The clock on the wall read 12:15 AM. Dalton Black sat behind his mahogany desk, the glow of three monitors illuminating his face in the dark room. Outside, the snow was falling silently over Washington.
He rubbed his temples. The video call with London had just ended. A leveraged buyout of a German biotech firm. It was a brutal deal, the kind that left people jobless and made investors millions. He loved it, usually. Tonight, it just felt like noise.
A message popped up on his secure terminal from his assistant, Taylor Reed.
Moody file sent. Preliminary evidence points to market manipulation in their flagship fund.
Dalton opened the file. He scrolled through the documents, his expression unchanged. It was dynamite. Enough to blow the Moody family's reputation to pieces. He typed back.
Leak the relevant sections to our friend at the SEC. Make it look like an accident. I want it trending before the opening bell.
He closed the window and leaned back. He needed a distraction. Out of habit, he opened the family's internal mail server. He monitored his mother's inbox. It was a control thing. Karon was meticulous, but she was also sentimental. Dalton was neither.
An email caught his eye. The subject line: Alistair Black History Tutoring Plan.
The sender was Johana Neal. The girl from the snow. The one who had looked at him like he was a cockroach.
He almost deleted it. He should have. But he clicked the attachment anyway.
The PDF was ten pages long. He started reading, expecting a generic list of textbook chapters. Instead, he found a highly structured, analytical breakdown of the Civil War. She had linked military strategy to political fallout. She had referenced obscure primary sources that even he recognized as impressive.
He read it twice. It was brilliant.
He remembered her standing in the snow, shivering, her nose red, her jaw set in a defiant line. He had called her a high schooler. He had dismissed her. But this document was written by a mind that was sharp, disciplined, and thorough.
"Georgetown," he murmured, staring at the screen.
His phone buzzed. It was Kamren Hubbard.
"What?" Dalton answered.
"Don't bite my head off," Kamren said, his voice light and lazy. "Zane's party in the Hamptons just started. Get on a chopper and come out. You've been staring at spreadsheets for three days."
"I'm busy."
"The Moody deal is done, Dalton. You told me yourself. Come on. Zane got a shipment of that Pappy Van Winkle you like. Twenty-three years."
Dalton glanced at the Bloomberg terminal. The numbers were still ticking. The pressure in his skull was building. He needed a drink. He needed to not think about leveraged buyouts or his mother's secrets for a few hours.
"Send the address," Dalton said. "I'll be there in an hour."
He hung up. He closed the laptop, but the image of that tutoring plan stayed in his head. He stood up and changed out of his suit into a black cashmere sweater and dark jeans.
He walked out of his study and down the hall. He paused outside Alistair's door. Light spilled from under it, and the sound of gunfire from a video game echoed faintly. He didn't go in. He just stood there for a second, thinking that maybe, just maybe, that girl could actually get through to his brother.
He walked down the stairs and out the front door, into the waiting car that would take him to the helipad. He left the snow and the silence behind, heading straight for the storm of a different kind.
