Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
He promised to destroy what he had on me. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. I can still feel the weight of that burner phone in my pocket like a curse. One favor.
And now here I am, driving a hundred down a county road to save the woman I love.
The Bellamy fixer. That’s who I was.
Tonight I’m not fixing.
I’m chasing the one thing I can’t lose. The one thing I’d burn the whole damned world down to protect.
I think of Dani’s note—Don’t worry about me. I will be fine. I meant it when I said I love you. She wrote it to reassure me, to anchor me.
Instead, it spurred me on.
The thought of her choosing to walk into a house to trade her body for a child’s safety makes something in my chest squeeze.
I try Robin again. It goes straight to voicemail this time. Her phone’s either dead or off. I leave nothing. No time. I queue up Falcon and stare at the contact a second. He’ll demand to come.
No.
Not yet.
Still no cops on the road. No one coming up behind me with a siren. Only a house and a woman who wrote I love you like she was leaving a light on.
I ram my foot to the floor and keep going.
40
DANIELA
I stare at that fifth candle.
Which isn’t a candle at all.
He’s going to light it after the last course.
Blow us both up.
But will he really? Is Chef ready to die? Or is it just me he wants to kill? Keep me from ever servicing another man again?
Back in Colombia, death seemed preferable to entertaining my father’s friends. There were times I thought about ending it all. Especially after my father forced me to choose which girl would be substituting for me while I was out of commission. The guilt was too much to bear, and I found myself standing on the edge of my balcony wondering if death was the only way I’d escape it.
But I never did it. Even in my darkest days, a tiny glimmer of hope radiated within my heart. Then Vinnie saved me.
And I met Hawk. I learned that sex can be something beautiful, a physical expression of the love we share. And the tiny glimmer of hope in my soul sprang eternal.
Until now. Now it’s been snuffed out.
Or has it?
I don’t know what Chef wants tonight, but what I do know is that cooking is art to him. Not just a painting or a sculpture, but performance art as well.
This whole thing could be an elaborate performance, complete with my starring role as the young girl in the blue dress.
I swallow. I make my throat work like this is normal. The tablecloth under my fingers isn’t normal. It’s the same pattern as those sheets from Vega. Chef wants me to recognize it. He wants me to remember. He wants to traumatize me.
Fine.
If this is a performance, I can act.
I slide one hand into my lap and press two fingers to the back of my thigh. The coolness of the hidden metal calms me. Still there. Still mine. No one patted me down.
I sit. Back straight. Ankles crossed. I place my hands on the table, palms down—like my father taught me for etiquette dinners when diplomats came through the house—and breathe through my nose until my heartbeat steadies.
“Very pretty,” Chef says, setting a new plate in front of me. “Course two.”
It’s shrimp ceviche. There’s lulo—a citrus fruit that lies somewhere between a pineapple and a lime—in the marinade. I inhale the green-sour note of tartness mingled with robust tomato. Red onion petals lie on top. A cloud of coconut foam sits off to the side.
“Ceviche de camarón con lulo,” he says, as if I can’t identify a dish I’ve watched him make a hundred times. “With coconut air.”
“I remember,” I say, and my voice doesn’t break. “You said the coconut should taste like the idea of the sea. Not the sea itself.”
He smiles, as if he’s rewarding me for getting an answer right.
I hold back puke.
He places a matching plate in front of his chair.
“Eat.” His voice is almost gentle. “Slowly.”
He doesn’t have to tell me. Slowly is my whole plan.
I pick up the tiny fork, spear a single shrimp, and let the marinade drip as if I care about keeping it off the wretchedly patterned tablecloth. I bring it to my mouth and stop halfway, inhaling.
Citrus. Onion. The faint, wild sweetness of the lulo.
I touch the foam to my tongue. It slides into a touch of coconut, and then…nothing.
I take ten seconds to chew. I take five to swallow. I set the fork down and line it up with the plate edge.
“How long did you cure them?” I ask, eyes on my fork.
“Eight minutes,” Chef says. “The acid was on fire today.”
He moves into my field of vision.