Chapter 31 The Weight Of Morning Light
Cedric woke at 5:47 AM to the sound of his own breathing.
Not a nightmare, exactly. More like the residue of one~that feeling of running toward something or away from something, he could never tell which. His heart was doing that thing where it beat just slightly too fast, not quite panic but adjacent to it. Close enough to make his palms sweaty and his mouth dry.
The room was still dark, that pre-dawn darkness that felt thick and heavy, like the air itself hadn't woken up yet. Through the windows, he could see the faintest suggestion of light beginning to creep along the horizon. Not sunrise yet, but the promise of it. The city preparing to exhale after holding its breath all night.
He lay there, staring at the ceiling he'd memorized over the past few weeks. There was a small imperfection in the plaster near the corner~nothing obvious, just a slight unevenness that caught the light wrong. He'd spent hours looking at it on nights when sleep wouldn't come, when his brain insisted on replaying every decision that had led him here.
Saturday. His mother was coming on Saturday.
Three days away.
Seventy-two hours to figure out how to introduce Gianni Falcone~crime lord, obsessive lover, the man who'd orchestrated his entire life falling apart so he could put it back together in a new configuration~to Linda Santos, nurse, single mother, woman who'd survived two terrible husbands and still somehow believed in the goodness of people.
"You're catastrophizing," Cedric muttered to himself. His voice sounded too loud in the quiet room. "It's just dinner. People have dinner all the time. It's a normal thing."
Except nothing about this was normal.
He threw back the covers~silk, because of course they were silk, because he slept in silk sheets now like some kind of~what? Kept man? Sugar baby? Was there a term for what he was that didn't make his skin crawl?
Partner, Falcone had said. The man who's in love with you.
Cedric's chest did something complicated at the memory. A squeeze and a flutter and something that felt dangerously close to hope.
He needed coffee. And a shower. And maybe to stick his head in a bucket of ice water until his thoughts stopped spiraling.
The hallway was dark, but he knew it well enough now to navigate without turning on lights. Past the guest rooms that stayed perpetually empty. Past the door to Falcone's master suite~closed, no light visible underneath. Either still asleep or already awake and working, it was hard to tell with him. The man seemed to operate on about four hours of sleep and sheer willpower.
Downstairs, the kitchen was already humming with quiet activity. Cedric could hear it before he reached the bottom of the stairs~the soft clink of dishes, water running, the low murmur of Spanish from the early morning staff. He'd learned their schedule by now. Maria and Rosa came in at five to start breakfast prep. Mrs. Kozlov appeared like clockwork at six-thirty. The day shift security changed over at seven.
He used to find the constant presence of people unsettling. Now it was almost comforting. The house was too big to feel safe in alone, too many rooms and corners and spaces where anything could be hiding. But with people moving through it, doing their work, living their lives~it felt less like a mausoleum and more like a place where actual humans existed.
The kitchen was enormous and industrial, all stainless steel and marble countertops that probably cost more than his entire education would have. Maria looked up when he entered, her round face creasing into a smile.
"Señor Cedric. You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep," he admitted, moving toward the coffee maker~a machine so complicated it should have come with an instruction manual and possibly a degree in engineering. He'd finally figured out how to work it last week. Small victories.
"Bad dreams?"
"Something like that."
Maria made a sympathetic noise and went back to chopping something that smelled like fresh herbs. Cilantro, maybe. The kitchen always smelled amazing, like someone's grandmother was cooking even when it was just prep work for the day.
"Mr. Falcone, he's already up," Maria said conversationally, not looking at Cedric. "In his office since four-thirty. I brought him coffee but he barely touched it."
Cedric's hands stilled on the coffee cup. "Four-thirty? Did he sleep at all?"
"Who knows with that man." Rosa chimed in from where she was doing something complicated with eggs. "He keeps hours like the dead don't need rest."
"Rosa," Maria chided, but she was smiling.
"What? It's true. I've worked for this family fifteen years, and I've never seen any of them sleep like normal people." Rosa pointed her whisk at Cedric. "You should make him rest. He listens to you."
"I don't think he listens to anyone."
"He listens to you," Rosa insisted. "I see the way he looks at you. Like you hung the moon and stars just for him." She went back to her eggs. "My husband, God rest his soul, he used to look at me like that. Means something when a man looks at you that way."
Cedric didn't know what to say to that, so he just focused on his coffee. Added cream~real cream, not the powdered stuff or the cheap half-and-half from the corner store. Another small luxury that had stopped feeling remarkable.
That was the dangerous part, he realized. How quickly the exceptional became ordinary. How fast his baseline for normal had shifted. Three weeks ago, instant coffee from a gas station was fine. Now he was drinking something that probably cost twenty dollars a pound and barely thought about it.
"You want breakfast?" Maria asked. "I can make you something. Eggs, toast, whatever you like."
"I'm okay, thanks. Just coffee for now."
"You should eat. You're too skinny." This was an argument Maria made at least twice a week. "Mr. Falcone, he worries you don't eat enough."
"Mr. Falcone worries about a lot of things he doesn't need to worry about."
"That's what love does," Rosa said matter-of-factly. "Makes you worry about everything."
Cedric escaped before they could continue that line of conversation, coffee cup in hand, and made his way toward Falcone's office. He told himself he was just checking in. Making sure Falcone was okay after barely sleeping. It had nothing to do with the anxious energy crawling under his skin or the need to see him, to ground himself in Falcone's presence.
Nothing to do with that at all.
The office door was slightly ajar, warm light spilling into the hallway. Cedric paused just outside, suddenly uncertain. What if Falcone was on a call? What if he was in the middle of something important, something Cedric wasn't supposed to see or know about?
But then Falcone's voice came from inside: "You can come in, Cedric. I know you're out there."
Of course he did.
Cedric pushed the door open. The office was exactly as intimidating as always~dark wood, leather furniture, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a desk that looked like it could survive a nuclear blast. Falcone sat behind it, still in pajama pants and a t-shirt, which was somehow more jarring than seeing him in his usual suits. It made him look younger. More human.
His laptop was open in front of him, papers scattered across the desk in a organized chaos that probably made sense to him and no one else. The coffee Maria had mentioned sat untouched at his elbow, probably cold by now.
"You look like hell," Cedric said, closing the door behind him.