Page 14 of His Cruel Exception

I still have no idea how he managed to unlock my old phone and did the transfer, but Stacy, Logan and Dylan find it adorable.

I find it disturbing.

What I also find frustrating that is that the masked man went through the trouble of replacing my phone without leaving me any way to contact him. He could have saved his number before sending it over or added a single message.

As I cross campus toward Professor’s Campbell’s office building, I make the effort to push all of that aside and concentrate on the more immediate problem of why the head of the department wants to see me urgently since the email he sent gave nothing away.

Please come to my office as soon as possible.

I just hope it doesn’t take long because I’m supposed to supervise an undergraduate methods workshop later this evening. By the time I reach the third floor of Professor Campbell’s building, I have come up with few possible reasons for the meeting, eliminate all but two as unlikely, and convince myself that the remaining two involve either my thesis or the seminar where I accidentally described Professor’s Lynch’s teaching strategy as intellectually decorative.

In my defense, I had not intended for Professor Lynch to be standing behind me when I said it.

Professor’s Campbell’s door is open when I reach his office, and I find him sitting behind his desk beneath a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with the chancellor.

“Alex,” he says as soon as he notices me standing in the doorway. “Come in.”

I step inside and leave the door open behind me. I take the chair opposite his desk and straighten my back, attempting to look composed.

Professor Campbell folds his hands over the papers in front of him and studies me for a moment. His expression is serious, but not displeased so that eliminates the possibility that Professor Lynch has complained about my ill-advised description of his teaching strategy.

“One of our students requires private tutoring in statistics and has specifically requested your services,” he says. “He’s a senior and took a leave of absence, so he needs the help.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage one more student with the existing four.”

“I think we can find new tutors for your students without any difficulty.”

I shift in my chair. “Who is it?”

Professor Campbell removes his glasses and begins polishing them with the end of his tie, even though the lenses do not appear dirty from where I’m sitting.

“Antonio Scalera,” he replies.

For several seconds, I assume I have misheard him. There has to be another Antonio Scalera somewhere in New York, preferably one with no familial connection whatsoever to the Scalera family whose surname has appeared in newspapers beside words like investigation, corruption, extortion, and the occasional charitable foundation.

“The Antonio Scalera?”

Professor Campbell puts his glasses back on. “Yes.”

“The same Scalera whose company was investigated after three customs officers disappeared just recently?”

He waves one hand. “That’s hearsay.”

Technically, almost everything people say about the Scaleras is gossip, although that has never stopped the stories from spreading through Columbia. Faculty members lower their voices when discussing the family, students trade rumors between lectures, and every few months someone claims to know someone who knows someone who once worked for one of their companies and saw something they definitely were not supposed to see.

One story currently circulating claims that one of the missing customs officers did not disappear at all, but moved to New Zealand without telling his wife because he had stolen from the Scaleras and doesn’t want to wait around to face their wrath.

The Scaleras own enough businesses across the Upper East Side that avoiding their name entirely would require a deliberate effort. There is Scalera Maritime, Scalera Logistics, two freight terminals, several hotels, and a foundation that recently donated six million dollars to this very university.

“I take it you’re familiar with the family,” Professor Campbell says.

“Everyone is familiar with them,” I almost snap.

Even with all of their legitimate success, there are constant whispers about the way the Scaleras deal with rival companies, especially the ones that overlap with their interests. Businesses have collapsed months after refusing acquisition offers, warehouse have burned under circumstances investigators later described as inconclusive, and union officials who resisted certain contracts have occasionally ended up in hospitals with unexpected injuries. According to the news, plenty of people connected to Scalera businesses have been arrested over the years, although it never leads to convictions.

Gaetano Scalera, the patriarch of the family, appears in photographs very often that I would recognize him anywhere. He’s always wearing a dark suit and standing beside someone respectable, usually a politician, bishop, hospital director, or university administrator, while journalists describe him as a businessman, philanthropist, shipping magnate, or controversial figure depending, I assume, on how confident their legal department feels that morning.

His son Antonio appears less frequently, but when he does, he’s usually surrounded by the four others heirs who are his cousins, all of them looking directly at the cameras with the unnerving composure of men who know the person taking the pictures is frightened of them.