marcus will brief you on her patterns, the places she goes, the people she claims to see." I pause, try to organize my thoughts, but they're all tangled up with emotions I can't afford right now. "And Franco? This stays between us. No one else knows, just keep it quiet."

"Understood!" He stands, moves toward the door.

"Wait!" He turns back. "If she's meeting someone, I need photos. Clear ones. I need to see faces, I need to—" I stopped, before I said I need to know if my wife is cheating on me. Because that's not what this is about. It's about the money, the lies, the secrets. Not about whether she's sleeping with someone else. Right? "Just get me photos!"

"You'll have them."

The door closes and I'm alone.

I sat there staring at the empty chair where Franco was sitting, wondering what the hell I was doing. Tomorrow morning someone will follow my wife through Munich, document her movements, photograph whoever she's meeting. Tomorrow I'll start collecting evidence against the woman I love.

The woman I think I love!

The woman I thought I knew!

God! I don't know anything anymore.

My phone buzzes. Text from Rafael.

***Finished running those transactions. You need to see this. Now!.***

I took the stairs down to the server room where Rafael sits surrounded by monitors, fingers flying across keyboards. He doesn't look up when I walk in, just keeps typing like the world depends on whatever he's doing.

"Show me!"

He pulls up a spreadsheet, numbers and dates filling the screen. "I traced every transaction in those files Marcus gave you. Followed the money as far as I could through the offshore accounts."

"And?"

"They don't go anywhere." He highlights a row of numbers. "Someone's moving money through your accounts, making it look like you're running operations, but the money never actually lands anywhere useful. It just circles back through different banks before it disappears into—I don't know where it goes. Nowhere, basically."

I lean closer to the screen, trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. "What does that mean?"

"It means someone's not stealing from you," Rafael turns in his chair to face me. "They're framing you. Building a paper trail that makes you look guilty of crimes you didn't commit."

The words hit me like a fist to the chest.

"How long?"

"Three years, like Marcus said. Started small, got more sophisticated over time, like whoever's doing it got better at hiding their tracks or—" He stops, rubs his eyes. "Whoever's doing this knows your systems inside and out. They know which accounts to use, which transactions won't trigger alerts, how to make everything look legitimate enough that you wouldn't notice unless you were really looking."

"Someone inside the organization."

"Or someone with access to someone inside." Rafael's eyes meet mine and I can see the question he's not asking. "Someone who's been watching your operation long enough to know exactly how it works."

Natasha's face flashes through my mind. Three years of access. Three years of learning my business, my systems, my life. Three years of being exactly where she needed to be to destroy me.

No! No! That's not—she wouldn't. Would she?

"Can you trace it back to a source?" My voice comes out rougher than I intended.

"I'm trying but whoever did this covered their tracks really well. It's going to take time."

"How much time?"

"A week, maybe two if I'm lucky," he pauses. "Xavier, if someone's framing you, they're not doing it for fun. They're building a case. Evidence for something bigger, like law enforcement or—"

"I know!" The words come out sharply. "Just keep digging. Find out where this started and who's behind it."

Rafael nods and turns back to his screens.

I leave before he can ask more questions I don't have answers to.

---

Natasha is asleep when I come to bed.

Or pretending to be. I can't tell anymore, can't read her the way I used to. Maybe I never could.

I stand in the doorway watching her, trying to see past the mask she wears so well. Blonde hair spread across the pillow. One hand tucked under her cheek. Breathing slow and steady. She looks peaceful and innocent.

But I don't know if any of it is real.

I cross the room quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed. She doesn't move, doesn't react. Just keep breathing in that perfect rhythm, which could be real sleep or could be performance.

My hand rises before I can stop it, fingers brush a strand of hair off her face. Her skin is warm under my touch. Soft. Real. Or at least it feels real. Everything feels real until you find out it's not.

Her eyes open. Slow, like she's been asleep for hours and not just pretending for the last five minutes.

"Hey!" she whispers. Her voice is rough, sleep-heavy. Convincing. "What time is it?"

"Late." I pull my hand back. "Go back to sleep."

"Are you coming to bed?"

"In a minute."

She reaches for my hand, her fingers wrapped around mine. Cold. Trembling slightly. "Schatz?"

The nickname cuts through me. She only calls me when she's vulnerable, when her guard is down. Or when she wants me to think her guard is down.

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever wish things were different?" Her eyes search my face in the darkness. "That we were different people, living different lives?"

The question catches me completely off guard. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing." She pulls her hand back fast, turns away from me. "Forget I said anything. I'm just tired, I don't know why I said that."

I watch her curl into herself, shoulders tight, breathing too fast to be relaxed. She's scared of something. Running from something. And every instinct I have says that something is connected to me.

"Moya!"

She flinches at the nickname but doesn't turn around.

"Yeah?"

"If you're in trouble, you can tell me. Whatever it is, I can—we can figure it out together."

She goes completely still. Doesn't breathe. Doesn't move. Just lies there frozen, like my words hit her somewhere vital.

"I'm not in trouble," she says finally, but her voice shakes. "Everything's fine."

Another lie! I can hear it in her voice, see it in the tension in her shoulders.

I stand, walk to my side of the bed. Strip down and slide under the covers. The space between us feels wider than it should, like there's an ocean separating us instead of just two feet of mattress.

"Goodnight!" I say.

"Goodnight!" she whispers back.

Neither of us sleeps.

I can tell by the way she breathes, too controlled and careful. The way she doesn't move, doesn't shift positions, doesn't do any of the unconscious things people do when they're really sleeping.

She's lying there awake just like I am, both of us pretending we're asleep, both of us—I don't know. Hiding? Waiting? Whatever this is, it's not sustainable.

My phone sits on the nightstand, dark and silent. Tomorrow Franco will start following her. Tomorrow I'll start collecting evidence. Everything changes or maybe everything has already changed and I just didn't notice.

But tonight we lie here in the darkness, two people who used to know each other, now strangers sharing a bed.

I close my eyes and try to count Natasha's breaths, but I keep losing track. One, two, three—was that three or four? Start over. One, two, three, four, five.

I hear her breathing finally slow for real. Her body relaxes. Her fingers uncurl from the fists she was making.

She's actually asleep now.

I reached for my phone, sent a quick text to Franco.

***Start tomorrow. I want to know everything.***

The response comes back immediately.

***Understood.***

I set the phone down and stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow I'll know the truth about my wife, or at least I'll start to know. I'll know if the last three years were real or just an elaborate lie she's been telling.

Tomorrow I'll know if the woman sleeping next to me is the person destroying my life.

I turn my head, look at Natasha's face, peacefully asleep. Even now, even knowing what I know, part of me wants to believe she's innocent, believes we're real and this is all just some terrible misunderstanding.

But want and reality are two different things.

And I didn't survive this long by believing in fairy tales.

I close my eyes and wait for morning.