Page 92 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“I watched a K-drama for her,” I say instead. “Last night. I stayed up until two in the morning watching some show about an alien who falls in love with an actress so I’d have something to talk to her about. To build rapport.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and then his mouth twitches. “Which one?”

“I don’t know. My Love from the Star or something. It was ridiculous.”

“That one’s actually good.”

“You—what?” I stare at him.

“What? It’s a good show.” He says it without a shred of embarrassment.

“Finn. I can’t be wasting my time watching K-dramas until two in the morning to build rapport. Bugging her would be much easier. You want to find the mole, don’t you?”

He turns from the window, and the light catches his face at an angle, throwing one side into shadow, tracing the line of his jaw. He drags a hand through his hair, leaving the blond strands disordered, and exhales through his nose.

And for some reason, exactly in that moment, I think about the kitchen. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me. The flashback hits fast. I remember how close he was. Those guileless blue eyes fixed on mine like I was the only thing in the room. How unfairly handsome he looked from that close.

No, Sophie. Now is absolutely not the time to be thinking about that.

“And if she’s innocent?” he asks, bringing me back to the present. “If she’s just a woman struggling with money, and we’ve recorded her private conversations without her knowledge or consent?”

God damn it, Finn. Why do you have to be so righteous?

The worst part is, he’s saying exactly what I’ve been thinking. But I don’t say that.

“Then we delete it and she never knows.” I keep my voice level. “Forty-eight hours. If there’s nothing, the file disappears and Phoebe Brandt remains what she appears to be—a talented employee with some credit issues. No harm done.”

He stares at me, and I stare back. The office is quiet—just the hum of the ventilation and the muffled sound of footsteps in the hallway beyond the closed door.

Then he crosses back to the desk and sits down.

“Forty-eight hours.” The words come out slow, like he’s having to push each one past his own conscience. “Not a minute more. And if there’s nothing relevant, you delete everything. Every second of it.”

“Done.”

He looks at me. The tension in his jaw eases, but his eyes stay serious, carrying a weight that has nothing to do with the investigation. He leans forward, his elbows on the desk.

“I trust you, Sophie.”

He says it simply, and the words hit me somewhere behind my sternum and lodge there.

Finn Preston. A week ago he would barely even look at me, and when he did, his eyes were hard. He stood across from me in every meeting like I didn’t exist.

Maybe he’s figured out what happened to me and he feels sorry for me.

I have a feeling though that it’s not that. That it wasn’t the moment I broke that changed things for him, but the moment right before it—when we were close enough to breathe the same air, reliving a night that happened what feels like a lifetime ago.

I plant the bug on Monday morning at seven, before the marketing floor fills up.

It takes less than ten seconds. A small adhesive-backed transmitter, no bigger than a shirt button, pressed to the underside of Phoebe’s desk where the modesty panel meets the desktop. Standard Sentinel issue, with a relay booster I place inside the supply closet down the hall. The audio feeds directly to an encrypted app on my phone.

Phoebe will never know it’s there unless she crawls under her desk with a flashlight and knows what to look for.

And just like that, I’m listening to someone’s life.

That night, I sit cross-legged on my bed in the residential wing with my headphones on and my laptop open, scrubbing back through the day’s audio in the encrypted app.

The first three hours are nothing. Office ambience—keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the muffled hum of conversations happening at neighboring desks. Phoebe’s voice appears intermittently, discussing campaign timelines, reviewing copy drafts, laughing at something Celine says.