Cover Your Tracks Better

"And how, exactly, did you know that?" he asked his voice crisp but with slight interest. It wasn't a national secret, but he tended not to brag publicly about how he had gotten the job. And his CV was a patchwork of things he could have done to get the job. Academia was laughably easy to dupe when it came to showing off papers because they took so much money to buy every academic article. He had used it to the full extent. And more students preferred not to read the work of their professor unless they were a research fellow or pursuing their Ph.D.

So, the only way she could have gotten the information was through illicit means.

Hypocritically, he ignored the document on his desktop.

She snorted, settling into the chair opposite his desk, folding herself into it like she was the queen who sat on the throne. "Obviously in the way you accused me of in class," she said un-tactfully. "You're not the only one who can dig up private information on people by going through pages on the internet," she accused.

He kept his expression clear and his voice was calm.

"I am not sure what you mean, Miss Dunn." He started to pack up the papers on the desk, taking good measures to look right into her eyes. Challenging her. Something about them arrested him. But he was not in the mood to verbally spar with her when his brain was obviously fried from reading filth. In the span of one day, she had managed to surprise him multiple times.

"An online search could only get what you already said in your CV. The cleanest chit of bill I could find. So, I fished a little, asked a few people who you should have taught but didn't even know you existed. What a shame, you should have covered your tracks better… sir." She eyed all the papers on his desk. And he finally gave up.

"Get to the point," he snapped, his voice low. He met her gaze and leaned on the table with both of his hands, bent to reduce his height so that he could look better at her. His interest grew. If that was even possible.

"Imagine my surprise when I found out you had been asking other staff members about me. What? Going through my social media didn't fetch you any dirt on me?" she teased.

Ladislas narrowed his eyes, wondering how she had found out about the social media thing.

"Then? What do you want? To report me for stalking your social media or asking about a student who I think is wasting their potential?" he said, closing his eyes briefly and leaning back into his chair. He could feel a headache approaching.

"Nothing," she said. Surprised, his eyes flew open once more to see that she was getting up, having left a box of something on his desk. "I just wanted to check if the information I had was right. And to tell you that I surprisingly enjoyed the class today."

She gave him a blinding smile. Now, she was sure that he didn't know what she really was. He had some suspicion that she liked to poke her nose in other people's business, but nothing more than that. He would have thrown it back at her face if he had known.

With that, she gave him a courteous bow.

"Have a wonderful evening, sir," she trilled.

She watched him saunter out of his office without looking back. When he looked down to see what she had left for him, she found the only brand of coffee he had resting in the box. He looked up, surprised. He could only grit his teeth and wonder when he would get a chance to get back at her for this little stunt.

.

Anna had an inconvenient problem. A Ladislas-shaped problem that she needed to solve.

She probably should have blamed herself for looking into him. There was no need for doing so. She had completed her primary mission and could have left the rest for Boss or the prosecutors to take care of. But something about him bothered her. Like he was something unfathomable that she had to understand fully to put her curiosity to rest.

She had thought that would be the case, but he turned even more enticing as a character. She had thought him to be somewhat of a Godfather character, but he turned out more like an enigmatic villain who was picky about who he associated with. And she could understand why he was so self-sure about himself.

One thing led to another and she went down a rabbit hole of tracking down every person he met with on a regular basis. She knew where he lived but she couldn't find it for some reason. It was an odd phenomenon. After class, she had gone out to buy herself a box of energy bars to have at night and suddenly found herself staring at the brand of instant coffee Ladislas usually had. How did she know? She had checked on footage from his different lectures and seen him put this in the cup he carried around with him.

The thought came to her to go to him. To drop the coffee and find out how much he knew. He was dangerous but she had always had a fascination for things she shouldn't be doing, that the rest of the world frowned upon.

Because of her job, she hadn't been able to do much of what she really wanted to. When she was a teenager, she had wanted to dye her hair in wonky colors like the other kids in high school. She had wanted to secretly pick up smoking but it was easily found out because of the smell. At the time, she had not wanted to be the bad girl who everyone spoke about or draw attention to herself, so she had foregone those.