Page 56 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I want to believe him. I want to believe that what we’re doing matters, that Equinox and everything else is worth the weight I carry every day.

But on days like today, it’s hard to feel anything but the crushing weight of his shadow.

“Come on,” Finn says, sliding off the desk. “I’m taking you to lunch. Somewhere off campus. Somewhere you don’t have to be Max Cavill for a few hours.”

“I have meetings⁠—”

“Cancel them.”

“Finn—”

“I’m not asking.” He’s already heading for the door. “You can yell at me in the car. It’ll be therapeutic.”

Despite everything, despite the rage and the grief and the bone-deep exhaustion, I feel the corner of my mouth twitch.

“You’re impossible.”

“That’s why you keep me around.” He holds the door open, waiting. “Now move your ass. I’m buying.”

At exactly eight o’clock, I’m waiting in the lobby. Night two of the sweep, and tonight it’s my turn.

The building is dark at this hour. Only the emergency lighting remains on, casting everything in a dim, amber glow that makes the familiar space feel foreign, almost haunted.

Footsteps echo from somewhere down the corridor. I push off the wall and wait.

Sophie comes around the corner, and my breath hitches the moment our eyes meet. She is stripped back, her long, wavy hair tied back, those eyes dark and as empty as ever. She doesn’t look like anyone’s assistant right now.

Her eyes go past me to the elevator before they come back, like she can’t wait to get this over with so she can get out of here.

Fine. That makes two of us.

“Mr. Cavill.” She looks me dead in the eye when she says it.

I hold her gaze, and a strange, unexpected relief moves through me, at being looked at like a man for the first time today, instead of a bomb about to go off.

“Ms. Dysart.” It comes out rougher than I had intended.

She nods and she moves to stand beside me.

“This way.”

We ride up in near silence. She stands perfectly still, eyes on the floor numbers as they climb.

“Anything on the fourth floor last night?” I say.

“No. It was clean.”

“Good,” I say.

The doors open onto the second floor.

She’s moving before they finish opening, straight for the main surveillance room. I swipe my badge and the lock clicks open.

Inside, the room is a nest of monitors and servers, blinking lights and humming fans. Sophie sets her backpack on the central console and starts unpacking. The first thing she does is set a small black box on the table and flip the switch. The faint hiss of the audio jammer fills the room. She unpacks the rest without a word—detector, cables, a spectrum analyzer, and a handful of tools I don’t recognize.

“I can take it from here,” she says, without looking up.

It’s automatic, the way she says it. A reflex. Like she thinks I’ll just be in the way.