The Enemy I can't Resist

CHAPTER 8

*Dario’s POV

*

She was here.

The moment I step into the suite, I know.

The air still carries a trace of citrus and something warm—light, floral, and entirely out of place. Not from the candles. Not from the staff. From her. It mixes with the deeper scent of whiskey and oak, unsettling the balance.

She didn’t stay long.

But she stayed long enough to leave her mark.

I close the door quietly behind me, already scanning the room. One of the throw pillows is slightly off-center. The pen I left lined up perfectly on the desk is now on the floor. The rim of the whiskey glass holds a faint smudge—right where a lip might’ve brushed.

Her presence lingers like static. Unseen. But undeniable.

I shrug off my jacket and cross the room slowly, taking it all in.

She came.

And she ran.

I lower myself onto the couch, letting the silence press in. It’s not the silence I mind—it’s the absence. The tension that still clings to the space she just vacated. Like the heat after lightning. A charge still echoing through the air.

I rest my hand on the cushion next to me. Still warm.

Still alive with the ghost of her.

I hate ghosts.

They’re reminders of what I didn’t catch in time.

Adrian warned me.

“Don’t get too close to this one.”

“You’re slipping.”

He doesn’t understand. This isn’t about infatuation. It’s not even about control, not fully.

This is about curiosity. The kind that burrows under your skin and stays there until it’s fed.

And I haven’t felt that in years.

Most people are predictable. Easy to read. Easy to bend.

But her?

She bends differently.

And she dares.

I walk over to the desk and open the drawer. The black folder inside is untouched, or so it might seem to someone less observant. But the edge is misaligned. A corner slightly creased. I run my thumb along it, flipping open the top page.

Shipping manifests. Transfer orders. A port authority clearance. All routine on the surface—until you dig deeper.

She saw something.

I don’t know how much she understood. But the timing… the look in her eyes when I gave her the keycard… the way she watched me like she was searching for something else…

It doesn’t add up.

Who is this woman?

And why did she really come?

I sip the untouched whiskey, letting it burn down my throat as I face the bar. My thoughts move like smoke—slow, curling, dangerous.

She was careful. She didn’t take anything. Didn’t break anything.

But she couldn’t help herself.

She touched. She searched. She wanted to know.

And that’s the kind of curiosity that always leads somewhere.

I walk to the window and look out at the city. Manhattan stretches beneath me—cold and glittering and full of secrets. Somewhere out there, she’s walking. Maybe shaking. Maybe smirking to herself. Maybe thinking she got away clean.

She didn’t.

There are cameras in the hallway. Motion sensors in the elevator. But I won’t need them.

Not yet.

I don’t want to catch her.

I want to watch her.

To let her dance around me a little longer.

Because whatever game she’s playing, she doesn’t know the rules.

But I do.

I pull out my phone and open a secure channel.

Me: “Get me everything you can find on Lia. Start from scratch. No filters.”

The reply from Adrian comes in seconds.

Adrian: “Already tried. She’s careful.”

I smirk. That makes it more interesting.

I set the phone down and glance around the room one more time, eyes tracing the path she likely walked; the bar, the desk, the edge of the couch. Her perfume still lingers in the air like an unanswered question.

She was here less than fifteen minutes ago.

And now she’s loose in my city, pretending she left nothing behind.

She’s wrong.

She left everything behind.

I pace, thinking through our dinner.

She never once mentioned a boyfriend. Her voice was steady but guarded. The way she watched me wasn’t the gaze of someone overwhelmed or seduced—it was calculated. She listened more than she spoke. She tested limits, but she didn’t push.

Except tonight.

Tonight she came to my door.

And ran before I could open it.

That’s not seduction. That’s strategy.

She wanted me to know she’d been here.

The shifted pillow.

The open folder.

The smudge on the glass.

Not enough to scream “intrusion”—but enough to whisper it.

Enough to make me look.

Enough to drive me insane.

My fingers tighten around the glass.

She doesn’t know what she’s done.

She thinks she’s clever.

She doesn’t know how far I’m willing to go when something doesn’t make sense.

I stand in the center of the suite, surrounded by everything she touched, every fragment she disturbed. Her fingerprints may be invisible, but her presence isn’t. It’s embedded in the room’s silence, in the air I breathe, in the way my pulse moves slower now, measured, waiting.

She thought she was doing the watching.

She thought I invited her into my world for entertainment.

She doesn’t realize that the moment she stepped in, she gave me everything I needed. Her body language, the small tremor in her fingers, the hesitation before she walked in. I watched her through the camera in the hallway—just a glimpse, but enough to see the conflict written in every curve of her stance.

She’s not a girl stumbling into danger.

She’s a girl who knows it’s dangerous… and came anyway.

That’s not stupidity.

That’s purpose.

And it’s the most dangerous kind of purpose—the one that comes with pain behind it. Grief. Vengeance. Desperation. Something rooted in the past and tangled in silence.

I’ve seen that look before.

In men who came back from war with nothing but ghosts in their eyes.

In myself, once.

But what I haven’t seen… is someone who wears it with a red lip and a silk dress and looks me straight in the eye without blinking.

I return to the desk and run my fingers across the folder she opened. She couldn’t have understood much from a single glance, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that she looked.

And now I need to know why.

I don’t care if she’s a spy, a journalist, or someone with a grudge.

I just want to know what she wants badly enough to walk into my suite and leave her scent behind like a signature.

I’ll let her pretend she still holds the cards.

But soon—very soon, I’ll know her real name.

And when I do…

I’ll use it.