Page 51 of In Love With Mr. Wrong

The offices ofPerfectly Matchedare quiet by the time I return, but not empty. The sun is low, casting long golden streaks across the floor-to-ceiling windows in the executive wing. Everything is soft and low-lit, the calm before either brilliance or disaster. I love the building at this hour. When the buzz has faded, and it’s just the heartbeat of something we built. Something that, up until recently, I thought was unshakeable. Now, I’m not so sure.

I drop my tote onto the edge of the desk and make my way to Olivia’s workspace. She’s already there, as always, standing in front of three curved monitors like she’s commanding a warship. Her hair is up in a sleek bun. Her black blazer looks sharp enough to draw blood. She doesn’t look up.

“You felt it too?” she asks.

I nod. “Something’s wrong.”

We haven’t had to say it aloud yet. Not really. But we both know. ThePulseMatchleak was too clean. Too precise. They had access to files and framing no outsider should’ve gotten. Not without help. It wasn't just a cyber breach. It was a hand on the inside. A mole.

“I started digging,” Olivia says, flicking a few keystrokes. The monitor to her right flares to life with internal logs, color-coded timelines, and heat maps of recent log-ins. “I’ve isolated anomalies in access logs from the elite server branch. There are two pings from a location that doesn’t align with anyone’s calendar, three nights ago, after hours.”

“PulseMatchlaunched their campaign the morning after that,” I say, stepping closer.

“Exactly.”

The data is dense, but Olivia narrates like she’s reading a novel she’s already memorized. “This login happened from a sub-access account. Not admin-level, but enough to view the matchmaking backend. Enough to export onboarding footage.”

My fingers tighten around the edge of her desk. “Do we know who?” She pulls up a name. My stomach twists:Jared Bloom.

Junior data analyst. Quiet. Efficient. Brought in six months ago after we doubled our client base. Clean resume. Tech-forward. The kind of guy who refills his coffee at exactly 10:15 every morning and never misses a deadline. He also worked atPulseMatchfor two years before joining us.

“Background cleared when we hired him,” I say.

Olivia nods. “They buried the connection. He listed it under a rebranded startupPulseMatchabsorbed. I missed it. HR missed it. You were on maternity leave when we signed off.”

“Fuck,” I whisper. “He’s good.”

“Too good to be trusted.”

We’re quiet for a beat. The air feels heavier than it should. Olivia taps her nails once against the desk, a habit when she’s holding herself back from saying something riskier.

“What?” I ask.

She turns slowly. “I think he’s still here.”

My pulse stutters. “In the building?”

“No. I think he’s still embedded. Still planning something. PulseMatch isn’t done, Margot. That last campaign was the opener. They’re waiting for us to move first, so they can counter it with something worse.”

I take a deep breath, steadying the heat rising in my chest. “So what’s the plan?”

She swivels her keyboard toward me. “We don’t alert him. We isolate access quietly. Mirror the next login. Feed him false data. Then we track where he sends it.”

“And when we know?” I ask.

“We burn him.”

I don’t smile. But God, I want to.

***

Two hours later, I’m in the main bullpen. Most of the staff have gone home, but a few linger, late calls, project wrap-ups, and Jared, exactly where Olivia said he’d be. Second desk from the back. Dual monitors glowing, headphones in. Typing calmly like the world isn’t on fire. I watch him for a beat, pretending to skim emails on my phone, before heading back upstairs.

“He’s in,” Olivia confirms, eyes locked on her screen.

“Send the data?”

She nods. “Fabricated internal doc. Half of it is nonsense, the other half a sandbox of tracking beacons and keystroke loggers.”

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