Daybreak (Sorrowsong University, #2) — Chapter no 2

Chapter 2

ALEX

[DRAFT]

From: Alex Corbeau-Green Subject: Torture (noun) the act of inflicting severe pain as punishment To: Ophelia Winters

Dreamed about the freckles on your thighs last night.

MY COFFEE SCALDS my lips as I take a sip, unlocking my laptop. Just how I like it.

Rain patters against the glass wall behind me, staining the city a drab shade of gray.

It’s dark out, thanks to a thick blanket of black cloud and a heavy fog that snakes its way through the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan.

I hang up on my morning call with Luis and scroll to the website of a nearby culinary school campus. I book myself and Mia a tour in a couple weeks’ time. Fleur has wanted to be a model for as long as I can remember, Evie has dreamed of being on Broadway since she could walk, Josie’s pretty dead set on a career as Spider-Man, but Mia has never been sure.

After making pro and con lists beneath nurse, personal trainer, sports coach, engineer, and athlete, she sighed at the kitchen island and said, “I wish I

could just cook food all day.”

Chef, Mia. You want to be a chef.

Idiot.

I love all my sisters equally, but Mia is the one who most often feels like a friend. The idea of her moving out and chasing her dreams of becoming a chef is terrifying; I’d miss her. In my head she’s still six years old.

Jacqueline buzzes me from her desk outside my office. “Mr. Corbeau?

Mr. Morello is here.”

“Send him in.”

Rocco Morello is a mountain of a man. I remember meeting Vincenzo, double the size of the other kids his age, and then seeing his father across the room and thinking, Ah, that makes sense. Buzzed hair, watchful eyes, tattoos all the way up his neck, a nasty scar across his forehead. Six foot six with shoulders broader than your average doorway, he used to terrify me as a boy.

Now we’ve ended up here, feeling more like equals.

“None of that instant crap. I don’t want no pods, either. Or coffee bags.

Fuck coffee bags. And fuck decaf. You got that?” he barks, on his way in.

“Yes, Mr. Morello,” replies Jacqueline, sounding a little faint.

Rocco shuts the door behind him, isolating us in my oversized office.

He bypasses the sofa, sprawling out in the armchair opposite my desk. “You get her from the unemployment office, or what? Woman doesn’t know how

to work a computer.”

“She’s fine.”

“She sucks at her job.”

“Like me.”

Despite the early hour, he lights a cigar, smoke obscuring his frosty blue gaze. The tattoos all over his hands have spread with age, but his wife’s name is still legible just above his knuckles. “Not according to the Wall Street Journal.”

I pull a cigarette from my desk drawer, joining him. “I appreciate you watching over my sisters the week it all happened.”

His smile doesn’t touch his eyes. He sits forward, the faint wrinkles in the tanned skin on his forehead deepening. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Corbeau.” The steroid-enhanced muscles in his shoulders tense, fingers drumming together. “You endangered my children at Sorrowsong.”

I shake my head, taking a drag. “Not how it played out.”

“No?”

“I didn’t ask anything of them.”

“You sent my daughter on a hunt for a killer in that forest outside the castle. If you hadn’t have left her with a weapon, I’d have pulled your intestines out your mouth by now.”

“Consider us even, then, for the cleanup I did with the Ivanovs.”

When Ophelia’s roommate—the daughter of Rocco’s bitter rival—was found dead at Sorrowsong last year, Vincenzo looked like the obvious culprit.

The rift between the Morellos and the Ivanovs is decades long and is often only worsened by each family refusing to send their kids anywhere other than Sorrowsong. There are too many influential people there to let the other family have free rein over the secrets and societies that hide between those crumbling walls.

Thankfully, by the time I got to Ophelia’s stalker—some sad, sniveling psychology lecturer—he was alive enough to confess to the murder. Three days of pleading with the Russians to see sense and they eased off on the attempts to kill Vincenzo.

It’s never boring in their world; I’ll give them that.

He scoffs. “I could’ve handled the Ivanovs on my own.”

“With bloodshed,” I argue.

The skull tattooed on his hand stretches into a nasty grin when he clenches his fist. “Yeah, and explosions, probably. Risk my daughter’s safety again and I’ll kill you.”

“Have you ever tried to stop Belladonna doing anything, ever?”

That earns me a genuine smile. Rocco Morello and Cain Green may share many characteristics, but there’s one where they differ: Rocco loves his children with every piece of his soul. He wears the capo hat well, but when you pull it off, the father hat sits closer to his skin. His life revolves around Belladonna and Vincenzo. He cried like a baby at her sixteenth birthday party.

For all the wealth and power he sits on, I know he’d trade it all for them if it came to it.

Rocco gave me my first condom. Bought me my first bottle of whiskey.

Told me which women to avoid and which ones to trust. After my first breakup, he called me to talk about it. In many ways, he was more of a father than Cain ever was.

He’s like Vincenzo: His morals are marbled in the shiniest gold and darkest shade of black.

He claps both hands onto his knees. “What gives me the pleasure of being here today?”

I exhale a breath of smoke over my desk. “A new deal.”

“I’m listening.”

“No more hits.”

His gaze ices over. “I’m no longer listening.”

“No more hits. Not for you, not for anyone. You want someone dead, do it yourself.”

My father was malleable, easily used by whichever criminal was willing to pay him most. He built himself a monopoly on the private aviation market. If anyone rich, anyone important was flying anywhere, my father knew about it.

If Rocco Morello wanted someone off the face of the earth, my father would make it happen, tidy it up with a fake story and an NDA. He had a heart attack just before takeoff; he tried to hijack the aircraft—we had to shoot him; he never showed up for the flight.

For the right price, Cain Green would do anything anyone wanted.

It’s a legacy I do not intend to continue.

“No deal. It’s not about doing it myself. It’s about getting multiple important people in the same place at the same time. A helicopter is a sitting

duck.”

“No. More. Hits.”

“You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Alex.”

It’s true, but for the first time, he doesn’t want to make an enemy of me, either. Temporary or not, I’m as rich as he is. Better connected than he is.

More reputable, believable, trustworthy than he is. He has power, but so do I.

“I can’t think of another airline that’d be willing to ferry you and your men around all day, willing to splash as much cash as Green does on covering your tracks from the Russians.”

He narrows his eyes. “Why are you doing this? For the woman?”

“For the woman.”

“I warned you about women,” he growls, temper fraying. “They make a mess of it all.”

“I’m scrubbing Green clean. I shouldn’t even be partnering with you, Rocco, but I’m willing to continue. But no more hits.”

“I’m saying no.”

“I’m saying you have no choice.”

He huffs out a laugh. “You have nothing over me.”

I bite down my smile, glancing down at the watch that hugs my wrist: 9:01 a.m. The news will be live. I type a quick search into my phone, standing to put the device on the coffee table.

Green Aviation Acquires New York Based Cybersecurity Firm Synx in $540 Million Deal.

Synx covers every digital trace Rocco leaves. It encrypts his messages, buries his finances, and hides his illegal business behind his legitimate one.

It’s also a very profitable company.

“Would be a shame if your security company turned evidence in to the Feds.”

Rocco looks the same color as the ugly chartreuse curtains he let his wife put up in the Morello mansion last Christmas. His fists clench and unclench over the expensive wool of his slacks. “You’re losing your mind over a piece of ass, Corbeau.”

“Call her that again and see where it gets you.” And that ass is such an ass. Couldn’t have picked a better one to lose my mind over.

“You hold far too much loyalty for a girl who plotted against you.”

“Didn’t Francesca blow up your car two weeks before you got married?”

A fond affection joins the venom in his eyes. Rocco and Francesca Morello might be the only reason I still believe in true love. “She’s a firecracker, that one. She did me a favor, really. Car needed replacing.”

“As did my father.”

His snort of amusement tells me we’re back on safer ground. He had a profitable arrangement with my father, but he never really liked him, didn’t really like the way he treated my mother the last few years.

Abruptly, he slams a giant fist down on the coffee table and curses. It’s easy to step on a land mine with Rocco. If Jacqueline comes in with an instant coffee, God himself wouldn’t be able to save her. “You’re not scrubbing shit clean, coglione, you’re blackmailing just like he did.”

“For the right reasons. For my sisters, for my mother. No more hits, Rocco.”

An inch of gray ash tumbles into the porcelain tray on the coffee table, his eyes wide with manic exasperation. I’m still half expecting him to reach out and snap my neck. He’s unpredictable, possibly a little unstable. I think

you have to be, in his job. “You kids will be the death of me.” He leans back in the seat again. “Fine. Deal. Only because Francesca likes your mother, and Vincenzo likes you.”

I didn’t need his acceptance, but I take it anyway.

“How is she?” he asks.

“Ophelia?”

He snorts. “No, dipshit. Your mother. I don’t give a fuck about the sad

ginger girl.”

“She’s the same.”

He draws a graph with his hand, up and down and up and down. I nod.

That’s about it. Highs and lows, over and over, with increasing volatility.

“When Francesca got shot in the back, I thought my kids would have no mother. It’s fucking terrifying, the idea of losing her.”

“And?” I say, waiting for the inspirational speech. The it’ll get easier, or the she’ll always be in your heart.

He shakes his head, tossing the remainder of his cigar in the tray.

“That’s it. It’s bullshit, it’s terrifying, and it’ll hurt like hell. Nothing anyone tells you, no shitty quote regurgitated from a sign on a bathroom wall is gonna fix it. Your mom will be gone, and that’s shit.”

“A cheerful conversation for my Tuesday morning,” I chime, but really, I do appreciate his honesty. Everyone is obsessed with telling me that everything will get easier.

I can’t imagine that ever being the case.

IT’S INCREDIBLE HOW fast things decay. My relationship with my father, whatever it was I had with Ophelia, my mother’s health. My mood today is no exception.

As I saw Rocco into the elevator just before lunch, I felt buoyant, another job off my list, another weight off my shoulders. And here I am at quarter to three, struggling to imagine how I’ll make it to five.

I can’t identify a trigger. No disastrous event occurred between Rocco’s polished oxfords shuffling out of my office and now. But there’s a gray cloud looming over my head again, casting all my thoughts in shadow.

Fat droplets of rain slide down the glass windows behind me, staining the sidewalks an inky charcoal.

On cue, my phone buzzes where it sits on my laptop keyboard. Robert Harwood. I pick it up on the first ring.

“Robert.”

“Alex. How are you?”

I don’t even bother answering that. He knows the answer. “You’re not very good at being on vacation.”

I hear his smile. “I can find time to check in on my favorite clients.”

Yeah, right. He just wants to make sure his paycheck is still breathing.

“Your most unstable clients.”

He laughs. “I think you take both crowns.”

“How is Lagos?”

“Busy. Humid. How is New York?”

I drum my pen on my thigh. Suffocating. Depressing. Freezing. Gray. So

fucking lonely. “It’s fine.”

“Tell me more.”

“Enjoy your vacation, Robert.”

“I have time. It’s this or drinks with my great aunt, so if you could keep talking, that’d be fantastic.”

I shrug, even though he can’t see me. I stare down at the traffic on the street far below. It’s all so pointless. “I’m just tired.”

“Bad day?”

A headache thuds at the base of my skull. The number of unread emails on my screen ticks up. A taxi rear-ends a bus at the intersection. The pedestrian light turns green. A crowd of people burst into action, and I find myself skimming each one for my father’s graying blond hair. I wonder for the millionth time where he is. “Just tired.”

“Let’s break it down, then. Are you stressed at work?”

“Not really.” I don’t care about Green that much. “I met with Rocco Morello this morning.”

“And your head is still on your shoulders. A miracle.”

That drags a small smile out of me. “Yeah. I’m just …” I’m lonely. It feels so ridiculous to say out loud. I’m an adult man, with a big family at home. Vincenzo is just a text away. I have friends in the city. But I am.

Loneliness gnaws at my bones the second I swing my eyes open in the morning. It sits on my shoulder while I’m at my desk, fills the car when I drive home.

And when I get into bed at night, it’s so heavy on my chest that I can’t take a full breath in.

“I miss her.” I miss Vincenzo. I miss my free time. I miss my mom, I miss my hopes and dreams. The words are out without my permission, but they aren’t news to Harwood. “And I feel trapped by my sisters.”

“Trapped into staying alive?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, even though I know how awful it sounds. But Harwood doesn’t scold me. Doesn’t tell me how grateful some people would be to have a family. Doesn’t tell me how lucky I am to have reasons to stay alive.

An accepting sort of silence unravels between us for a moment. “I think that’s a very valid way to feel, Alex. It’s not ungrateful, if that’s what you’re telling yourself. Let’s talk about it when I’m in your office next week. I was mostly calling to see if there was any news on your father.”

The gray cloud clogs my throat. Forcing the words out feels like wading through syrup. “No news. He’s vanished.”

“Could he be dead?”

“Unlikely.” He’s not one to go down quietly, nor one not to be ruthlessly efficient. I doubt he’d shoot himself unless he knew the shot would pass through someone else on the way. Double the return on investment. “I worry about him getting to my sisters and me being too far away to help.”

“You’ve hired very capable security for them, and should he surface for air, he’ll be caught. You’ve done all you can. You’ve done enough.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Even with his credit card blocked, my father is rich enough to slip through the nets of the law. Rich enough to silence people, rich enough to buy his freedom. He has blackmail on police departments, hospitals, insurance firms, airlines, billionaires, crime gangs, everyone.

His absence looms over me, unsettling and threatening. A knife above my head tied to a fraying string. I get the sensation we’re all just treading water, and somewhere beneath us, my father is a shark just waiting to bite.

I wrap up my call with Robert and text Mack, my private investigator, and Jordan, my contact at the FBI, asking if either of them has any updates.

Mack replies immediately. Nothing. On the app on my phone, I check the security feeds at home. The lounge is empty, the basement, the hallway, the foyer, the games room, all unoccupied. In the kitchen, my mother is sitting at the island having coffee with the housekeeper.

All is well. I close the security app and get back to work.

A twisted part of me wishes I had a camera on Ophelia. Day and night.

Every room. I’d watch it like it was my favorite TV show, watch it when I couldn’t sleep.

But she isn’t mine anymore. She hid the truth from me, and I left her. I lost all right to watch her, and she lost my trust.

I have a feeling I’ll be watching her for the rest of my life, though.

I slap a hand onto my keyboard just to get rid of the reflection of my face in my laptop and try to focus on something, anything, that isn’t her.