Page 131 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I try Ethan’s office first. The stack of journals on his desk has grown since this morning, and his cold coffee mug is still on the windowsill, but he’s gone.

I cut across the bridge to the executive floor. Finn’s office is dark and the door locked. The marketing wing is winding down for the day, people grabbing coats and bags, the low hum of end-of-day conversations filling the open plan.

I keep walking. Through the frosted glass of the conference room adjacent to Max’s office, I can see a single figure—broad shoulders, dark hair, standing near the table.

The door is open. It looks like a meeting just wrapped up—chairs slightly askew, water glasses half-empty. But there’s no one in it now except Max, who’s gathering papers from the table, his jacket slung over the back of a chair.

I step inside and close the door behind me.

Max immediately looks up.

His green eyes find mine, and whatever he sees there makes his hands go still.

“Max,” I say. “We need to talk.”

CHAPTER 35

Max

Twelve years.

I stare at the document on the table, taking in the official seal in the corner and the signatures lined up along the bottom of the page. Twelve years of setbacks, of failed formulations and starting over from scratch. Twelve years of watching Ethan pour his genius into something the world said was impossible, of carrying the weight of this thing on my shoulders every single day since I was twenty-two years old and swore on my mother’s grave that I would finish it.

And now it’s done.

Equinox is approved.

There’s one final step—a formality, really, a rubber stamp from the regulatory board that Ethan and Finn are handling right now downtown. But the hard part is over. The trials are complete. The data is solid. The compound is safe, effective, and ready for production.

In a month—maybe less—omegas will be able to walk into a pharmacy and buy their freedom in a bottle.

I pick up the folder and read the words again, even though I’ve memorized them by now.

Phase II clinical trial: COMPLETE. Efficacy threshold: EXCEEDED. Safety profile: ACCEPTABLE. Recommendation: PROCEED TO MANUFACTURING.

Acceptable. Such a small, bloodless word for the thing that’s going to change everything.

I set the folder down and lean back in my chair. Late afternoon light slants through the windows. Beyond the glass, the grounds stretch out toward the treeline. All of it built on the bones of my father’s estate, where his house used to stand.

I think about him now—I can’t help it. On a day like this, with everything we’ve worked for finally within reach, he’s the ghost I can’t escape.

Theodore Cavill. The name still hangs in boardrooms and university halls, bearing his legacy like a benediction.

But they didn’t know him.

They didn’t see how he looked through my mother or hear the way he spoke to her. The bruises stayed hidden beneath her clothes. Year by year I watched her shrink, becoming a ghost in her own home long before she died.

I did. I watched all of it. And I couldn’t do a goddamn thing.

You thought you won, I think, staring out the window at what I built on his grave. You thought you’d always win. That’s what men like you believe—that power is permanent, that control is forever, that the people you break stay broken.

But I’m still here. And she’s still here, in everything I’ve built. And you?

You’re nothing.

I pick up the folder again. Trace my finger over the approval signature.

This is for her. Everything I’ve done. Everything I am. This is for her.