Chapter 17 – Finn – The Line We Crossed
I don’t go to the hospital.
Everyone else is there anyway. Eleanor rearranging reality with her voice, Ariane pretending calm like it’s an Olympic sport, Julian auditioning for “Most Caring Fiancé” in a mirror somewhere.
I’m buried under work I don’t care about and problems I care about too much.
If I go, I’ll have to be decent. I don’t have decent in me this morning.
The house is quiet in that expensive way that makes your thoughts echo.
Floor-to-ceiling glass, skyline like a threat, concrete that remembers every footstep.
I take the stairs two at a time and shut myself in my room, where I’ve set-up my makeshift office, making sure to turn the lock like that will keep anything out.
It won’t, but what’s the harm in taking precaution?
Coffee is non-negotiable. The machine I had Maria bring up to my room hisses and spits out the double shot of espresso I favor. I don’t bother with cream or sugar to dilute it. I carry the mug to the desk and wake the laptop.
Password. Two-factor authentication. The process is as annoying as it is necessary. I’ve found that out the hard way.
I’ve only just logged in when my inbox detonates. I scroll past them like an adult ignoring toddlers yelling for attention. Instead, I click my way to the folder Eric sent me this morning.
Julian’s folder waits on the desktop, tagged with a discreet color like a bruise you pretend isn’t there.
I click into it. Eric’s guy’s done a hell of a job scraping together a dossier in record-time: I’ve got everything from details on Julian’s credit and assets to his corporate filings, soft profiles, charity circuits, and any other details that make up the usual pack of public breadcrumbs you can follow blindfolded.
I read until my eyes are dry and scratchy.
It doesn’t help that the man is far from the most interesting subject to study.
He’s fucking predictable, for one. With tastes you can forecast just from looking at how he presents himself to the world.
He is careful where it costs him nothing, and cheap where it counts.
There’s a line item for everything except a soul.
Nothing bloody. Nothing hot. Not even a rumor I can feed.
“Look at you,” I say to the screen, and the screen looks back like it has all day. “You fucking saint.”
Intel, intel, intel. Useless. I want a seam to pry open, a crack to pour acid in. There’s nothing to sink teeth into, and the part of me that solves problems by breaking them starts pacing inside my ribs.
Fine. If there’s nothing to destroy, I could always make up something.
Thoughtfully, I parse my way through my contacts until I choose one. My thumb hovers for a second before I’ve made my choice. And then, the phone is ringing.
It only rings twice before a voice sounds on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” The voice is young, or maybe just undercooked. Background hum says small room, big fan, wired nerves.
“This is Finn.” I don’t add a last name. If he needs one, Eric gave the wrong number.
Silence. A click. His next word comes tighter, like he rolled his chair up to a desk and decided to sit upright. “Right. Uh, okay. Hi.”
“Is there a reason you sound like you just shoplifted gum?” I ask.
“Because I like not being indicted?” he tries. “Eric said you might call. He also said… never mind.”
“What did he say.”
“That you’re a guy who doesn’t do small asks.”
“Then this will be a surprise.” I take a breath like I’m bored, not plotting arson. “I need fabricated threads. Believable. Messages between Julian Hartford and someone else. Flirty. Stupid. Enough to hurt.”
A beat, then: “I don’t do frame-jobs,” he says, words stacking like he practiced them. “No offense. I’m more ‘find what’s actually there.’ Backups. Sync leaks. Cloud misconfigs. I have… standards.”
“You have hobbies,” I say. “Congratulations. I need the thing I asked for.”
He laughs. It sounds like a cough that got lost. “Man, this is not a prank call, right? Because what you just said is illegal as… well, illegal. Reckless. Dangerous. Like, prison-adjacent.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Do it. I don’t give a fuck.”
“Okay, see, when I say ‘dangerous,’ that’s your cue to reevaluate. There are laws. People with badges. My mom. I like my mom. And freedom. And sleeping. You’re asking me to fabricate evidence. That’s—”
“I’m asking you to make convincing screenshots,” I cut in. “Fake words on a glowing rectangle. Not a coup. Not a bank. Calm down.”
“Convincing to whom?” he asks, still fighting. “Because if you want it to stand up on the open internet for more than ten minutes, that’s a whole other—”
“It doesn’t need to stand up on the open internet,” I say, and I hear my own voice flatten into something cold and venomous. “It needs to stand up to one person’s eyes. That’s all.”
He goes quiet. “Right,” he says finally. “So, this is personal.”
“It’s leverage.”
“Same church, different pew.” He mutters something that sounds like math or prayer. “What’s the endgame? You trying to get this Julian guy fired? Divorced before he marries? Shot into the sun?”
“If I wanted the sun, I’d buy it. Focus.”
“I am focused.” He is not. He is breathing like a rabbit. “I’ve seen your name around. You’re… no offense…intense, dude. And this is the kind of intense that, um, gets you headlines. ‘Local tech guy’s pet nerd forges…’”
“You lay one more adjective on me, I hang up and find someone with fewer ethics and better results,” I say. “You want the job or not.”
He hesitates long enough for me to consider how long it would take to build my own little factory. Then he says, “No. Sorry. I’m out. Hard pass.”
“How much?” I ask.
“That’s not the…”
“How much,” I repeat.
He names a number that would make a partner at a white-shoe firm press pause. It’s not small.
“Tell you what. I’ll double your ask,” I say, “and throw in a fucking retainer for the quarter. Paid today.”
He stops breathing for a second. When he starts again, it’s a different rhythm. “You’re serious.”
“Do I sound like a man trying to save money.”
Another beat. Then, he groans like a cartoon.
“Fuck. Okay. Fine. But guardrails. We don’t touch anyone’s actual accounts.
We don’t impersonate live. I produce artifacts.
Period. If somebody audits pixels like a hobby, that’s your problem, not mine.
We never met. If a cop asks, I’m a figment of your imagination. ”
“Good,” I say. “You won’t meet me.”
He exhales. “Christ. Okay. Start talking. Tell me whatever you can about how this guy talks, since you’re asking me to mimic it.”
“His tone is fucking prissy as hell,” I say.
“Julian sounds like a man who treats HR policy like a hobby… polishes it, displays it, breaks it when no one’s looking.
Careful in public, lazy in private. When he wants something, he pretends it’s already his.
He doesn’t gush. He nudges. He thinks he’s charming, lands on condescending.
He never gets his hands dirty. He likes the idea of being bad more than the mess. Perfect grammar.”
“God, I know that guy,” the hacker mutters. Keys start clacking. “Who’s the other party?”
“Someone disposable,” I say. “Vanilla name. Nothing that pings her history. Keep her voice eager, a little try-hard. Lots of exclamation points. She’s flattered by access. She’s not the point. He is.”
“Content?”
“Hints, not confessions,” I say. “He alludes, he doesn’t describe. ‘Last time was risky.’ ‘You looked incredible in red.’ ‘Can I steal an hour.’ He pretends to be busy, because busy men believe busyness is virtue. He adds a ‘delete this’ once, not ten times; he wants to feel careful.”
“Right.” More typing. “Time stamps? Frequency?”
“Make it look lived-in,” I say. “A thread that breathes. No manifestos. Flirty crumbs. Sometimes he disappears because he’s ‘in meetings’; sometimes he texts at midnight because he can. Not every day. He’s not a teenager. A few weeks’ worth is enough to imply the rest.”
He clears his throat. “Any words he’d use? Like, key phrases?”
“He’d never write ‘sex.’ He’d write ‘see you’ and mean it.
He’d use a nickname he thinks is clever.
Something he would never call Ariane.” The name hits my teeth and stays.
“Make it wrong on purpose. ‘Sunshine.’ ‘Bunny.’ The cutesier the better. He’s stupid enough to think women actually enjoy that shit. ”
“Jesus,” the hacker snorts, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s judging me or Julian. Not that it matters to me, either way. “Okay. Format of deliverables?”
“Screenshots,” I say. “On a platform most people recognize. I don’t care which.” I can hear the lecture trying to climb out of him… resolutions, overlays, metadata… and I cut it off before it grows legs. “Just make it look real.”
“You’re a dream client,” he says, halfway to offended. “Anything else?”
“Once,” I say, “have him say ‘don’t ask questions.’ He thinks that makes him brave.”
A pause that tastes like judgment. “You’re disturbingly good at this.”
“I pay attention.”
“Right.” He huffs out a breath. “Timeline?”
“Two hours.”
He laughs, shocked. “I need at least three, if you want something passable.”
I look at the clock, at the city, at the coffee I forgot to drink. I want fast more than I want perfect, but I don’t want stupid.
“Three,” I relent grudgingly. “If you need me, don’t.”
“Copy,” he says, and hangs up before I can change his mind.
I hold the phone in my hand until the screen goes black and my reflection stares back. A man I recognize and a man I don’t, layered. I set it down.
Coffee again. The second cup tastes like penance, too.
I lean on the desk with both hands and try to make myself care about the board deck.
I open it. Words and numbers, charts that perform confidence, the polite pageantry of being in charge.
I add a note in the margin that says we should bleed the vendor before they bleed us, then delete it because other people read these.
I have all the quiet money buys, and still I can hear last night in the walls.
Ariane’s mouth. Ariane’s “not yet” like a vow and a dare.
Ariane’s eyes, full of all the wrong things, and me taking every wrong thing like a man starving in a room full of fruit he didn’t pay for.
Her soft gasps and tortured expressions when I knew she wanted to scream but couldn’t.
This needs to stop. Fuck. I need more of her.
I try to read a memo about an acquisition that will make Q4 less embarrassing.
I try to answer a question about a venue that refuses to let us move a stage because of “historic weight limits.” I try to care that the catering team thinks “elevated comfort food” means charging six figures for mac and cheese.
Every time I focus, the words blur and I’m back in a hallway with a hand on a wall and a girl who doesn’t belong to anybody looking at me like she might.
Three hours takes a lifetime to pass.
My phone buzzes on the desk like it’s waking me up from a dream. Unknown Contact. Good. He remembered to be anonymous.
UNKNOWN: Done. Screenshots attached.
UNKNOWN: Don’t forward from your primary. Please. I like my limbs.
A zip icon blooms on the screen. I open it. Thumbnails stack like teeth.
I click the first one and the room tilts.
Blue bubbles. Gray bubbles. A battery icon that says “ordinary day.” A header with a name that means nothing and will mean too much.
The cadence is exactly what I asked for: suggestive, not explicit; careful, not careful enough.
“Still thinking about the elevator.” “You looked incredible in that red dress.” “Can I steal an hour? 314 again.” A single “Delete this.” A midnight ping that reads like he thought of her and decided he deserved the thought.
And there, the wrong nickname—bright, stupid, branded: Sunshine.
I swipe through them, and I feel the pressure backing off like someone took a boot off my chest. Not gone. I don’t get gone. But quieter. Like the house is finally breathing with me instead of against me.
Another message while I’m still staring.
UNKNOWN: You good?
UNKNOWN: How do you… want to handle payment. Asking for my blood pressure.
I wire the double and the retainer and a tip because fear should always be rewarded. The transfer confirmation pops up. Thirty seconds later:
UNKNOWN: holy fuck.
UNKNOWN: Respectfully, sir, please forget my name.
ME: We never spoke.
UNKNOWN: I died in 2017.
ME: Stay dead.
UNKNOWN: ??
I drop the files into a folder no one will open unless they’re paid to be nosy, Vendor_Escalations, and back them up to a place my attorneys will never see unless I decide they should. I don’t text them to anyone. Not yet. You don’t pull the pin in an empty room.
She’ll see the truth. Even if I had to build it myself. It’s a shitty thing to think but it feels good anyway. There’s a kind of peace in choosing your sin and paying full price.
I close the laptop slower than I need to, like that makes the choice tidy. The house is still.
Fuck. My dad’s in a hospital bed while I’m here workshopping damnation like it’s a quarterly OKR.
I should be at his side, or in a pew somewhere, mumbling words I barely remember.
I haven’t been inside a church in over a decade unless a funeral forced me through the door.
Even then, I counted exits and thought about parking.
“Sinning” is the word they taught us to fear; I call it decisions with receipts.
If God’s doing rounds, He can check mine. I’m not hiding what I am.
I stand, stretch my back, and let the morning lay itself out like a map I can burn. The work is still there. The emails. The meetings I won’t attend. The calls I’ll let ring until someone decides I’m a legend or an asshole. I put my phone in my pocket and walk to the window.
Julian is out there somewhere, wearing his decent face, telling himself he’s the good guy because he wrote thank-you notes and learned which fork to use. He’ll leave town tonight and think distance is safety. It isn’t. It’s an opportunity.
I press my palm to the glass, and the town prints itself across my skin, small and cold.
My father would say go light a candle. I just lit a fuse.
Maybe that’s prayer in my language— asking the universe to listen while I make a mess it can’t ignore.
Whatever the fuck “sin” means, I’m fluent. There’s no going back. There never was.