10. Boudin Noir aux Pommes
Idon’t go home after leaving Dix. My work for the night is nowhere near finished. Instead, I walk to the boucherie near Rue Montorgueil. I already contacted Philipe this afternoon and told him I needed to use his equipment after hours to prep for the final challenge before winning sous.
It’s not a complete lie. There’s one challenge left. The tenth challenge—given the name of the restaurant, it’s only fitting. Javi has won one of the last three challenges; I’ve won two. In my opinion, we’re almost evenly matched, and it’s going to take something special to push me ahead and into first place.
But tonight isn’t just about food. No, tonight is about removing a parasite that has already taken far more than he deserves. And I won’t allow him to feed off others anymore. Tonight, Blaise Moreau is going to bleed.
As much as I hate Aurélie, I’m not going to let her bear the punishment for the things we’ve done together this summer. If she had been willing to leave—if she’d been brave enough to give up a life of luxury for a chance at something beautiful and real—these sorts of extremes wouldn’t be necessary. But she chose him, and my hand has been forced.
I don’t turn a blind eye to abuse, and I refuse to let that kind of consistent cruelty run unchecked. After seventeen years of living under the harsh rule of my father, I vowed to never again be complacent in the suffering of others. And her decision is making me fulfill that vow to a very extreme and permanent extent. It would have been more convenient to resolve this situation without bloodshed, but I’m honest enough to admit that this way is far more fun.
The boucherie is dark when I get there. They’ve been closed for hours, as has every other shop on this block. The streets are mostly empty; people are in the comfort of their homes even though there’s still plenty of daylight left. I open the door to the shop with my spare key and start to prepare for my task.
It makes perfect sense to dismember a body in a place that deals with blood, organs, muscle, and bone on a daily basis. Mess and disposal are already taken into account with hoses and drains. There are plenty of the sharpest knives, cleavers, and bone saws. You’ll find everything you need for processing the meat properly. And Philipe has an incinerator for animal waste at the back of the shop. After tonight, it will be like Aurélie’s swine of a husband never even existed.
I really thought it would be harder to get her husband alone, but it turns out that rich pricks like him are shockingly simple. One blow to their manhood and reputation, and you’ve practically got them on their knees. In the end, all it took to get Blaise Moreau out in the open was a photo of his naked wife riding my cock with my hand wrapped around her throat and her cherry lips spread in ecstasy as she moans my name. With my extensive tattoos clearly visible in the photo, it’s obvious that Mrs. Moreau isn’t getting dicked by her husband.
Pretending to be the lowly piece of shit he thinks I am, I secretly stole his number from Aurélie’s phone and sent him the picture with a demand for money or that photo and the other twenty I have like it are being sent out to every news publication in Paris. I did a little digging on him after he showed up at Dix. Turns out, Blaise is quite the socialite, even though he keeps his wife out of the spotlight so he can hide his predilection for violence. And exclusive info on Moreau being a cuckold would actually cause quite a ripple amongst the high society Parisian sycophants.
I demanded ten thousand euros be hand delivered at nine to a location that would be disclosed fifteen minutes before. If he doesn’t arrive by five minutes after nine or if he brings anyone else, the photos will be blasted everywhere. The ten thousand is enough that Blaise will take me seriously, but not nearly enough that he’ll need to consider his decision. A few thousand is pennies to pricks like him. And like a fucking idiot, he agreed to my terms.
It’s five minutes till, and my body trembles with adrenaline as I wait for him to walk through the door. The last time I did this, it was unplanned and messy. I didn’t consider how much effort it would take to subdue someone who was bigger and stronger than me. This time, I plan to be meticulous.
I twist the metal mallet in my hand, loving how something so small can feel so powerful. I could have procured something injectable to knock him out. Ketamine, fentanyl, morphine—you can find most anything on the streets of Paris if you know where to look for it. But drugs mess with the mind and the quality of the meat. And I want him to be lucid enough to understand exactly what is happening to him. The meat mallet will be enough to render Aurélie’s husband unconscious so I can drag him to the meat locker in the back and hang him up with the rest of the pigs.
At two minutes till, I hear rustling at the front of the shop. The fucker is early. I’ve left the door unlocked and all the lights on so that the atmosphere is inviting. No one wants to walk into a dark butcher shop at night. Who knows what dangerous things could be lurking in the shadows.
“Gavin Greyson,” an angry voice calls, followed by the slamming of a door. “Where are you, salaud?”
The cunt knows my full name. It seems he’s been doing his research too, not that it will save him now. “Back here,” I answer. “I thought our business would be best conducted in the office.” I’m not in the office. I’m in the storage closet across from it waiting to knock Blaise the fuck out.
“You call chantage business, connard?” he shouts as he gets closer. “I’m surprised Aurélie stooped so low this time. She’s had her indiscretions before, of course. But never with a common rat who likes to hide out on this side of Paris and blackmail his betters for money.”
The prick kicks in a door—I’m guessing the one to the butchery room. “You should be exterminated like the rest of the vermin scurrying through the city living off our scraps, spreading your filth and disease.” Another door slams. He’s got two more before he reaches the office. Either I’ll hit him in the back of the head when he walks through the open office door, or I’ll hit him in the balls when he opens the door to my hiding spot.
“It’ll take a great deal of time to cleanse Aurélie of your infectious touch. I’ll have to bleed her long and slow until her blood runs pure again. Only then will she be fit for the punishment I have in store for her.” There’s another burst of a door hitting the wall. One more left. “Her fickle cunt has been causing me problems for far too long. I think it’s time I made some permanent modifications to keep her whoring in check.”
I clench my fists so hard that my nails cut through my palms. I was going to make this fast. In and out so I can be rid of his miserable existence as quickly as possible. But now, the evil fuck is going to suffer one fucking slice at a time until he’s paid for his sins with a pound of flesh.
“I hope her cunt was worth dying for, connard.” A door slams before I hear footsteps right in front of where I’m hidden. They stop for a moment before I hear him take the bait and walk into the open office.
Deciding on speed rather than stealth, I spring from the storage closet and close the four steps between us before the fucker even has a chance to turn around. I hit him in the side of the head with the mallet, and his large body drops to the floor within seconds with a satisfying thud. When I lean down to drag his body down the hall, I see the metallic glint of a firearm tucked into his belt. The bastard brought a gun to a knife fight.
“I guarantee you won’t think her cunt was worth dying for by the time I’m finished with you, connard.”
Even if he is unconscious, it’s not an easy task stringing up a well-built man of over six feet. After I stripped him naked, I tied his hands behind his back and secured his ankles together with rope. I didn’t bother gagging or blindfolding him. I want him to watch as I bleed him slowly, just like he planned to do to Aurélie. And hearing his screams will make it even sweeter.
It takes me a few tries to finally get Blaise hanging upside down from the metal butcher hook, his hair just barely touching the ground as his body sways from side to side while he knocks into the dead pig carcasses beside him. He can get a little preview of what he’ll look like in another hour or so when I relieve him of his skin.
It’s not freezing in the meat locker, but it’s cold enough to be uncomfortable in my thin, white button up shirt while I stand around and wait for Aurélie’s husband to come to. I twist the stainless steel in my hands, loving the way the sharp blade catches the light. I’ve picked a lighter, less threatening looking knife rather than one of the heavier cleavers. This one won’t cut through bone, but it will separate skin from muscle like cutting through butter.
On the ground beside my feet, I’ve got a mechanical dial scale used for weighing meat. Which is exactly how I’m going to use it.
Blaise groans as he starts to gain consciousness. He’s got a large lump on the side of his head that’s seeping blood. The red streams down his temples, just narrowly missing his eyes. My cock hardens a little at the sight, and I’m reminded that it’s not just the pain of the willing that gets me off. Sometimes it’s the suffering of those who deserve it too.
“Wakey, wakey, fucker,” I greet in a singsong voice, kicking my leather boot into the middle of his bare stomach. The blow sends him swaying in the air, the pain and the disruption of his balance causing him to spew and cough as he chokes on his own vomit. I grab him by the leg to steady him. “Easy there, Blaisey boy. We can’t have you asphyxiating and taking the easy way out.”
I bend down low so I can stare into his gray eyes; they’re starting to bulge in his puke covered face from being hung upside down. “We still need to get to know each other better.”
“Va te faire foutre,” he gasps out before spitting a mixture of saliva and bile in my direction.
“Still kicking, I see.” A devilish smile pulls at my lips as I let him gaze upon his own destruction. “Good, I always like to see someone fight before they break.” I slide the thin carving knife over his cheek, sighing with pleasure when his skin splits open and starts to gush red. “Now, are you ready to scream?”
His French profanities turn guttural and unintelligible as I slip the knife under his skin at his jaw and gently scrape and pull up until I’ve removed the top layer of skin from cheek to nose. Blood drips into his eyes while I cut off the skin completely and throw the warm slab of meat onto the scale. The mechanical dial moves down as it measures the weight of the chunk I’ve cut off Blaise’s pretty face. Well, not so pretty anymore.
“You’re looking flushed,” I taunt, careful not to get blood on my shoes when I reach down and grab his raw face. “Does being bled long and slow not agree with you?” An animal-like whimper is all he can manage in response. He looks half-monster, half-man at the moment. When I’m done with him, he’ll look exactly like the disgusting, rotting creature he is on the inside.
I slide my knife to the other side of his face, prepared to skin him down to the next layer of muscle before his eyes start to flutter shut. “Now, now, don’t wimp out on me so quickly, tough guy.” I slap the flat of the knife against his face until his eyes are wide and alert. “There you are. No passing out, do you understand? I want you to feel this. If I see your eyes close again, you’ll be waking up without one.”
To his credit, Blaise barely bats an eye as I peel off the other side of his face and toss it onto the metal pan at the top of the scale. The arrow dips down further, but he’s nowhere near paid his debt. I look down at him thoughtfully, deciding where to harvest from next. His face is a pulsing, fleshy mass of red with a thin strip of skin left in the middle along his forehead, nose, and lips. The small remainder of skin laying against his bare muscle makes him look even more grotesque.
“What’s next, Blaisey boy? Should we see if you have a heart in that chest of yours?”
His weak moans are the only sign that he disagrees with my plan as I get on my knees and hold him steady with his peeled face wedged tightly between my thighs. I’m sure the rough material of my jeans chafes at his exposed nerve endings, but he’s just going to have to live with it for a moment. I point my knife at the left side of his chest and press the tip in slowly until his skin breaks. Then I drag the blade straight down the edge of his sternum before jerking the knife left and sliding it underneath his skin at the curve of his breast bone.
If I’m being critical, this isn’t my best work. It’s not as smooth as skinning off his face, and I can feel I’ve accidentally slipped beneath the skin and into the tissue and muscle. There’s more blood; it coats my fingers and makes my hands slippery around the handle of the knife as I try to saw back and forth over the skin of his chest. When I finally rip the flesh from his chest, he screams before going deathly still.
“Goddamnit,” I swear, chucking the hunk of meat onto the scale. “I told you not to pass the fuck out.”
I grab him by the hair and jerk him up until his head is cradled on my thighs. His eyes are still closed, the last normal looking part of his mutilated face. I take my knife and jam it into his right eye before jerking it out of his eye socket with a loud pop. That startles him awake, his eyes fluttering as he tries to equilibrate while his body is in a state of trauma. Well, one eye flutters. His other is a gaping hole where I’ve ripped through his eyelids and left them in bloody tatters.
Huffing at the inconvenience of getting his blood and vitreous fluids all over my shirt, I fling his eye and the connecting tissue onto the scale. The dial slips down incrementally. It’s still not enough.
“You still owe me. How do you want to pay?”
“S-s-s’il vous plait,” he splutters. “I h-have m-money.”
I scoff. “Oh, I know you have money, Monsieur Moreau. That’s part of the whole fucking problem.” I let the knife circle his other eye. I don’t cut him, but I remind him that I could. “But I don’t want your goddamn money. I want my pound of flesh. So how do you want to pay?”
“P-please,” he pleads again. I wonder how many times Aurélie pleaded for mercy as he hit her over and over until she bruised and bled? And how many other women before her?
“No ideas, then?” I ask, my voice jovial as I consider my next torture.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that my cock is hard as steel in my pants. Turns out, his screams and tears turn me on almost as much as hers do. “I’m so fucking hard watching you bleed under my knife,” I tell him, scraping the blade over his skin. “I swear the next time I cum, I’ll be fucking someone in your blood.” I laugh cruelly when my eyes land on the most useless hunk of meat on his whole body. I rise to my feet and point my knife between his legs before running it down toward his belly.
“What about this?” I stroke my knife along the underside of his dick hanging limp and flaccid on top of his toned abdomen. “I think this little chunk of meat might just tip the scale in your favor. What do you say, Blaise?” He shakes his head as well as he can, his lips trembling as he slowly understands what I’m about to do. “No complaints, then? Perfect.”
I take my time, slowly sawing through the meat hanging against his belly from the balls down. The blood spurts farther than I expect, bright red spraying against my white shirt and dripping down his abdomen and chest in rivulets along with other fluids. He stays conscious for as long as it takes for me to rip through his sack, his sweet screams filling my ears before he finally passes out again from sheer agony. I leave him be, having an easier job dismembering him when he’s not squirming in terror. And when he wakes up, he’ll be fucking cockless.
When I finish castrating him, I toss the small handful of meat on the scale and watch in satisfaction as the dial passes one pound. He’s paid for his sins. Now it’s time for him to burn.
Refusing to let him go out in his sleep, I bend down and slap him with the same knife that just removed his cock and balls. It takes a few slaps before he rouses, his one eye rolling open slowly as tears stream down his temples. I grab a fistful of his hair and jerk so that he focuses on me. “Any last words, you abusive cunt?”
His bloody lips smack together, but no words come out. “No? Well then, I’ll see you in Hell, motherfucker.”
I reach up and stab my knife into his stomach before jerking the blade all the way across his abdomen, disembowelling him. His lips quiver and his single eye spasms as he clings to his final moments of life while his entrails spill out of his body and onto the floor in a steaming mess of blood and bodily fluids. After what seems like ages, his body finally stops jerking, and he sways gently through the air with the leftover inertia of his death spasms. In the end, he’s just another slab of meat on a hook.
I’m a fucking mess, covered in blood and gore. My white shirt has turned completely red, and I have entrails in my boots. The only expensive things I own are ruined because this pig couldn’t fucking die without being a piece of shit. Sighing over the damn boots, I get to prepping the ingredients I need.
In the end, I harvest a quart of blood in a sanitized container mixed with vinegar to keep it from coagulating, a portion of meat from the thigh in addition to the pound of meat I already collected, and the small intestines emptied and cleaned. When I’ve taken what I need, I butcher the meat into smaller portions and throw them onto a sheet of plastic and rinse the floor clean.
It takes a fair amount of effort to drag the spare pieces down to the incinerator and drop them in one by one. I throw my own ruined clothes and shoes onto the pile along with Blaise’s wallet and jacket. Since we are about the same size, I keep his clothes and shoes for myself to wear home. I’ll have to trash them later. I keep his phone so that I can buy some time before his disappearance is noticed. And I still haven’t decided what to do with the gun.
I turn on the incinerator and allow what remains of Aurélie’s husband to burn along with the last of the feelings I had for her. Then I get to doing what I do best.
The rare summer rain streaks down the windows of the local cafe, and the typical blue August sky is painted a dim gray. I kind of appreciate the dreary weather for a change, and it means there are less crowds of people bustling around the city. It’s Saturday, which means I’m not spending the day in the Dix kitchen trying to be the best chef I can be. Instead, I’m sitting across from my beautiful little betrayer explaining why her husband didn’t come home last night.
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Aurélie asks with a haughty arch of her perfect brow.
She’s wearing her signature color, her lips painted to match. She knows what seeing her in red does to me, so I can only guess that it’s a calculated move on her part. In fact, maybe every one of her moves since the moment we met in the back of the Dix kitchen has been nothing more than a pretty manipulation.
I smile at her, taking a leisurely sip from my café crème before answering her question. “Well, if you want specifics—I lured him to a downtown boucherie after hours with a naked picture of you coming on my cock. I knocked him unconscious, strung him up in the meat locker, carved the skin off his face, cut off his cock and balls, and finally gutted him like the worthless pig he is.”
Aurélie hasn’t started screaming, so I take it as encouragement to continue. “I drained him of blood before using a cleaver to cut up his body into more manageable pieces and burning what was left of him in the incinerator.” I don’t tell her what I did with the pieces I kept. That might be too much even for her.
I look at her quizzically, wondering why she isn’t more terrified to be looking into the steel blue eyes of a killer. “So, he’s gone gone,” I finish with a shrug.
A soft, chilling smile pulls at her lips, her white teeth gleaming with bloodlust. She’s not horrified. In fact, I’d guess she’s fucking thrilled. I’ve just told her I used a knife to carve up her husband, and she’s beaming as though I’ve offered her a million euros. Which, technically, I suppose I have since she’ll have sole access to his bank accounts.
“You fucking did it,” she gasps finally, something ravenous shining in her periwinkle eyes. “Even when I told you it would never work, you still found a way for us to be together. I knew you were determined, but this is incredible.”
I scoff, truly wondering if she’s any more sane than I am. And I have a growing body count. “So the fact that I’ve just killed your husband doesn’t bother you in the slightest?” I ask, my voice tinged with rational disbelief.
“The man was a monster. It’s not like his death is any great loss,” she retorts, brushing off the grisly details of her husband’s death with as much concern as a piece of lint on her perfectly tailored dress. “Your methods were unorthodox, sure, but that’s just part of your creative style.”
“Butchering your husband is all part of my creative style?” She stares at me with that look of exasperation that I’ve grown so used to over the summer. Somehow it hits different knowing that she used me with every intention of tossing me aside.
“You killed for me. For us. I mean—it’s dark—but you know I’ve never shied away from a little darkness.”
I sneer at the twisted excitement shining in her crystal blue eyes. “Jesus, I didn’t do this for us, Aurélie. I’m not some possessive psycho willing to kill so that I can have you all to myself. You couldn’t pick me when given the choice. I have enough self-respect not to pick you when I’m the last choice you have left.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Aurélie splutters, her eyes wide with shock.
I stand up from the small table, my appetite suddenly vanished. “I meant what I said last time. We’re fucking over. But even if you chose wrong, I would be damned if I let that cunt take his hands to you any time you stepped out of line.”
I throw a stack of euros on the table, the amount more than enough to pay for both of our orders and a tip. Courtesy of Blaise Moreau’s wallet. “Now you get his money, and you get your freedom. You’ll have everything you could ever want.”
She sniffles, tears pooling but not quite spilling down her cheeks. “But I won’t have you,” she whispers, looking up at me with a shattered look that would have broken my resolve if I was the man I was last week. But I’m not him. Thanks to her, I’m stronger than ever with a heart of steel.
I look her up and down without an ounce of mercy. “It sucks to be a selfish bitch, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not fair, Grey,” she retorts, her false tears turning angry.
“Life’s not fair, golden girl. One of these days, you’ll get the fuck over it.”
I’ve said what I needed to say, and even though hurt still lingers in my chest, the pain is numbing quicker than expected. “This is goodbye. Stay away from me. Stay away from Dix. And after you’ve spent a unsuspicious amount of time playing the weeping widow, get the fuck out of Paris. Find happiness in something that doesn’t require infiltrating a kitchen you didn’t earn the right to cook in or devouring the hearts of naive boys. If that’s even possible.”
“You’re cruel,” she gasps like it’s something she didn’t already know.
I laugh, the sound harsh and cold. “You love a sadist.”
“You’re heartless.”
“You would know. There’s still blood under your lovely red nails from ripping it out of my chest.”
She looks up at me, her teary, ruined eyes starkly contrasting her perfect red lips. “I love you.”
And that’s the last lie I’ll ever hear from her sweet cherry lips.
“C’est impossible, ma chérie. That would require you to have a beating heart.”
It’s my first day entering the Dix kitchen as sous chef, and everything seems tinged in brightness, shiny and new.
Our last challenge was to deliver a dish of our own creation. We had an unlimited budget and access to any ingredients we needed. There were no limitations, no required elements, not even a specified course. Hors d’oeuvre, soup, appetizer, main course, dessert. It didn’t matter. It just had to be perfect.
Our group of ten was one short. Aurélie never showed. In all honesty, I thought she might in spite of my warning. Although, my having just butchered her husband might have made her consider my threats to stay away a little more seriously. I felt the briefest twinge in my chest when I saw her station empty, but it passed as quickly as it came. My purpose in the kitchen was to cook. She made me forget that for a moment, but I was finally back on track.
I presented boudin noir aux pommes for my final dish. A traditional French preparation by all accounts, but I added my own creative style. I sourced the meat myself—the blood and even the sausage casings too. And Chef Matis said it was the most flavorful saucisse he’d ever had. I wonder how he’d feel about my secret ingredient?
And speaking of, Chef Matis’ main financier has been missing for days, which explains why poor Aurélie was so distraught that she couldn’t finish the competition. Neither of them have been seen all week, and if I’m honest, no one is worse off for it.
The kitchen is teeming with excitement as we prep for opening night. Out of the ten chefs competing, six stayed on at the restaurant to cook under me. I’ll have to keep an eye on Javi—we’ll either be best friends, or he’ll try to steal the position of sous right from under me. I haven’t decided which. Either way, he can bring it the fuck on. As long as my knives are sharp, I’ve never been scared of a fight.
I’m no longer in the back of the kitchen. I’m no longer Nine. I face the fully staffed kitchen from the head table right alongside Chef Matis. I feel his hand on my shoulder as he introduces me to the rest of the team for the first time as sous. His gray eyes are warm with approval as he nods at me once, the gesture an unspoken sign of us being equals in the kitchen.
“Take it away, chef.”
And in this moment—in spite of the bitch, the lies, the betrayal, the heartbreak, and the motherfucking gore—I know I’m exactly where I belong.
And this is only the beginning.