"I slept in yesterday's clothes / And tomorrow's dreams / But they're not quite what they seem ... / bury me til I confess" - Uma Thurman, Fall Out Boy

The fair-haired man pushed the ski mask firmly over his face as he punched the twelve-character code into the keypad, smiling a vicious, gleeful grin at the thought of what he was about to do.

Up above, a man in the control room turned on his earpiece, whispering, "The coast is clear, sir. The security detail has been taken care of. "

"And the surveillance cameras?" There was a very good chance that he would not be recognized I his ski mask and black suit -poached from the espionage unit of this company with no suspicion at all, because he was well-esteemed among the Grace enterprises- but the blonde did not wish to take any chances.

"All disabled from the foyer to the file room, sir. "

"Thank you, Winston. I shall be on my way now."

Creeping up and taking the elevator from the foyer to yet another set of steel and titanium doors accompanied by a keypad, he entered yet another code and found a long corridor. As he walked down the familiar passageway towards the most secure space in the entire building, he contemplated his mission, questioning it for not the first time. It's all for Thalia, he told himself. All for her.

He was still telling himself that when he hacked into the computer system and deleted every file that was on the database and downloaded all of it onto his hard drive.

~xXx~

He's drunk again.

Zeus.

This isn't surprising; Thalia has always known and hated that she is like her father, all emotion like a lightning bolt waiting to strike. They are both hotheads, impossible to reason with, quick to anger, quick to getting into stupid situations (like this one.)

Every time he gets drunk she is forced to endure his maudlin rambling and this is no different.

It's the anniversary of the day her mother died in a fiery car crash three years ago. WIFE OF OIL TYCOON ZEUS GRACE, BERYL GRACE, DIES IN DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT the headlines blared. Thalia's never missed her, never seen what her father had and still does in her mother. It was never enough though; he's never loved Beryl Grace enough to do anything but marry her, knock her up twice, and cheat on her twenty-four seven. That was what drove her to crash, drove her to drink, drove her to get in the Maserati (that year's Valentine's Day present along with a seventy five carat diamond ring) and rev the engine from zero to two hundred in a matter of seconds.

He did love his wife though, in their family's screwed up way of loving people. Love is what drives him to drink, cry, show emotion rare as the pink diamond earrings that he bought for his wife on her birthday one year. (The ones she died wearing flashes in her mind, that memory fresh as it was that grey December morning- it was the only headline that made the Macy's Thanksgiving parade insignificant.)

"I don't know why I do this." Zeus is dead drunk, drunk as a skunk, as intoxicated as ever. If he had a stroke she wouldn't be able to tell the difference. If he had a stroke she wouldn't care. If she had a stroke she wouldn't care. "I don't know why I get drunk every year over your goddamn whore of a mother. Heartless bitch."

At the end, before she killed herself, Beryl Grace was practically a teetotaler. Like she was saving all the alcohol for the main event, for the going-out-with-a-bang moment. Thalia had been twenty-four and seen it coming, had been drinking with Luke when it happened, had ordered champagne when she read about the accident on her phone. They had toasted. She doesn't know why she thinks about Luke now, why she thinks about their glory days, young and dumb and headed nowhere too fast. Their relationship, their lives, all going downhill while they were intertwined.

Zeus vomits into the trash can in his office. She can't decide if the smell is better or worse than the alcohol coming off his breath. The room is redolent with liquor and bodily fluids. "Don't you dare even think about doing anything she did. I raised you better than that. I raised you to be like me."

(I'm already like you though and there's nothing I can do about it takes a stroll through her head, only it's going in circles and never leaves). He's said this speech a thousand times, so she knows all the words to this song and just nods like he's saying important things that she's hearing for the first time, tries to calculate how long it'll take for him to be piss drunk and fall asleep, like the guy under the table with the lute in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

"Go on, get out."

He's offering her a miraculous reprieve, but as she leaves, weary and heavy with disappointments that are not her own, she can't help but turn around and feel sad for her father. Even though none of it is her fault and her parents are two people who should never have gotten married or had children in the first place. Gods, Jason, why can't he be where he should be, with her watching their dad get drunk? Though she still can't blame him, she wishes for once she could give someone else this burden.

His words have filled her with lead instead of bones, so the way she usually goes to her hotel room (taking the stairs so the pain stops her from thinking) is too much and she jabs the elevator button instead and steps into the richly upholstered lift.

This is my life, she thinks, in the lap of luxury and going nowhere but down...