Page 94 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

CHAPTER 25

Sophie

The pack house dining table seats twelve, but tonight there are only four of us, and the room feels smaller than it should.

I’ve set up halfway down the table—laptop open, the encrypted audio file loaded and ready on a separate device face-down beside my coffee cup.

Finn sits to my left, his chair angled toward me, sleeves rolled to his forearms. Ethan is across from him, glasses on, a notebook open in front of him, pen in hand, even though I have a feeling he’ll remember every word without writing any of them down.

And Max is at the head of the table.

He was already seated when I walked in. I felt him the moment I entered the house, as if my body remembered what it feels like to be near him. He was reading something on his phone, and when I came through the door he didn’t look up.

He hasn’t looked at me since.

I haven’t looked at him either. Mostly because I didn’t want to remember that the last time we were in a room together, he had me against a wall with his hands around my wrists and his mouth on mine, and I was kissing him back like I wanted to devour him.

I swallow and focus on the screen in front of me. Because we are ignoring it. Completely. As if we can bury it somewhere deep enough that neither of us has to look at it again.

But the room knows. Finn’s gaze keeps drifting between Max and me, a slight furrow between his brows, like he’s missing something and can’t figure out what. Ethan is subtler—he hasn’t looked up from his notebook, but his pen hasn’t moved, and even though he’s staring at it, I know he’s listening to things that aren’t being said.

I pull up the file on my screen. The sooner I start, the sooner this is over.

“I’ve completed my assessment of Phoebe Brandt,” I say. My voice is level, stripped of anything that might betray the fact that my pulse is running about fifteen beats per minute faster than it should be, and not because of Phoebe. “I’m removing her from the suspect list.”

“On what basis?” Max asks.

His voice is curt, and he doesn’t even bother looking at me. Instead, he’s looking at some fixed point in the middle distance that apparently requires his full attention.

Fine. Two can play.

“Audio surveillance,” I say, matching his tone. “I put a transmitter on Phoebe’s desk. Forty-eight hours of audio.”

“You bugged her?” Ethan asks.

“Yeah, Sophie and I discussed it the other day.” Finn leans forward, his forearms on the table. “And, did you find anything?”

“I found the source of Phoebe’s debt. It’s not related to the leak, or to Synthera’s competitors, or to anyone with an interest in your research.”

“So what is it?” Ethan asks.

I pause, wondering how to say this to three alpha males sitting around a dining table at nine o’clock at night.

“Phoebe Brandt is using male escort services.”

The silence that follows tells me they weren’t expecting that.

Finn stares at me, his eyebrows climbing to a height I didn’t think anatomically possible.

Ethan blinks once, slowly.

Max’s phone lowers half an inch. It’s the most reaction I’ve gotten from him all evening.

“She’s booking escorts at premium rates, which is the source of the financial distress that flagged her in Declan’s initial screening.”

“Are you sure?” Finn’s voice is careful, as if he’s not sure the words meant what he thinks they meant. “Maybe you misheard her? Maybe it was—I don’t know, a personal trainer, or a⁠—”

“I’m sure, Finn.”