Page 63 of Omega's Formula

Now I’m free.

The word rings hollow even in my own head.

I unpack my bags. Clothes in the closet, toiletries in the bathroom, laptop on the desk where it belongs. Everything returns to its proper place. By the time I’m done, you’d never know I was gone at all.

I shower, scrubbing away the last traces of his scent that clung to my skin. The water runs too hot but I don’t adjust it. The slight burn feels appropriate somehow.

I spend the day at the office catching up on the thousand things that have accumulated while I’m away, throwing myself into the work so I don’t have to think of him.

It’s nearly midnight when I finally get home and into bed. The sheets are clean and cold, hotel-fresh from the service that comes while I’m away. They smell like nothing.

As I’m drifting off, I find myself reaching across the mattress automatically, my hand seeking warmth that isn’t there. The instinctive action jolts me awake.

Stop it, I tell myself.It wasn’t real.

I can still hear his voice on that recording. The slurred confession, the admission that everything he’d told me was a lie born from anger and wounded pride. He played me from the beginning.

All of it was manipulation. A con artist running his game, and I fell for it completely.

Rage is easier than whatever else I’m feeling. I wrap myself in it like armor and stare at the ceiling and don’t sleep.

Work is supposed to be my refuge.

For the first two days after cohabitation ends, I throw myself into it completely. I fill my days with back-to-back meetings, strategy sessions, the quarterly review I’d been putting off. I respond to emails at three in the morning and schedule calls for six AM and fill every minute with tasks that require my attention.

It doesn’t help.

Nolan’s face keeps intruding. Not the version of him that I know is true—the liar, the manipulator, the omega who admitted on recording that his accusations were fabricated. No, my traitorous brain keeps serving up the other Nolan. The one who laughed at my terrible cooking and looked so devastatingly vulnerable when I held him through the worst of his heat.

I’m in the middle of a budget presentation when I realize I’ve been staring at the same slide for five minutes without seeing it.

“Erik?” Sara’s voice, careful and professional. “Should we take a break?”

I blink the spreadsheet back into focus. “No. Continue.”

She does, but I catch her exchanging a look with the CFO that says she’s noticed something is wrong. Everyone has noticed something is wrong. I can see it in the way they look at me.

The presentation ends. I approve things that probably deserve more scrutiny. I go back to my office and close the door.

I keep thinking about the last morning. Had he known, even then, that it was all going to crumble? Had he been calculating how much longer he could maintain the fiction before I discovered the truth?

Or—and this is the thought I can’t let myself finish—or had he believed it too? Had he let himself get lost in the same fantasy I was building?

It doesn’t matter. The recording is clear. It’s his voice, his words, his admission that everything was a performance designed to hurt Alistair and ended up hurting me instead.

I should feel vindicated. Alistair was right all along, and my company’s reputation remains intact. I have documentation proving that every accusation against us was groundless.

Instead I feel hollow.

Nolan didn’t even push me on what he did wrong. He didn’t fight, didn’t demand explanations, didn’t try to convince me that whatever I’d discovered was a mistake or a misunderstanding. He just accepted my coldness like he’d been expecting it all along.

Because he knew. He knew what I’d find if I dug deep enough, and when I finally found it, he didn’t bother trying to maintain the lie.

That’s proof, isn’t it? His silence is proof that the recording was genuine.

I wish it made me feel better.

Anna shows up on day three without warning.