Page 86 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

Then the door shuts behind her, and she drops the act. Just like that. Her shoulders straighten, her chin lifts, and Sophie the operative is back.

Our eyes meet.

Her face gives me nothing. Her dark eyes are emotionless, that emptiness I noticed the very first day settling over her features like a visor snapping into place. She looks faintly bored, like being summoned to the CEO’s office is about as eventful as checking her email.

“You wanted to see me.”

“Sit down.” I gesture to the chair across from my desk.

“I’d rather stand,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.

Of course she would.

I hold her gaze for a long moment, then rise from my chair and walk to the door. I lock it, slowly, deliberately, the click of the latch loud in the quiet of the office. Then I turn to face her.

She hasn’t moved. Her weight hasn’t shifted, her arms remain crossed, and nothing in her posture suggests she finds this situation remotely intimidating.

“I watched the footage,” I say.

The corner of her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly and there’s a fractional narrowing of her eyes.

“I thought you deleted it,” she says.

“I deleted it from the main system. I kept a copy on an isolated partition that only I can access.” I lean against the edge of my desk, folding my arms across my chest. “Seemed prudent, given the circumstances.”

She doesn’t respond. Just watches me, waiting for whatever’s coming next.

“You engaged an armed intruder,” I say. “You were alone, unarmed, and without backup or body armor or any means of communication. You took on a man holding a loaded weapon, disarmed him with your bare hands, fought him through a knife wound, and broke his wrist.” I pause. “And at no point did you consider retreating.”

Her chin lifts almost defiantly. “I had the situation under control.”

“Under control?” The words come out too sharp, and I try to rein myself in. “He had a gun, Sophie. Pointed at your chest. At that range⁠—”

“I know what a gun looks like at that range, Max.” Her voice is hard now. The mask is thinning, the real Sophie surfacing like something rising from deep water. “And I know what happens when you let an armed intruder walk into a building uncontested. So yes, I engaged. Because that is what I was trained to do, and that is what you hired me to do.”

“I hired you to find a mole.” I push off the desk and take a step toward her. “Not to get yourself killed.”

“I’m doing my job.”

“Your job does not require you to die for it!” The volume of my own voice surprises me. I never raise my voice. It’s a point of pride, a line I drew years ago to separate myself from my father’s rages. But the words are out before I can stop them, hanging in the air between us, and Sophie’s eyes widen fractionally before she locks it down again.

“That’s not your call to make,” she says. “How I do my job is not your call. It never has been. You hired Sentinel. Sentinel sent me. And either you trust me to handle the work the way I’ve been handling it for a decade, or I leave. Those are your options.”

“You’re not leaving.” My hand closes around the edge of the desk behind me.

“Then stop trying to control me.” She steps closer this time, her eyes blazing. Her voice is rising now, the careful professionalism cracking. “You don’t get to sit in your office watching footage and second-guess every decision I make in the field. You weren’t there. You don’t know what it’s like to be standing in front of someone with a weapon, making calculations in fractions of seconds, deciding whether to move or wait or fight or run. You have no idea what that takes, Max. None.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” My voice is barely controlled. “But I don’t need field experience to know what it looks like when someone doesn’t care whether they live or die. Do you have a death wish? Is that what this is?”

Her chin lifts and her whole face hardens, her eyes locked on mine with a fury that makes the air between us feel thin.

“You have no idea.” Her voice shakes with the effort of staying level. “No idea what I’m capable of.”

And then she’s right in front of me, her finger stabbing into my chest, right over the sternum. Hard enough that I feel the pressure through my shirt, the sharp point of her fingertip pressing into muscle and bone.

“You’re just a rich⁠—”

Again. Same spot. Harder this time, each jab punctuating the word like a period at the end of a sentence.