Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Claire
“You’re not washing any more dishes, Claire.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
Draven and I are arguing in the parking lot of Tartine the next morning, but it’s not really an argument, is it?
Not when we’re smiling at each other and I’m still glowing from our “honeymoon.” I’m also playing with the buttons on the front of his shirt and admiring the gold wedding band on my ring finger. How it catches the sunlight.
Holy cow. I’m a married woman.
I’ve married the man of my dreams.
“I’m putting you on garnishes,” he says, his tone brooking no disrespect.
I give it to him anyway. “Garnishes? Like sprinkling parsley on the plate?”
I giggle as he stoops down and throws me over his shoulder, giving my backside a resounding slap. “It’s an underrated artform.”
“It’s favoritism.”
“So be it, little girl. I own the restaurant.” He strides toward the rear entrance of Tartine. “When we own our own place in Maine, you can choose your role. Event coordinator. Décor. Or better yet, special assistant to the executive chef.”
“Hmm.” I grin at his flexing butt as he walks. “What would that position entail?”
“That position would entail…well, positions.”
My laughter carries across the parking lot. “You’re not taking me seriously.”
Stopping in his tracks, Draven carefully pulls me down from his shoulder and I assume my favorite position.
Legs twined extra tight around my husband’s waist. He takes a moment to savor the hold, not to mention the way my breasts push up against his chest, ever so high and plump in the neckline of my tank top.
He groans, but visibly composes himself soon after, kissing my nose.
“You are the only person I take seriously in my life.” He touches our foreheads together.
“I just want to keep you close to me until we can leave this place. Okay? Can you bear with me until I speak to Pierre about a buy out?”
“Just call me the garnish queen,” I whisper, stroking his face. “For now.”
“For now,” he agrees. “Very soon, I’m going to take you far away from here.”
“Well, well, well,” Pierre says, coming around the corner of the restaurant, flipping a set of keys in his hand. “If it isn’t the love birds back from their irresponsible day off.”
“Pierre, I’m not in the mood,” Draven says, his jaw popping. “In fact, I’m never in the mood for you.”
“Isn’t that too bad?” Pierre sniffs in my direction, eyeing the thighs wrapping around his brother’s waist and inserts his keys into the back door.
“Let’s just get to work on that special sauce, shall we?
We have a full dining room of reservations this afternoon.
The cops are coming to do crowd control.
” With a narrowed gaze, he observes us both on his way into Tartine.
“You really must share the exact recipe, brother. In case we have another day like yesterday.”
“I’m not sharing shit,” Draven says, carrying me through the backdoor.
“Now, now,” Pierre admonishes. “That’s not a team player attitude.”
Draven and I share an eye roll.
“I love you,” I mouth at my husband. “Just think about Maine.”
“Maine,” he whispers back, groaning with reluctance as he sets me down in the locker room and crosses to his locker, removing his chef’s coat.
Tying on his cap. All the while, he watches me put on my apron and secure my hair up in a ponytail.
“I love you,” he says, coming over to kiss my shoulder when we’re both ready to work.
“I’ll signal you when it’s time to meet in the pantry. ”
My cheeks warm significantly. “I’ll look forward to it.”
With a quick squeeze of my backside, Draven heads toward the kitchen and I follow, taking my position at the garnishing station.
Normally, this would be something Draven does before sending dishes out to the dining room—and I know, because I moon over the man while he’s working.
Garnishing is my job now, however, and none of the kitchen staff question the switch.
They simply nod at me and await Draven’s instructions for the day.
“Before we get going,” Draven says, addressing the crew, “I would like to re-introduce Claire as my wife. We were married yesterday afternoon.”
A chorus of gasps go up, followed by a small round of applause.
“If you’re all wondering why I’m suddenly a bearable human being, look no further.” Draven regards me with so much love in his expression, my sight blurs. “It’s all her.” He swallows hard and drags his attention off me, clapping once. “Now. Onto the day’s menu…”
Feeling safe and adored, I pick up a knife and prep little springs of rosemary.
I pluck petals off edible purple flowers and store them in a plastic containers, ready for service.
Around the time I finish prepping, Draven nods at me on his way into the pantry and I follow, my heartrate kicking into a gallop.
His mouth meets mine before I’ve fully crossed the threshold and a ripple of laughter goes through the kitchen.
Draven cuts off the sound when he backs me into the door, closing it.
My head drops back on a moan when he delves his fingers into my panties and takes what he needs for our sauce, finishing me easily with concentrated rubs of my clit, leaving the pantry minutes later with wet fingers hidden at his side and a look of pure obsession on his face.
I leave the small room after him, already counting the minutes until he can unleash that obsession on me later.
At home. Our plan for the evening is to lie in bed after we make love and shop online for some new clothes for me.
Already, I’m excited for the flirty disagreements we’re going to have about appropriate attire.
He’s already threatened to put me in demure dresses and button-up blouses, but that is so not happening.
And I know exactly how I’m going to get my way.
On my way back to the garnish station, I realize my hair tie is broken, leaving my hair loose. Draven must have accidentally broken the black band with his fingers when they tunneled through my hair. Thankfully, I have another one in my locker.
I go there now, walking into the employee changing area, surprised to find it so dark.
Who turned off the light—
A cloth claps over my mouth, a noxious taste invading my throat. My nose.
Eyes burning, I struggle, but a lethargy has already begun to steal over me.
“I knew the miracle sauce had something to do with you,” Pierre sneers in my ear. “Did you think no one would notice your little rendezvous every time Draven makes the stuff? How are you doctoring it? What in the hell are you putting into it?”
“Nothing,” I slur.
Danger. I’m in danger.
But my limbs are slackening, my thoughts muddling together.
“It’s your pussy, isn’t it? You’ve got a little goldmine between your thighs, don’t you?”
“No,” I gasp, losing my balance and dropping, cringing when Pierre catches me beneath the armpits. I don’t want him touching me. “N-no…”
“Yeah, I don’t believe you,” he growls, dragging me toward the back door.
Toward the parking lot. No. Draven, help.
“I already got my mother out of the way years ago so I wouldn’t have to divide the profits three ways.
If I’m willing to do that, do you think I’d let two fuckers take the secret recipe and leave me behind?
Hell no. You’ve got another think coming. ”
Oh my God.
Pierre set the fire that killed his mother?
It was never Draven.
Later. I’ll tell him later. Right now, I have to focus on surviving.
After Pierre’s phone call with Draven yesterday, Pierre must have seen the writing on the wall and known he could no longer keep Draven under his thumb. That he could no longer control his brother with unfounded guilt over his mother’s death. Now, he’s panicking. Acting irrationally.
What is he going to do with me?
I’m thrown down onto the asphalt beside a white van and I’m just about to lose consciousness when Pierre rolls open the door.
There is a man I vaguely recognize sitting in the driver’s seat.
Is he one of the waiters? I don’t have time to place him before Pierre picks me up and heaves me into the van, my body landing in a loud thud on the floor.
“My associate is going to bring you somewhere safe. I’ll be by to collect some of that special ingredient later.
” He leers at the juncture of my thighs, and my stomach roils.
“My brother thinks he’s going to take the golden goose and run? Oh no. You’re mine now, Claire.”
Draven
I haven’t laid eyes on my wife in five minutes and I’m starting feel jumpy.
“Where did Claire go?” I ask one of the line cooks.
“I saw her go into the locker room,” she responds, absently. “Few minutes ago.”
I’m already striding in that direction, shoving open the door. My stomach drops when I find the light is off. It’s never off. I flip it on, a chill going down my spine when I see that Claire’s locker is wide open, a black hair band discarded on the floor.
My gut instinct takes over immediately.
“Where is my brother?” I bellow, red, jagged scratches hindering my vision. Rage. I lunge for the back door and tear it open, nearly ripping the thing off its hinges.
What I see makes my body go ice cold.
Pierre is walking back toward the restaurant fixing his hair, breathing fast. Too fast.
A white van has just taken a right turn out of the parking lot.
“What are you doing out here?” I grab him by the collar of his shirt. “Where is Claire?”
“How would I know?” Pierre shouts up at me. “I was loading up a catering order.”
“Bullshit. There were no orders this morning.” Thanking God my car keys are still in my pocket, I waste no time sprinting for my BMW.
When Pierre steps into my path and shoves me, trying to keep me from leaving, unfiltered ire blasts through my nervous system, because it’s proof. It’s proof something is wrong. “Claire is in that van, isn’t she?” I rasp, the world spinning in sickening fashion around me.
“I’m saving you from yourself!” Pierre screeches, sounding hysterical, doing everything he can to wrestle me backward. “You think I’ll just let you leave me behind for a stupid girl? You think you can just scrap me like stale bread? Who is going to cook?”
A surge of power rocks me and I pick Pierre up, launching him a good ten yards.
He lands on the asphalt face first and goes skidding into the side of a silver Mazda.
“If you’ve harmed a hair on her head, I’ll come back here and mutilate you,” I say in a strangled roar, before turning and running full speed toward my car.
“You think I’d damage my ticket to millions?” Pierre yells at my back. “She might be a little bruised up, but as long as her pussy still works its magic, that’s all I care about.”
Fear and outrage combust in my chest, and I throw myself into the BMW, peeling out of the parking lot and gunning in the direction of the van.
He knows.
He knows about Claire’s gift.
And I’m too late. That’s what I think. What I believe, until miraculously, I spot the van five blocks in front of me, taking a hard right.
I dissociate in that moment, because I have no choice.
If I think about my wife being bruised, kidnapped and scared, I think my heart might stop beating from the distress.
Locking into my mission, I drive.
I hit one hundred miles an hour on the avenue, weaving through cars and blaring my horn for cars and pedestrians to get out of the way.
There is a painful pounding in my skull, pressure pushing behind my eyes, like my head might crack into a million pieces.
I have to find her. I must find my wife. She’s got to be fucking terrified.
I should have done more to protect her.
Once I became aware of her body’s abilities, I should have left with her immediately, before Pierre got wind of what she could do. Now, she’s been taken from me.
My car takes the right turn on two wheels, and I frantically search the side road for the van. I almost miss it. If I’d blinked, I would have.
There.
The garage door on the house that closes a final inch as I pass.
As though someone has just pulled in.
I squeal to a stop and throw myself out of the car, advancing on the garage.
“Claire!”
I lean down and attempt to pry to garage door open, but it’s impossible.
Undeterred, I sprint for the front door of the house, putting my shoulder down and ramming into it as hard as possible.
Then again, again, again, until the door splinters at the lock, smacking open against the far wall.
A man stands with his hands up, a set of keys dangling from one hand.
“You,” I growl.
Our head waiter. He must have been recruited by Pierre.
“You’re fucking dead,” I say, hitting him with a right cross.
He goes down, unconscious, and my rage forces me to punch him twice more for good measure, before I snatch up the keys and storm toward the garage. There’s no sound coming from inside the van, and my heart beats in a lopsided tempo, though my blood doesn’t feel like it’s moving at all.
“Claire?” I croak, unlocking the door of the van with shaking, bloody hands.
I fall to my knees when she’s revealed, her body motionless on the floor of the van.
“Claire, please don’t be dead. Claire!” I bellow, irrationally, climbing into the vehicle to feel her face.
Touch her delicate features, relieving to find them warm.
Relieved there is color in her cheeks. And when she rouses, one eye opening, followed by the other, blinking up at me drowsily and whispering my name, I come undone with gratitude, picking her up into my arms and rocking while I wail thank you up at the heavens, my life restored.
My wife.
My wife is alive.
“Are you hurt, Claire?” I beg to know, shaking.
“Just tired,” she murmurs.
I swallow the bolts in my throat. “Did either of them touch you? Did they touch you?”
“No.” Her smile is drowsy. Sweet. I don’t deserve it. “My hero came in time.”
I release an agonized sound and bury my face in her hair. “I’ll never let you out of my sight again. I promise. Not for a fucking minute.”
“Maine,” she whispers, tracing my earlobe with limp fingers.
“Maine,” I agree thickly, carrying her out of the garage in my arms and putting her into my BMW. We drive northeast and never look back.