I hesitated outside the closed doors.
I only entered his inner sanctum to water his poor plants, which I’d continued taking care of even after I moved in. He’d offered to hire someone else to do it, but I’d grown attached to them.
Christian wouldn’t care if I went in when he wasn’t there, right? He was fine with me going in to water the plants. If he didn’t want me in there, he would’ve told me.
After another beat of hesitation, I opened the doors.
I spent longer in Christian’s office than anywhere else since I was so careful about putting everything back exactly where it was.
The room was a study in monochrome with its light gray walls, black leather chair, and massive glass and metal desk. Even the globe in the corner was black and gray.
Apparently, he was as allergic to color as he was to art.
“Christian doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to add a bit of life to you,” I told his desk. It was empty save for his laptop, two extra monitors, a paperweight, and a matte gray holder containing four identical Montblanc pens. “Eventually.”
I wiped down the desk and was so busy trying to figure out what the paperweight was—a jaguar? A boar? A deformed cat?—that I accidentally knocked over his pen holder.
I knelt and retrieved the pens, but I miscalculated the distance from the floor to the desk and accidentally banged my head against the underside on my way up.
“Ow!” I winced at the sharp burst of pain.
Maybe the planets were out of alignment because today was not my day.
I waited until the bout of dizziness passed before I rose again. This time, I slid my hand against the side of the desk on my way up so I didn’t make the same mistake.
This is why I can’t have a glass desk. They blended a little too well into their surroundings.
My fingers brushed against a small bump, but I didn’t pay much attention to it until I stood and noticed one of the drawers had popped up.
It looked different than the others. Smaller, made of black instead of gray metal, and nestled within a larger drawer filled with office supplies.
A secret compartment.
“Oh my God.” I stared at it in disbelief.
I knew Christian had all sorts of gadgets and devices at his disposal, but a secret drawer? Seriously? I thought those only existed in movies.
I should close it and move on. It probably contained confidential information that was none of my business, but curiosity got the better of me.
A little peek couldn’t hurt, right? Besides, the contents looked innocuous. They were just a bunch of plain black binders.
I picked up the top binder and flipped it open.
It looked like a bunch of boring text until my eyes zeroed in on the name at the top.
Stella Alonso.
I blinked twice to make sure I read that clearly, but no matter how long I stared, the words didn’t budge.
I skimmed over the rest of the page quickly and realized it wasn’t just random text about schools and birthdays and hobbies. It was about me.
Everything about my life—my birthday, my friends, my hobbies and where I went to school starting with pre-K going all the way up to college—was laid out in black and white.
Why would Christian have a file on me? To look into my past so he could weed out my stalker?
I’d already told him everything I knew, but maybe he was worried I’d missed something.
However, when I flipped through the rest of the binder, that clearly wasn’t the case.
My entire life was distilled into these pages. Everything from basic information like my parents’ occupations to my favorite foods, school extracurriculars, and my favorite freaking professor in college. He even had a list of every person I’d ever dated.
I’m going to be sick.
Bile coated my throat, but I set the binder down and picked up the second one with shaking hands.
It was worse than the first. It contained full dossiers on not only me but everyone closest to me, including my family, friends, Maura, and previous boyfriends.
The third folder housed a collection of media—my college graduation photos, a Thayer Chronicle article about the holiday food drive I’d organized, and a shot of me attending my first fashion show that’d made it onto some influencer gossip site years ago, to name a few.
The photos and articles were all public domain. There were no private or candid shots, but seeing them together along with the rest of my files made me want to throw up.
For a second, I thought he might be my stalker, but it didn’t make sense logistically. I also knew Christian well enough to know he wouldn’t terrorize me the way my stalker had.
Not well enough that youanticipated him having a dossier on your entire life, an insidious voice in my head sang.
Perhaps Christian had a good reason for the files, but it was still a huge invasion of privacy. He hadn’t dug into just my life; he’d dug into everyone I knew.
He’d done it without my consent, and he’d kept it from me.
How long had he had those files? Days? Weeks? Months?
My stomach rebelled, and I barely made it to the nearest bathroom before my breakfast made a messy reappearance.
Tears stung my eyes as I heaved.