Sophie's POV
Wedding preparations have consumed my life like a slow-burning fever.
Venues, florists, caterers—an endless carousel of decisions that make me feel more like a project manager than a bride-to-be. My phone buzzes constantly with vendors asking about centerpieces and menu tastings and whether we want ivory or champagne linens.
Each choice feels like another lie I'm building, another brick in the wall of deception that grows taller every day.
Today's errands bring me downtown, rushing between appointments with a checklist that never seems to shrink. The wedding planner wants final numbers for the reception.
The florist needs to know if we're doing boutonnieres for all the groomsmen or just the wedding party. The cake designer has three different frosting samples that apparently require my immediate attention.
I check my watch as I hurry down Fifth Street, calculating whether I can make it to the bakery before they close. The engagement ring catches the afternoon light, throwing tiny rainbows across the sidewalk. Three carats of guilt disguised as love.
That's when I spot him.
Jackson Blake stands near the corner of Fifth and Harrison, and I recognize him instantly despite the baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Asher's teammate.
The one who gave me an unsettling feeling at the airport months ago—something about his smile that never quite reached his eyes, the way he watched everything while pretending not to care.
I raise my hand to call out a friendly greeting, but something about his behavior stops me cold.
He's glancing around nervously, checking over his shoulder every few seconds, moving with the deliberate caution of someone who doesn't want to be followed. This isn't the casual wandering of someone killing time downtown. This is purposeful. Secretive.
Curiosity overrides common sense.
I trail him at a distance, staying far enough back that he won't notice me but close enough to keep him in sight. He moves through the lunch crowd with practiced ease, weaving between pedestrians and food trucks like he knows exactly where he's going.
After two blocks, he slips into a narrow alley between a coffee shop and a vintage clothing store. The kind of place people use to make phone calls they don't want overheard.
My pulse quickens. This is none of my business. I should turn around, go back to my errands, pretend I never saw him.
But something in my gut tells me this matters somehow. That whatever Jackson Blake is doing in that alley, it's connected to things I need to understand.
I edge closer to the mouth of the alley, pressing myself against the brick wall of the coffee shop. From here, I can see Jackson's silhouette about twenty feet away, phone pressed to his ear.
His voice drifts toward me—low and urgent, but not quite quiet enough.
"...fake IP addresses, right? Make it look like the messages are coming from someone else entirely..."
My blood turns cold. I strain to hear more.
"...untraceable routing through multiple servers. Even if someone tries to track it, the trail goes nowhere..."
I don't understand all the technical jargon, but I understand enough. Jackson is talking about hiding digital footprints. About making electronic communications appear to come from somewhere they didn't originate.
About covering tracks.
"...target's getting suspicious, but that's actually perfect for our timeline. The more paranoid he gets, the better this works..."
Target. He's talking about a target. Someone he's been manipulating electronically, someone who's getting suspicious.
My gut clenches with a certainty I can't explain: this is something I was never meant to witness.
"...as long as the real number stays clean, there's no way to trace it back. Even if he goes to the cops, all they'll find are ghost addresses and dead ends..."
Jackson's voice gets quieter, and I have to lean forward to catch the rest.
"...few more weeks, maybe a month. Then we can let him destroy himself completely. The beauty is, he'll never know who was pulling the strings..."
The conversation ends abruptly. I hear the distinctive sound of a phone snapping shut, followed by footsteps moving toward the alley entrance.
Panic floods my system. There's no time to run, nowhere to hide. Jackson is going to emerge from that alley in about ten seconds and find me standing here like an amateur spy.
I pivot away from the wall, pulling out my own phone and pretending to check messages while walking casually toward the alley entrance.
Just a woman multitasking on a busy afternoon, completely oblivious to whatever clandestine meeting just took place twenty feet away.
Jackson emerges just as I'm passing the alley mouth. I look up from my phone with what I hope is genuine surprise.
"Oh my god, Jackson? What a crazy coincidence!"
Shock flickers across his face—just for a split second, quickly buried beneath his practiced charm. But I saw it. The moment of genuine alarm before his mask slipped back into place.
"Sophie. Hey there." His smile is perfectly calibrated, but something cold lurks behind his eyes. "Small world, right?"
"Seriously! I was just running wedding errands downtown. What brings you to this part of the city?"
"Just meeting a friend for coffee." The lie rolls off his tongue smoothly. "You know how it is."
We exchange pleasantries about the weather, about how busy downtown gets on weekdays. Normal conversation between acquaintances who happened to bump into each other.
But I can feel Jackson studying my face, trying to read whether I overheard anything important.
His eyes drop to my left hand, catching the glint of the engagement ring. His smile sharpens into something that looks almost predatory.
"Congratulations, by the way. Saw the news about the engagement. Very romantic, that bridge proposal."
"Thank you. We're both really happy."
"I bet you are." Jackson's tone carries an undertone I can't quite identify. "Blaze was quick to get on the last train, wasn't he?"
I frown, genuinely confused. "What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, nothing." Jackson waves dismissively, already stepping past me. "Just an expression. Good luck with all the planning. Wedding stress can really get to people, you know? Makes them do things they wouldn't normally do."
He disappears into the lunch crowd before I can ask what he meant, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with a growing sense of unease.
The last train. What kind of expression is that? And why did he say it like there was some hidden meaning I should understand?
I walk the rest of the way to the bakery on autopilot, Jackson's overheard conversation playing on repeat in my head. Fake IP addresses. Untraceable routing. A target getting suspicious.
Someone being manipulated electronically, someone who's going to destroy himself without ever knowing who was pulling the strings.
The engagement ring feels heavier on my finger as I push through the bakery's glass door. Another weight added to the collection of secrets I'm carrying, another piece of a puzzle I'm not sure I want to solve.