Chapter 5: Dawn of Retribution
Zariah woke to the low, lethal timbre of his voice. The penthouse was washed in the pale, silent light of pre-dawn, the city a grid of scattered diamonds against deep blue. He stood at the window, a silhouette in a perfectly tailored Tom Ford suit, the phone a dark slash against his face. “I don’t care about the cost. Just bring me any information you have by tonight.” The words were quiet, precise, and carried a frozen finality. She shifted on the couch, the movement slight, but his head turned instantly. The predator’s focus in his emerald eyes dissolved, replaced by a warmth that made her chest ache. He ended the call, slipping the phone into his pocket. “Hey,” he said, his voice now soft gravel.
“Hey yourself,” she murmured, pushing herself up. The scent of coffee and something savory, smoky, cut through the lingering jasmine. He gestured toward the kitchen island where a plate waited, steam curling. “Sit. You need to eat.” She obeyed, the ceramic warm under her fingertips: perfect bacon, a mound of buttery grits. A memory, sharp and sweet, punctured the morning haze. “What Black woman taught you how to make grits?” she asked, her voice still sleep-rough.
He leaned against the counter, a slow smile transforming his face. “You,” he replied. The word unlocked it—a tiny kitchen in Cambridge, her showing him the ratio of water to salt, his mock horror at the bubbling pot. They’d laughed until their sides hurt. They laughed now, a soft, shared echo of that lost time. “I have a town car downstairs,” he said, watching her take a bite. “Leo will drive you. He’s discreet.” She nodded, the grits creamy on her tongue, a simple comfort anchoring her in the surreal luxury. He poured her more coffee, his hand brushing hers. The silent city below felt impossibly distant, a separate world where last night’s confessions and this morning’s reality had to eventually merge.
The silent city below felt impossibly distant, a separate world where last night’s confessions and this morning’s reality had to eventually merge. She finished the grits, the familiar taste a grounding ritual, and took a final sip of coffee. “So, a discreet driver,” she said, placing the cup down with a soft click.
“Standard procedure for consulting VIPs,” he replied, his tone all smooth corporate polish, but his eyes held a different meaning. She stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her clothes. “Right. A procedure.” She walked toward the door, grabbing her bag from the entry console. “Makes sense, can’t have the board or staff thinking the CEO is fucking one of his employees.” She laughed, a sharp, bright sound that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
He crossed the space in two long strides, his hand on the doorframe above her head, caging her in gently. “Yet.” He added, the single syllable a low, unmistakable promise that vibrated in the quiet hallway. She blushed, the heat rushing to her cheeks as she looked anywhere but at him.
His thumb gently brushed her jawline, tilting her face back up. “Go be brilliant today, Zee.” He dropped his hand and opened the door, revealing Leo waiting patiently by the elevator. The professional mask was back, seamless and impenetrable. She stepped out, the air in the corridor cooler, more anonymous.
“See you,” she said, not turning around, and walked toward the elevator where Leo already had his hand on the call button.
The elevator descended in a hushed, seamless glide. Leo’s silence was a solid, practiced thing, but she felt his assessing glance. “You’re safe with me, Ms. Hayes,” he finally said, his voice a low rumble that held neither pity nor curiosity, just fact.
Her own office building, a sleek glass spike, felt foreign as she walked through the revolving doors. The familiar chrome and marble reception echoed with the clatter of keyboards and the murmur of early calls. Her assistant, Eleanor, looked up from her desk, relief flashing in her eyes before being masked by professional calm. “Your nine-thirty is already waiting in the west boardroom,” Eleanor said, handing her a tablet. “The revised Matthews portfolio. They’re… agitated.”
Zariah scanned the data, her mind switching into its sharpest, most analytical gear. This was her element, a battlefield of metrics and perceptions. She pushed open the heavy boardroom door. The air inside was cold, thick with the scent of bitter coffee and stale ambition. A man with a precisely trimmed beard—Mark Matthews—turned from the window, his expression a tight blend of irritation and barely-concealed panic.
“We’re bleeding clients, Zariah,” he stated, bypassing any greeting. He tossed a printout toward the center of the vast mahogany table. “The narrative is slipping, and your team’s last campaign reads like a corporate apology.” She didn’t flinch, taking her seat at the head of the table with deliberate calm. She let the silence expand, feeling the pressure emanating from the four other executives staring at her.
“An apology implies wrongdoing, Mark,” she said, her voice cool and clear. “Your product rollout was rushed, and the flaw was engineering, not marketing.” She tapped the tablet, pulling up a cascade of social sentiment charts. “We’re not hiding a failure. We’re pivoting the conversation to the fix.” A woman at the table, Sarah from PR, began nervously. “But the board expects a face for the blame, and the CEO—”
Zariah cut her off, a sharp, graceful slice of her hand. “The board expects recovery.” Her gaze swept the room, landing back on Matthews. “You called me in because you need a scalpel, not a stone to throw. So let’s talk about the fix, and how we sell it.” The door behind her opened slightly, and Eleanor slipped in, leaning close to whisper. Her breath was a nervous flutter against Zariah’s ear. “There’s a Mr. Moretti on the line for you. He says it’s urgent.”
Every eye in the room locked onto her. The name ‘Moretti’ landed with the gentle impact of a brick. Matthews’s irritation calcified into something colder, more calculating. Zariah kept her expression a serene, untroubled mask, the morning’s grits and laughter now a secret shield. “Please take a message,” she said, her voice unwavering. “I’m in a meeting.”
“I’m in a meeting.” The words felt brittle in the suddenly thick air. Matthews leaned forward, his knuckles white on the table. “Everything quite alright, Zariah?” he inquired, his tone slick with faux concern. Her phone vibrated again on the polished wood, a persistent, angry hum. It was a private number this time, one she didn’t recognize but felt in her bones.“If you’ll excuse me for one moment,” she said, her voice miraculously steady as she stood, the chair gliding silently back. She walked into the hall’s sterile brightness, the door clicking shut behind her before she swiped the screen. “Hello?” Her own voice sounded strangely hollow.
Robert’s words were a serrated murmur, each one carving a fresh line of ice down her spine. I see you think you could runaway. The boardroom, the city, the scent of Dayne’s cologne—all of it dissolved into a roaring white noise. You won’t be able to tell where your black ass begins and the bruises end. Her breath hitched, sharp and useless. I’ll gut him like a fish. The image—sharp, metallic, visceral—flashed behind her eyes. The line went dead. A high-pitched ringing filled her head, muting the office’s ambient sounds.
What the fuck was happening. Her lungs seized, concrete blocks crushing her ribs from the inside. She fumbled the phone, her vision tunneling to a pinprick of distorted light on the gray carpet. She stumbled back toward the boardroom door, her hand slipping on the chrome handle. Eleanor looked up, her professional calm shattering into immediate alarm. “I have to go,” Zariah gasped, the words raw and thin, already turning for the elevator bank. The cool air of the street hit her like a slap. She raised a trembling hand, the rideshare app a blur of colors. An Uber slowed. “Just drive,” she managed, collapsing into the backseat as the world outside the window smeared into incoherent streaks of light and motion.
The Uber’s vinyl seat was slick and cold against her neck. “Where to, exactly?” the driver asked, his eyes finding hers in the rearview with flat patience. “Just go north,” she breathed, the command a pathetic whisper as she fumbled with her own phone, her thumb smearing across the screen.
Dayne’s name flashed there, a persistent, pulsing reminder of the threat. I’ll gut him like a fish. Robert’s voice coiled in her ear again, a psychic venom. Her finger hovered, trembling, over the green answer icon before she slammed the phone face-down on the seat, a gasp catching in her throat.
She couldn’t lead this back to him. The logic was crystalline and brutal, an old script rewritten with fresh terror. “Change of plan,” she barked, her voice suddenly too loud in the confined space. “JFK Airport. Terminal 4.”
The driver grunted, swerving across two lanes of traffic to catch an exit. Her mind raced, calculating with a cold, frantic clarity she hadn’t felt since she packed her life into a single bag fifteen years ago. She would use cash. She would disappear into the shuttle crowd and buy a last-minute ticket to anywhere.
This was how you kept someone safe. You severed the tie. The city’s skyline, that glittering monument to Dayne’s new world, shrank in the rear window, becoming a distant, dangerous jewel. She closed her eyes, seeing only the determined, vulnerable curve of his mouth as he whispered, You taught me.
She closed her eyes, seeing only the determined, vulnerable curve of his mouth as he whispered, You taught me. The airport was a cacophony of goodbye rituals and rolling suitcases that felt like a martian landscape.
She moved through it on pure, automated instinct, a ghost buying a one-way ticket to Calgary with thick wads of cash that made the ticketing agent’s eyes narrow. Fourteen hours later, the connection to Fort McMurray was a shuddering prop plane, and the final, three-hour drive north in a beaten, cash-bought pickup truck was a journey into a silencing, pine-dense cold. She fled the city for a remote cabin in north Canada, a prefab box surrounded by a frozen lake and silent, imposing spruce.
She’d purchased the pickup truck with the last of her emergency cash. She’d been there for two weeks, her cabin fully stocked with canned goods, firewood, and a piercing loneliness that ate at the silence. She had purchased a burner phone only to stay current with news events, scanning for any mention of his corporation or a body found in the harbor.
She stirred her soup as she read her book in the other hand, the spoon scraping the tin bowl in a rhythm that failed to distract her. She had cried so much over the past 14 days she was surprised she had the energy to cook, the grief a physical exhaustion deeper than any she’d known. She had thought about taking the entire bottle of aspirin then slitting her wrist but she’d chickened out, the image of him finding her that way too cruel a final gift.
She hoped Dayne was safe. Robert was usually a man of his word, which made the radio silence more unnerving than any headline. She figured that Matthew may have been the rat as he’d seemed rather aggressive towards her beyond business politics during that last boardroom standoff, his gaze lingering with a personal, knowing venom.
A log shifted in the woodstove, the sound like a breaking bone in the quiet. The soup tasted of salt and nothing. On the burner phone, a news alert blinked: Vance votes down hostile takeover bid. Her breath fogged in the cold air of the cabin, a tiny, transient sign of life.
Her breath fogged in the cold air of the cabin, a tiny, transient sign of life. The days bled together, a gray loop of canned soup, split firewood, and the silent, waiting trees. Another week went by where the highlight was catching the rippling, spectral green of the northern lights through her little window. She sighed, dozing off on her lumpy couch around 11 pm, a documentary about deep-sea fish still playing on the laptop.
At 1:37 am, a violent pounding shattered the silence, shaking the thin door in its frame. Her eyes flew open, adrenaline dumping into her system like ice water. She moved on pure, ingrained instinct, rolling off the couch and grabbing the cold, oil-scented 9mm from under the cushion. Robert had found her. If she died tonight, she’d die spitting in his eye, the mob princess her DNA demanded. She flipped the safety off with a thumb, the click definitive, and yanked the door open, the barrel rising. She was stunned. It wasn’t Robert.
DAYNE STOOD AT HER DOOR. “WHAT THE FUCK,” HE SAID, ANGRY WITH YEARS IN HIS EYES. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE…”
The gun wavered, her arm going slack with a shock that traveled up to her jaw. He looked feral, his perfect suit replaced by a worn parka dusted with snow, his dark curls matted from the wind. “Dead?” she finished softly, the word a puff of vapor between them.
He stepped forward, not around the barrel but into it, his chest pressing against the cold metal until her grip loosened and her hand fell. His own hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs sliding over her cheekbones as if verifying her solidity in the dim light. “Gone,” he corrected, his voice cracking on the syllable. “For twenty-three days.”
The cabin’s cold bit into her, but his touch was scorching. “He called me, at the office,” she whispered, her eyes scanning his for any new hurt. “He said he’d gut you. I had to…”
“You had to run,” he finished, the anger draining into a weary, profound understanding. He pulled her into him, his parka zipper cold against her cheek, his heartbeat a frantic drum against her ear. “I know about the call. I know about Matthews.” He spoke into her hair. “Leo tracked the Uber. I’ve had people scouring every cash-ticket flight path for weeks.”
She shuddered, all the fortified ice inside her melting at once. “The grits were perfect,” she mumbled against his chest, a stupid, vital anchor to a better memory.
He let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, his arms tightening. “You idiot,” he murmured, lips against her temple. “You magnificent, terrifying idiot. You can’t just leave me again.” The northern lights chose that moment to ripple overhead, casting his exhausted, furious, beloved face in a spectral green glow.
The green light danced across the wetness in her eyes, and he pulled her into the cabin, kicking the door shut against the biting cold. He understood how abuse made people do irrational things, the instinct to bolt so deep it bypassed all reason. So he didn’t fault her.
Nonetheless, it pulled at the insecure eighteen-year-old him who had sobbed into his own arms, convinced she’d left him for the “better man.” When Eleanor told him about the call from the office, a different, colder panic had set in. As a descendant of Donna Moretti’s blood, he knew to cover all bases immediately.
“My security detail traced the call the minute Eleanor flagged it,” he said, his voice low as he shrugged off the parka. “All calls in my buildings are recorded. Everyone who works for me acknowledges it.” He heard the disgusting words himself, Robert’s voice slick with threat, and could only imagine her terror.
“Someone tipped him off, Zee.” He watched her process this, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “After not so much digging, I found my snake. Matthew.” Her eyes widened in confirmation, that final piece of office-political hostility clicking into something far more sinister.
“But he needs to believe he’s doing a great job as an informant,” Dayne continued, his tone turning deliberate and cool. “For now.” He reached for her hands, his thumbs pressing into her palms. “You running just proved his tip was good. That’s useful.”
The tactical truth of it hung between them, a grim utility born from her fear. “So what now?” she whispered, the cabin walls feeling suddenly closer. He didn’t answer with words, just leaned his forehead against hers, their shared breath fogging in the air. Now, he would use every weapon.
Now, he would use every weapon. He pulled back slightly, his eyes scanning her face in the pale light, and noticed the fine tremors wracking her body. The cabin’s deep cold was seeping through her thin sweater. “Now I gather more firewood for you. Jesus, you’re shivering, Zee!” He released her and moved toward the dwindling stack by the woodstove, his movements efficient and edged with urgency.
She watched him, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “The ax is by the back door,” she said, her voice still unsteady. He grabbed it and shouldered through the flimsy door into the wall of night air. The sound of splitting wood began—sharp, percussive cracks that echoed across the frozen lake. Each strike felt like punctuation to his bottled rage.
He returned minutes later, his arms laden with fresh split logs, a dusting of snow melting in his curls. He fed the stove, the new wood hissing and popping as flames eagerly consumed it. The radiating heat began to push back the icy stillness. “You should have called me,” he said, not looking at her as he arranged the logs. “Running alone into this… it was a gamble with your life.”
“Calling you was the gamble I couldn’t take,” she whispered, sinking onto the arm of the couch. He finally turned, the firelight carving shadows into his exhausted features. “So we trust the snake to lead us to the den,” he stated, his voice low. “Matthew feeds Robert information, and we feed Matthew exactly what we want him to know.”
She absorbed this, the strategic coldness of it settling alongside the growing warmth in the room. “And what do we want him to know?” He stood, wiping his hands on his jeans. “That you’re broken, and I’m distracted. That we’re vulnerable.” He walked to the window, staring into the dark. “It’s the only way to draw Robert out from behind his lawyers and walls.”
Zariah let out a shaky breath, the plan taking shape like a map in her mind. “You want to use me as bait.” “I want to end this,” he corrected, turning to face her, his emerald eyes fierce in the dim light. “For good.” The silence stretched, filled only by the crackling fire. Then she nodded, a single, decisive motion. “Okay.”
His breath left him in a short, sharp huff, as if her agreement was a physical blow he hadn’t braced for. He closed the distance between them, the worn floorboards creaking under his boots, and took her hands. They were still so cold.
She looked down at their joined hands, her voice dropping to a whisper barely audible over the fire’s pop and crackle. “I trust you with my life, with everything,” she whispered. “You’re the only real friend I had.”
A tremor ran through her fingers. “I missed that. I missed you so much, Dayne, that it broke me, but I had learned to live with the void.” She finally met his gaze, her eyes reflecting the flickering orange light. “Do you know how I got that lovely bruise that you saw when I first came to the office?”
He went perfectly still, a dark, knowing dread settling in his gut. “Robert claimed I mentioned you in my dream as I sleep-talked.” A single, wretched laugh escaped her. “I guess even then I hadn’t fully let you go—always thinking of what if.”
The air left his lungs. Every part of him seemed to freeze, then crystallize into a white-hot point of fury. He remembered the mottled yellow-green stain on her jawline that first day in his office, the one she’d deflected with talk of a taxi door. He saw now the truth of it, a violence inflicted because his name had passed her lips in a vulnerable, unconscious moment.
“He did that to you,” Dayne said, the words not a question but a low, dangerous statement. His thumbs traced over her knuckles, a gentle motion belying the storm in his eyes. “Because of me.”
“No,” she insisted, squeezing his hands with surprising force. “Because of him. Only ever because of him.” She leaned her forehead against his chest, her next words muffled by his sweater. “But I’m done living in the void.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her as the fire spat an ember against the stove door. “We’re leaving at first light,” he murmured into her hair, his plan solidifying. “We’re going to give Matthew exactly what he wants to hear.”