Chapter 26 The Morning After 2
He typed quickly: Can't do today. Family thing. Wednesday still works. I'm fine, don't worry.
The lie came easily. Too easily. When had lying to Marcus become automatic?
Since you started wanting to stay, that Falcone-voice in his head supplied.
"Shut up," Cedric muttered to the empty room.
He deleted the text thread like he always did, shoved his phone in his pocket, and made his way downstairs. The mansion was quieter in the morning~or maybe just different. The nighttime staff was gone, replaced by the day crew. He could hear distant sounds from the kitchen, the soft murmur of voices, the clink of dishes.
The smell hit him halfway down the stairs. Coffee, obviously, but also bacon and something with cinnamon. His stomach growled traitorously. When was the last time someone had made him breakfast? Actually made it, not just pointed him toward a box of cereal or a bodega coffee?
Years. The answer was years.
Mrs. Kozlov was in the hallway outside the dining room, directing two younger staff members about something involving linens and silver polish. She looked up when Cedric approached, her expression as neutral as ever.
"Good morning, Mr. Santos."
"Morning, Mrs. Kozlov."
"Mr. Falcone is in the solarium. He's requested no interruptions during breakfast." Her eyes tracked over him with the efficiency of someone cataloging inventory. "You look tired. Are you sleeping well?"
It was the most personal question she'd ever asked him. Cedric wasn't sure how to respond.
"I'm fine. Just... adjusting."
"Adjusting." She repeated the word like she was tasting it, testing its weight. "Yes, I imagine you would be." She gestured toward the solarium. "He's waiting."
Cedric nodded and started to move past her, but her voice stopped him.
"Mr. Santos?"
He turned back. "Yeah?"
For a moment, something almost human flickered across her severe features. Something that might have been sympathy or understanding or just acknowledgment of a situation they both recognized but couldn't name. "He's not an easy man to live with. But he's... trying. In his way." She adjusted the stack of linens in her arms. "That means something, I think."
Before Cedric could respond, she was gone, disappearing down the hallway with the two staff members in tow.
Cedric stood there for a moment, processing. Mrs. Kozlov didn't do personal observations. She did efficiency and discretion and running a household like a well-oiled machine. The fact that she'd said anything at all felt significant, though he wasn't sure what it signified beyond the obvious: everyone in this house knew exactly what was happening between him and Falcone, and they all had opinions about it.
Great. Just what he needed. An audience for his identity crisis.
The solarium was as beautiful as it had been the first time Cedric saw it~all glass and light and the smell of growing things. Morning sun poured through the windows, turning everything golden. The plants seemed greener somehow, more alive. Or maybe that was just his brain trying to romanticize everything because admitting he liked it here was easier than admitting he wanted to be here.
Falcone sat at the round table in the center of the room, reading a newspaper with his coffee. He'd changed out of last night's clothes into a white button-down and dark slacks, no tie, sleeves rolled up like he was preparing for actual physical labor instead of whatever business empire running he did during the day.
He looked up when Cedric entered, and something in his expression shifted. Softened, maybe. Or just became more focused. Cedric couldn't tell. Falcone's face did this thing where it could go from completely neutral to devastatingly intent in the space of a heartbeat, and Cedric still hadn't figured out how to read all the micro-expressions in between.
"Good morning," Falcone said. He set the newspaper aside~some financial thing Cedric didn't recognize, all graphs and market analysis~and gestured to the covered dishes on the table. "I wasn't sure what you'd want, so I had them make options."
Cedric sat in the chair across from him, the same one he'd sat in before. It was already starting to feel like his chair, which was a thought he immediately shoved away into the box labeled "Things We're Not Thinking About Right Now."
He lifted the nearest cover. Scrambled eggs, perfectly fluffy. Bacon that looked crispy without being burnt. Toast, cut diagonally because apparently even the toast had standards in this house. Fresh fruit arranged in a way that suggested someone had taken time with it~strawberries fanned out, melon balls in a neat cluster, blueberries scattered artfully across the top.
"You didn't have to do all this," Cedric said.
"I know." Falcone poured coffee into the cup at Cedric's place setting~black, no sugar, exactly how Cedric took it. When had he noticed that? When had he cataloged that particular detail among all the other things he seemed to know about Cedric? "But I wanted to."
They served themselves in silence. Cedric took more food than he probably needed, suddenly ravenous in a way he hadn't been when he woke up. The eggs were perfect. The bacon was perfect. Even the fucking toast was perfect, that kind of artisan bread that cost eight dollars a loaf and tasted like someone's grandmother had baked it with love and European butter.
He hated that he noticed these things now. Hated that he could taste the difference between good food and great food, between eating to survive and eating to enjoy. Another way this place had changed him, recalibrated his expectations.
"Did you sleep?" Falcone asked after a few minutes.
"Eventually."
"Good." Falcone took a sip of his coffee, his eyes never leaving Cedric's face. "I worried you might not."
The admission hung in the air between them, small and vulnerable and completely at odds with everything Cedric thought he knew about the man sitting across from him.
"You worried?" Cedric couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice. "You, who orchestrated this entire situation, worried about whether I could sleep?"
"Yes." No defensiveness in Falcone's tone. Just fact, delivered with the same calm certainty he used for everything. "I worry about you more than I'd like to admit. It's inconvenient."
Despite everything~the tension, the confusion, the weight of last night still pressing on his shoulders like Atlas's burden~Cedric laughed. It came out rough and surprised, but genuine.
"Inconvenient," he repeated, shaking his head. "Your obsessive concern for my wellbeing is inconvenient."
"Extremely." But Falcone was almost-smiling, that tiny curve of his lips that Cedric was starting to recognize as his version of humor. The expression that said he was in on the joke, even if he'd never laugh out loud. "It interferes with my ability to focus on literally anything else. Do you know how many meetings I've had to reschedule because I was thinking about whether you'd eaten lunch?"
"That sounds like a you problem."
"It absolutely is." Falcone's smile widened fractionally. "And yet here we are."
They ate in comfortable silence for a while. Cedric watched the plants sway gently in the breeze from an open window somewhere. A bird landed on the glass outside, pecked at its own reflection with determined confusion, then flew away. Somewhere in the house, someone was running a vacuum. Normal sounds. Domestic sounds. The kind of sounds that belonged in a home, not a crime lord's fortress.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe Falcone was trying to show him that this could be both. That you could have the danger and the domesticity, the power and the peace. That contradictions could coexist.
Or maybe Cedric was reading too much into breakfast and bird-watching.
"I've been thinking," Falcone said eventually, setting down his fork with the careful precision he brought to every movement. "About what you said last night. About feeling like your life is an extension of mine."
Cedric's stomach tightened. "Okay."