30. Max
Max
Since that night at Aurelia, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Finn told us.
Sophie’s scar and the way she reacted when he grazed it, her forearm across his throat. He said it was like watching a woman relive something terrible, something so terrible it made her want to kill the other person.
And I pinned her against a wall. I took her wrists and held them above her head and pressed my body into hers, like a goddamn fucking animal. She kissed me back, I know that, and I thought she wanted it. But now I’m not so sure anymore, and the guilt sits in my chest like something with teeth.
Because the worst part is that, looking back and knowing what I know now, I recognize it.
I know the way trauma can rewire you. The way you build your entire life around a wound you never talk about, and create a version of yourself so competent and controlled, so untouchable that no one ever thinks to look underneath.
In the past week, we’ve fallen into a routine.
Since she moved to research, her five o’clock updates come to me instead of Finn, and somewhere along the way those meetings stopped feeling like briefings.
She’s not open, not exactly. She’s still Sophie, but she’s not as guarded as she was when she first arrived here.
She argues with me when she thinks I’m wrong, which is often.
She rolls her eyes when I overthink something, and she doesn’t hide that she’s doing it.
Last Wednesday she called one of my theories “impressively wrong,” and when I asked her to elaborate, she did, for twenty minutes, and she was right about every point.
And then there was her humor. It comes out in flashes, dry and quick and gone before you can catch it, like she’s testing whether it’s safe to be funny around me.
I’ve started looking forward to it the way you look forward to the first crack of sunlight after days of rain, not because the rain was unbearable but because the light makes everything look different.
It’s early evening and Synthera is emptying. I’m heading to my office for my scheduled update with Sophie. My laptop is under one arm, my phone in my hand, when I round the corner of the fourth-floor corridor and stop.
Sophie is standing in the middle of the hallway.
She’s completely still, one hand raised at her side, her body angled toward a cleaning closet halfway down the corridor. Her posture is coiled, the careful stillness of a person who has heard something and is assessing it before she moves.
She turns her head and sees me. Her dark eyes lock onto mine and she raises a single finger to her lips.
Shhh.
Then she points at the closet door.
I go still. My mind runs the scenarios in under a second—another intruder, a breach, someone who’s gotten past Nathan’s security rotation. I shift my weight forward, lowering the laptop to the nearest surface. My phone goes into my pocket. My hands are free.
Sophie and I look at each other. There’s a split second of silent communication, and we move.
She reaches for the door handle. I position myself behind her left shoulder, close enough to intervene, far enough not to crowd her motion. She adjusts her grip and tightens her stance. She looks at me once more—a quick, confirming glance that says ready?—and pulls the door open.
Lucy Finley and Fabian Monroe spring apart like they’ve been electrocuted.
Lucy’s blouse is untucked on one side, the fabric bunched above her waistband.
Her hair, usually pulled back in a neat ponytail, is half undone.
Fabian’s glasses are so thoroughly fogged they’ve become opaque, and he’s holding a bottle of all-purpose cleaner in a way that suggests he grabbed the first object within reach and is now holding it like it explains everything.
They’re both flushed and panting and looking at Sophie and me with the pure, distilled horror of two employees caught making out in a supply closet by the CEO of the company.
“Mr. Cavill!” Lucy’s hands fly to her hair, trying to smooth it into something that doesn’t look like it was recently gripped by another person’s fingers. “We were just—I was—there was a—the supplies needed—”
“Lucy,” I say. My voice is level. “Mr. Monroe.”
“Sir, I can explain—” Fabian starts, his glasses still opaque, his dignity in ruins.
“I’m sure you can.” I hold the door open wider, stepping back to clear the exit. “Perhaps somewhere other than between the mop and the paper towels.”
They scramble out. Apologizing over each other, words tumbling and colliding—so sorry, won’t happen again, completely unprofessional, we were just—practically tripping over their own feet as they flee down the corridor.
Lucy’s heels click frantically against the floor, the sound accelerating as she rounds the corner.
Fabian, still clutching the bottle of all-purpose cleaner, walks directly into the wall, bounces off, and keeps going without acknowledging it.
Sophie and I stand in the empty hallway. The closet door swings slowly shut behind us with a long, theatrical hiss.
We watch Lucy and Fabian disappear around the corner. The sound of their retreat fades and then the corridor is silent.
Sophie turns to me.
“We can safely rule those two out,” she says. “Whatever they’re leaking, it isn’t data.”
And I can’t help it, I laugh. The sound is low and warm, and it surprises me completely, but once it’s out, I can’t pull it back. It fills the corridor, and I have to brace a hand against the wall.
Then Sophie looks up at me and she smiles and I can feel my heart squeeze.
The corners of her eyes crinkle and she looks completely open and unguarded and all I can think is, God, she’s beautiful.
I’ve always known she was beautiful, but somehow, seeing her like this, open and smiling at me like we’re two normal people who just shared a funny moment in a hallway, undoes me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
“Sophie, I—” I step forward. My body moving toward her without my permission, my hand rising, reaching for—what? Her face? Her arm? I don’t even know.
“Max—” she says, taking a step forward. Her eyes are soft and her lips are parted, and I think she’s going to close the distance between us.
Then she blinks, and the softness is gone. “Let’s go to your office,” she says, already turning.
I stand in the corridor for a second, my hand still half-raised, my heart beating fast.
Then I follow.
Sophie sits across from my desk, her files spread between us, the lamp casting a warm circle of light that catches the angles of her face.
“So far things have been uneventful in the research wing,” she says, taking a sip of her coffee.
Except for Ethan’s demonstration of the knotting device, I think. I wonder what she thought about it.
“Diana Quinn seems dedicated and the team clearly respects her,” she continues.
“But there are some things I noticed. She takes her phone to the bathroom every single time. She’s got a browser window she minimizes the second anyone walks by—and I mean she nearly jumps out of her chair doing it, Max.
It’s not casual. She looks guilty as hell every time. ”
She hands me a page and taps a line on it.
“But here’s the real one. Diana’s been accessing formulation files outside her project scope. Three times in the last week—files she has no reason to open. I had Declan pull her access logs.”
“Accessing files outside her scope could be curiosity,” I say. “Researchers cross-reference.”
“Not these files. These are pre-launch formulations for products that haven’t been announced yet.” She meets my eyes steadily. “A phone in the bathroom is innocuous. A minimized browser is ambiguous. But unauthorized access to proprietary formulations? That’s not a pattern, Max. That’s a trail.”
“Or she’s doing legitimate cross-departmental research and you’re reading too much into it.”
“That’s what I thought initially too,” she says, but then her eyes sharpen. “But I checked. No other researcher on Yoon’s team has accessed those files. If this were normal behavior, everyone would be doing it. Or at least one other person. But no, it’s just her.”
I stare at the page for a long moment. She has a point and we both know it.
“Victor Hartman,” I say, moving on. “What about him? Any updates?”
“Declan’s team still can’t crack his encrypted communications. Whatever he’s using, it’s sophisticated.”
“Which is itself a flag.”
“Which is a flag,” she repeats, and our eyes meet, and for a fraction of a second neither of us speaks because we’ve just said the same thing at the same time, independently.
“The question is,” she says, tapping her finger against the edge of her coffee cup, “why does a mid-level security personnel need military-grade encryption?”
“Three possibilities.” I hold up a finger. “He’s the mole.” A second finger. “He’s concealing something unrelated.” A third. “The encryption is a red herring—he’s security-conscious to an unusual but legitimate degree.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve been thinking the same,” she says, biting her lip, lost deep in thought.
“So what do you think it is?” I ask.
“One or two. The encryption is too good for a hobby. Victor has zero background in IT, I checked. Someone must’ve taught him, or someone provided the tools.”
“Who has access to sophisticated encryption tools outside of government and defense?”
“Private security firms. Sentinel-tier operations. Or—”
“Biotech competitors with intelligence divisions,” I finish.
“Nexagen,” she says.
“Nexagen,” I say. At the same time.
We look at each other and Sophie’s eyes drop to her files. I look down at mine.
The office is quiet, the clock ticking in the background. And suddenly, with a clarity that cuts through everything else, I realize I’ve never spoken to anyone whose mind works so much like mine. I don’t have to explain my logic because she’s already run it.
Sophie is mid-sentence about something to do with Victor’s login times when she catches me looking at her.