Page 61 of Heat Unscripted

Bram’s hand stilled on the folder. His eyes met hers.

“The replacement was a network decision,” he said slowly. “Presented as routine personnel rotation.”

“Presented as routine,” Sloane agreed. “Done clean. The new liaison had the technical rider, the booth specs, the monitoring protocols, the production schedule. Everything they needed to know exactly what Cillian’s setup was built to protect against.”

The kitchen held its quiet the way the booth had held the heat, sealed and concentrating, getting heavier.

Tuck’s hands had closed into fists at his sides. Not the showy tension of a man about to hit something. The tight, controlled kind, a threat identified and a response being worked out. The scar through his eyebrow stood white against the flush climbing his face.

“Somebody sat in our production meetings,” he said, low and dark. “Watched her get ready for the most exposed performance of her life. And filed a lawsuit before the feed was cold.”

“Not somebody,” Sloane said. “The network. The liaison was their operative. The lawsuit was their contingency. They knew, or guessed, what Isobel’s biology was before the stream ever started. The reveal just handed them the trigger.”

I sat down.

The chair scraped the tile and the sound was too loud in the held breath of the room. Bram’s coat was still over the back of the chair where I’d hung it, and it brushed my arm. The peppercorn ghosted off the fabric, warm and familiar. I pulled it into my lap without thinking and held it against my stomach like a shield.

“How long were they watching?” My voice was quiet. The lowest register I had, the one that lives just above silence. “Before the stream. How long?”

Sloane’s face gentled. The amber and fig in her settled into something warmer, the particular tone one omega uses with another who’s hurting.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “That’s what we have to find out. But the timeline says weeks, not days. The legal prep alone would’ve taken?—”

“Three to four weeks for a filing this complex,” Bram finished. His voice had gone cold. Not the managing-logistics cool I knew. Real ice, a strategic mind that had noticed not just a betrayal but a planned one. “Someone’s been watching us for at least a month.”

He looked at me. The cold didn’t reach his eyes. What was there was the same fury that had surfaced in the booth, aimed not at me but at the whole machine, the industry that builds cages and calls them contracts.

“They won’t get what they’re after,” he said. Each word set down like a promise. “None of it. Not the IP. Not the catalog. Not one syllable of what you built.”

Sloane took a business card out of her jacket and laid it on the table between us. Heavy stock, embossed. A name I didn’t know, but Bram did, I could see it in the flicker behind his eyes.

“My solicitor,” she said. “She’s expecting your call. She’s cleared her calendar. And she does not lose.” She looked around the kitchen. At Tuck’s fists. At Cillian, fingers moving on his tablet with new intensity. At Bram, the cold already hardening into a plan.

“Build the nest,” she said to me. Quiet. Omega to Omega. “Let your pack hold the line while your body finishes what it started. The legal fight will still be there when you’re ready.”

She stood.

“I’ll be back tomorrow with the full disclosure files. Cillian.” She looked at him. “My solicitor will need everything you’ve got on the liaison’s access history. Every file they touched. Every meeting they sat in. Every piece of that rider they could have seen.”

Cillian nodded once. His eyes held hers, steady. She’d just handed him a problem shaped exactly like the ones he was built to solve.

Sloane turned to me one last time. The amber and fig wrapped around the chamomile and honey in the air between us, two omega scents meeting and recognizing each other.

“You’re not alone in this anymore,” she said. “You haven’t been for a while. Stop acting like you are.”

She left the way she’d come in. Decisive, brisk, filling every space she crossed.

The front door clicked shut.

The kitchen stayed quiet. Three beats. Four.

Then Cillian spoke.

“I can trace the access logs tonight.” Clipped, focused, the caretaker turned hunter. “If the liaison pulled the rider off the shared drive, there’s a fingerprint. Timestamp, device ID, how long they had it open.”

“Do it.” Bram picked up the business card, turned it over once, set it down. “I’ll call the solicitor in the morning. Tonight we build the timeline.”

Tuck uncrossed his arms. His cedar had settled, no longer sharp, no longer territorial. Steadier. He’d found his job and was ready to do it.