Chapter 416: Do You Like Me?

Internally, she thought: ’He’s hiding something.’

She did not know what. Strangely, she found that she was, increasingly, over time, one of the things she liked about him.

Taking a deep breath, She shifted the conversation. "There’s more."

"Go."

"The Streak situation has developed."

His expression sharpened one degree. "The Vanguard has rolled up two more copycat operations in the last four days."

She laid it out for him. The additional networks impersonating him. The fact that these were not random scammers, they were organized, well-funded, and clearly working from a shared playbook. The uncomfortable observation that they appeared to have access to information about the real Streak that ought not to have been public. She suspected Tiktuk platform itself might have a hand in this...

They were not merely exploiting the name. They were using his reputation to build networks, attract wealthy targets, and establish credibility across several apparently unrelated schemes. The Vanguard was now, cautiously, developing the working theory that a single larger syndicate was operating beneath at least four of the fronts they’d identified so far.

Stan listened. "Do they know who’s behind it."

"Not yet."

"Von?"

"We’re still squeezing what we have out of what we already have. He’s a piece. He’s not the whole picture."

"How close are you?"

"Closer than we were." She permitted herself a small smile. "But not close."

Stan nodded slowly. "Good."

She watched him. "You’re not surprised."

"I expected there’d be more behind it."

Her eyebrow arched. "You did?"

"People don’t build something that large off a single scam. Something that reaches has been assembling itself for longer than the scam that broke it into the open."

She smiled, small and pleased. "That’s why I wanted to tell you in person."

He gave her a small knowing look. "You’re getting better at this."

"At what."

"Reading situations."

Her smile widened, small and pleased and proud.

"I’ll take that as a compliment."

"It was."

Once the small serious business had been laid down between them, the atmosphere at the table eased again.

Amelia leaned back in her chair, drink in hand, and permitted a small playful comment.

"You know," she said, "most people come back from a trip and tell their friends about the food they ate."

Stan raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"You come back from Antarctica and somehow have several governments scrambling."

He laughed, he could tell she was teasing, but she was unbelievably bad with her jokes, maybe it was because she was nervous, since he can sense her nervousness..

"That’s not my fault."

"Don’t worry I trust you," She shook her head as she added, "But you’re impossible."

"And yet you flew to Inksea."

The words slipped out easily. They did not stay easy for long.

Amelia froze for half a second.

Stan noticed.

She looked, very quickly, down at her drink. "I had work."

"You could have handled it remotely."

"I needed to discuss it in person."

"Convenient."

She looked back at him. Her eyes were, she was well aware, a small unhelpful shade warmer than she had intended.

"Are you teasing me."

"Maybe."

She smiled, small and a little unsteady. "Then perhaps I should stop giving you opportunities."

Stan leaned back slightly in his chair. "You probably should."

The conversation drifted on.

But as it did, Stan, who had spent the last several minutes smiling at the small unguarded moments Amelia had let slip past her usual careful exteri

She looked at him for slightly longer than the conversation required.

She smiled more easily than she did around other people. He had seen her with other people. This was a different expression.

She seemed, in a small unadvertised way, genuinely happy to be sitting across from him.

She had flown to Inksea within a day of learning he was back. She had booked a hotel suite.

She had spent, he suspected, with a small quiet certainty he could not have justified in a court of law but was entirely sure of nonetheless, the last three quarters of an hour before he arrived rehearsing.

He decided he shouldn’t keep her waiting...

Sighing inwardly, he watched her, quietly, over the rim of his glass. ’Its time I make my move since she’s so scared that I would reject her that she doesn’t want to speak her mind...’

As he thought this, he stared intently at her for far too long

Amelia felt the weight of it, eventually, and looked up.

"What."

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that."

He smiled. "Just thinking."

"About what."

He did not answer immediately.

He studied her face.

She became, visibly, without meaning to, increasingly self-conscious. The small pale warmth along her cheeks that had faded during the professional stretch of the conversation returned, one shade. Her fingers, resting composedly around the stem of her glass a moment before, tightened by a very small fraction.

She was not going to be the one to look away first.

She had, however, no idea what to do with the small careful attention he was giving her.

Stan set his glass down. He decided, in the small easy back of his head, that subtlety was not going to move this any further tonight.

He gave her a small unhurried smile.

"Amelia."

"...Yes."

"Be honest with me."

She straightened slightly. "What?"

He looked directly into her eyes.

"Do you like me."

Silence. Amelia froze.

Her heart, which had, over the course of the past hour, worked its way from an elevated baseline into a steady controlled hammering. Some small internal instrument, somewhere in the base of her chest, registered the question and produced a small alarmed ping that echoed nowhere anyone could hear.

She had been ready for many things at this table. She had not, not remotely, been ready for that.

Stan simply watched her with a calm, curious smile

Her mind went blank.

The woman who could, without missing a beat, brief a board of directors on the movements of a criminal syndicate across four national jurisdictions found, at that specific moment, that she was entirely unable to produce a single useful English sentence.

Her lips parted, very slightly.

The small pale warmth along her cheeks deepened into something rather more visible.

Her heart, which had briefly stopped, resumed at a rate that would have concerned a physician.

She stared at him and he stared back.

Neither of them spoke for a second. The small warm light of the restaurant went quietly on around them.

Outside the window, along the promenade, the last of the evening’s gold slipped over the horizon into blue.

And Amelia Don, composed executive, seasoned strategist, quietly infatuated woman, sat frozen across from Stan Harrison, and did not, for one very long silent moment, know what to say.