Page 176 of Broken Omega

Well, I’ll find a way to make one.

I’m not going to marry Lachlan Darvish. I’d sooner die.

I’ll find a way to fight my asshole father to the bitter end.

I’ll never give in to what he wants.

FROST

Security at Warren Corvina’s house is surprisingly lax. Like Brooke told us, there’s no alarm system. No security guards patrolling the grounds. All he has are cameras. They’re everywhere, the closer I get, but they’re standard kit. Nothing fancy.

In comparison, I’m all dressed in black, with a hoodie and gator covering most of my face. I have leather gloves on my hands, and I have black shoe covers ready to put over my boots, to avoid leaving footprints inside the house.

Donnie had the gator, the gloves, and the shoe covers in his car. He’s worked a lot of jobs in the past, but I didn’t consider a burglar might be one of them until he started digging out helpful items.

He even found me a mini flashlight that I’m carrying in my pocket.

I have the gun on me, too, but I don’t expect to have to use it until Warren gets back here.

That’s the part of the plan I had to change, because I already know when he sees the files are missing, he’ll have some kind of contingency plan. Something that’ll let him escape the ugly fate that’s rightfully his. I’ll have to come back and watch what he does.

If he tries to run, I can stop him. Fingers crossed that’s all he can do.

Truth is, we don’t know if he might have sway with someone high up.

Could be, he has a Get out of Jail Free card in his back pocket.

We can’t let him evade justice like that. The least he deserves is to spend the rest of his miserable life rotting away in a prison cell. If it looks like that won’t happen … well, I’ll have to decide what I can live with.

The chance to play judge, jury and executioner doesn’t come along all that often.

He won’t get away with what he’s done to Brooke.

I won’t let him.

On approach, I can see the house is mostly dark inside. The small glimmers of light seem to be coming from a central source. The hallway, most likely.

It looks like no one’s home.

Brooke said her father has a half-dozen live-in kitchen staff and housemaids, but if any of them are inside it doesn’t look like they’re awake. I make my way around the exterior of the house, and I find I have my pick of entry points. Two ground floor windows are halfway open. The gap is plenty big enough to climb through, and both rooms appear to be vacant.

I go with the sitting room, which Brooke told me comes out into the hallway behind the main staircase. It’s almost directly across from the study.

The gap isn’t as big as it looked, but I make it.

My new black hoodie doesn’t survive fully intact, but I can live with the superficial damage caused by the catch on the bottom of the open window’s frame. My next surprise is the discovery that the boot covers aren’t quite as non-slip as Donnie claimed, but I guess polished hard-wood flooring is their natural enemy.

I get the hang of walking after a few missteps, and I head straight for the door to the hallway.

It’s bright in this mid-section of the house, and I spot the cameras in the hall, right where Brooke told me they’d be. All I can really do is avoid looking at them directly. There’s no way to avoid showing up on the feed. The only real saving grace is the system is old. He’s doesn’t have alerts set up, and he doesn’t have a security guy watching his screens, so he won’t find out someone’s in his house the second I’m visible on the feed.

I’ll just have to move quickly and make sure I’m out of here the second Kellan’s friend alerts us that he’s leaving the academy.

I leave the sitting room, crossing the bright hallway to the study door. It’s locked, like we expected it to be. There are a few ways to get a locked door open in an emergency, but considering I don’t have a battering ram on hand tonight, I’ll be employing my second favorite method. The credit card.

At least that’s the method I’ll be using. I never use an actual credit card. I have an old, scraped-up gift card that I keep for this singular purpose, and it’s never failed me yet.

It’s a bit trickier with the gloves, but I get the door open in under a minute all the same.

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