I didn't blow my cover. That's the first thing I need to say. I held it. I told him I was a private consultant hired by a competitor to assess his company's security vulnerabilities — a plausible cover, one I had prepared for exactly this kind of probing. He listened. He nodded. He didn't believe me.

But he let it go. For that night.

He gave me a tour of the gala instead — introducing me to his team, his investors, his board members, with the easy confidence of a man who owned every room he walked into. I was cataloguing everything: faces, names, connections, the way people deferred to him or didn't.

What I wasn't prepared for was how good he was at the same thing. By the end of the evening, he had asked me twelve questions that seemed like small talk and were actually a comprehensive background check. He had clocked my tells — the slight pause before I answered questions about my past, the way I angled my body toward exits, the fact that I had nursed the same glass of champagne for two hours.

In the car back to my cover apartment, my backup team lead said: "He made you." I said: "He suspects me. There's a difference." A pause. "Don't go back." I said: "I'm going back tomorrow."