She couldn't unsee it.
The footage looped again in her mind, the small frame grainy but clear enough: a man's hand, the flash of a silver watch, and the faint line of a scar beneath his left ear as he bent towards her desk.
Robert's watch. Robert's scar.
Her chest had gone cold when she'd realised it.
She'd sat staring at the frozen image for what felt like hours, her thoughts tangling, refusing to make sense. Why him? What could he possibly gain from this?
If he wanted her gone, why not just tell Richard she wasn't up to the job? He had influence. He didn't need to sneak around in the dark, deleting files and moving her papers.
But the evidence was there; or at least, it looked like evidence.
The camera didn't lie.
She'd spent most of the night turning it over in her mind, trying to fit it into some rational pattern. Nothing lined up. Robert had no reason to target her. He was curt, yes, occasionally cold, but he didn't seem vindictive. He barely seemed to care whether she existed.
Which, perhaps, was the answer.
Maybe he wanted her gone simply because she was there — an inconvenience, a distraction, a reminder of something he'd rather not think about.
That morning, she dressed slower than usual, distracted. The children chattered at breakfast, her mother talking in the background about bills and the school's next fundraiser, but none of it really landed.
She nodded, smiled in the right places, and slipped on her coat with that brittle sense of composure she'd mastered years ago.
On the tube, she stared out at the blurred reflection of herself in the window — the tired eyes, the the pale face, was it worth it?
"Pull yourself together," she murmured under her breath. "You've survived worse than this."
The office felt colder than usual when she arrived. Or maybe that was her imagination.
She sat at her desk, turned on her computer, and tried to work. But every time she heard footsteps behind her, her heart gave a small, traitorous jolt.
By mid-morning, she couldn't concentrate.
If she confronted him outright, she'd risk looking paranoid, and if she was wrong, it would be career suicide.
But if she did nothing… he could destroy everything she'd built.
There had to be a way to catch him properly. Another trap, maybe. Something that forced him to reveal himself again.
She opened a new document, began to draft a project note — something innocuous, but with enough sensitive data to tempt anyone watching. Then she encrypted the original and saved the decoy version to the shared drive.
If Robert tried to tamper with it, she'd know.
And if he didn't… well, at least she'd stop fixating on him and find who it really was.
He'd known that Isabelle was watching him for two days now.
It wasn't difficult to tell; the way she tensed when he entered a room, how her emails had become clipped and overly formal, how she avoided his gaze in meetings.
She was good at hiding it, but he'd spent years reading people who didn't want to be read.
And he wasn't angry. Not even surprised.
In her position, he might have suspected himself too.
He'd seen the access logs again since last night. Someone was still accessing her files out of hours, and this time the trail had been deliberately obscured. Whoever it was knew what they were doing.
But he also knew how office politics worked. Someone like Isabelle — young, competent, quietly intimidating — made enemies without meaning to.
And if she'd stumbled across something that pointed in his direction, it was only a matter of time before she decided he was the one.
He exhaled slowly, leaning back in his chair.
He didn't want to involve Richard, not until he had something solid. But if Isabelle was setting traps of her own, they were both circling the same truth from opposite sides.
He wasn't sure whether to admire her, or tell her to stop before she got herself hurt.
Instead, he decided on something else entirely.
He found her at her desk before lunch, typing furiously, her focus absolute.
He stood there a moment before speaking. "You look like you're trying to set the keyboard on fire."
Her head snapped up, eyes wary. "I'm busy."
"I can see that."
A pause stretched between them, full of unspoken tension.
Then he said quietly, so only she could hear, "Have lunch with me."
The words came out more abruptly than intended, but he didn't take them back.
Her brows drew together. "Excuse me?"
"Lunch," he repeated evenly, voice still low. "You've barely eaten all week. We need to talk."
She froze, her gaze narrowing just slightly. "About what?"
He hesitated, just long enough for her suspicion to deepen, then said, "About what's really happening here."
Her hand tightened around her pen. "I'm not sure I follow."
"Yes, you do," he said. "But we should discuss it somewhere other than the middle of the office."
She looked at him for a long moment — assessing, calculating, maybe deciding whether it was safer to agree or refuse.
Finally, she nodded once. "Half past one. The café on the corner of Church Street."
He inclined his head in silent agreement and walked away, pretending not to notice the way her eyes followed him; cautious, unreadable.
She shouldn't have agreed.
Every instinct told her to stay clear of him, to keep her head down until she had proof. But curiosity, or maybe exhaustion, had won.
By the time half past one arrived, her nerves were taut. She'd rewatched the footage that morning, convinced herself she was right — and yet, something about his expression earlier, the calm steadiness of it, had made her hesitate.
The café was busy, full of low chatter and clinking cutlery. She spotted him already seated in the corner, reading something on his phone.
He looked different outside the office; less severe, though still distant. The kind of man who could disappear into a crowd simply by deciding to.
She approached slowly.
He stood as she reached the table, polite but unsmiling. "Isabelle."
"Robert."
They sat.
For a while, neither spoke. The noise around them filled the silence; the hiss of the coffee machine, the faint drizzle against the window.
Finally, he said, "You think I'm the one sabotaging you."
It wasn't a question.
She stiffened. "I —"
He raised a hand, cutting her off. "Don't bother denying it. I'd have drawn the same conclusion if I were you."
She stared at him, searching for a trace of mockery, but there was none. Just calm certainty.
"You don't deny it," she said finally.
"I'm not your saboteur," he said. "But I know someone's trying to make you look incompetent. I've been tracking it quietly for weeks."
Her pulse jumped. "Why?"
"For the company," he said simply. "Richard's reputation. And mine."
He leaned forward slightly. "You're good at your job, Isabelle. But you're being targeted. And whoever's behind this, is smart."
She swallowed. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"
"You don't," he said. "But I think you want to."
Their eyes met; a long, charged silence stretching between them.
For the first time, she saw something behind his coolness. Not warmth exactly, but clarity. Purpose.
And she wasn't sure whether that made her feel safer or even more unsettled.