The Reaper (Dominion Hall #8)

Chapter 1

MEGHAN

T he waterfront had gone quiet by the time I unlocked the side gate and stepped into the courtyard.

Charleston had a way of holding still after dark, like the city itself was waiting for something to shift. The air hung thick over the Battery—salt-laced, unmoving, heavy in a way that settled into your bones.

Maybe it was the heat. Or maybe it was me—standing there in the heels I’d slipped on to walk the dining room, after hours in clogs behind the line, still wearing a linen apron and listening for something I couldn’t name.

Promenade’s facade looked untouched. The gas lanterns flickered low against the white columns. A few candles still burned in the dining room beyond the front windows, casting soft golden light across the hardwood floors and empty tables.

The night’s service was over, every dish served, every compliment accepted with a smile. Staff gone. Kitchen spotless. Guests content. I should have felt proud.

I did. And I didn’t.

I stepped back inside and slipped the bolt on the door behind me.

The place was too quiet without the usual movement—the precision of plating, the subtle rhythm of feet on old wood, the simmer of saucepans behind the pass.

In stillness, the restaurant became something else entirely.

A shrine. A cage. A goddamn cathedral to everything I’d built with my bare hands.

They said you couldn’t build a legacy on obsession. But obsession was the only thing I trusted.

Upstairs, I could’ve collapsed into the cool sheets of my third-floor apartment and shut off my brain, if only for a few hours. Instead, I moved on autopilot. Pulled a fresh bottle of Pinot from the climate cabinet, popped the cork with practiced ease, poured a glass I had no intention of drinking.

My feet carried me to the long, narrow window overlooking the harbor, where I leaned against the frame and stared out past the historic rooftops and the line of palmettos swaying in the slow breeze. It was beautiful here. But nothing about it was soft.

The Battery had teeth. People forgot that.

My phone buzzed in the apron pocket still tied at my waist. I didn’t answer. I already knew who it was. Finn Carroll, checking in. He always did after I closed alone.

If anyone understood my rules, it was him. He never overstayed his welcome, never made it weird. Just a simple Are you good? followed by a thumbs-up emoji when I replied.

Tonight, I didn’t reply.

I turned from the window and walked back down to the kitchen, half-hoping I’d forgotten something—anything to justify the restlessness in my limbs.

But everything was in order. The burners were cool.

The knives aligned. The sous vide bath had been emptied and dried.

Each prep station wiped down twice. Even the walk-in, which I kept stocked with clockwork precision, looked smug in its perfection.

Still, I found myself pacing, retracing steps I’d walked a hundred times—line, pass, dish return, cooler, and back again. Like muscle memory wasn’t enough anymore. Like I needed friction. Resistance. A crack in the surface.

Charlotte Duffy’s voice echoed in my head. “We got a weird one today.”

The man had called during service hours, ignored every protocol, and told her he’d figure it out. No name. No callback number. Just … presence.

I hated that it lingered.

I hated more that it stuck with me.

There was no room in my life for that kind of unknown.

Everything about Promenade was precision, by design.

The exclusivity wasn’t marketing—it was insulation.

No walk-ins. No uninvited press. No chaos.

We didn’t even take direct reservations.

You needed a referral. A password. An understanding of the unspoken rules.

This place wasn’t for tourists or influencers or the casually curious. It was for people who knew what restraint cost—and were willing to pay for it. Every plate served at Promenade was a war won. Every service a battle survived.

And still, one anonymous man had found a way to crawl under my skin.

I refilled my glass, took a sip this time, and let the wine settle across my tongue. It was clean, tight, expensive. I felt none of it.

Before I could spiral further, the back door creaked open behind me.

I turned sharply.

Finn stepped inside, carrying his jacket over one shoulder and a smirk on his face.

“You didn’t answer,” he said.

“I didn’t realize I was required to.”

“You’re not,” he said. “You just always do.”

I sighed and set the glass down. “I’m fine.”

“You always say that, too.”

He wasn’t wrong. Finn had been with me since day one—back when Promenade was just a paper sketch and a bad loan. He knew more than most, though less than he thought. Still, I let him stay. That meant something.

He dropped his jacket on a stool and surveyed the kitchen. “Everything’s spotless. I’m shocked.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

“Neither does burnout,” he said lightly, then paused. “You’ve been chewing your cheek again.”

I stilled. “Have I?”

“You get this look on your face. Like you’re five seconds from setting something on fire but too polite to say it out loud.”

I turned away. “Maybe I should start.”

He chuckled, but his gaze stayed on me, sharp and steady. “You’re wound tighter than usual.”

“There’s a lot going on.”

“The review?” he asked.

I gave a tight nod.

A national publication had hinted at a feature—one of the big ones.

A piece that could put us on the map in ways even I hadn’t dared to chase.

Charleston wasn’t a Michelin city, but I’d been building an argument, anyway.

Promenade was a manifesto. If the stars wouldn’t come here on their own, maybe I could make enough noise to bring them to me.

Or leave. Start over. Take the fire elsewhere.

I didn’t want to leave.

But I also didn’t know how to stay if staying meant this hollow pressure forever.

“Think they’ll come in this week?” Finn asked, softer now.

“I don’t know.”

He gave me a long look, then shifted gears. “Charlotte told me about the caller.”

I bristled. “She shouldn’t have.”

“She tells me everything,” he said. “I’m irresistible.”

“Your hair is still wet from the humidity.”

He grinned. “Exactly.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back toward the pass. “There’s no reason to think he’s anything.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t believe in gut feelings,” I said. “I believe in facts. In patterns. In the things I can control.”

“Which is … nothing?”

“Which is most things. If you’re good enough.”

He didn’t argue. That’s why I kept him around.

By the time he left again, the wine was warm and the harbor breeze had turned ever so slightly cooler.

I moved through the dining room, extinguishing candles one by one, until the space was cloaked in near-darkness.

I knew every inch of the layout by heart.

Every chair pushed in at the same angle.

Every napkin folded with precision. The copper fixtures glowed dully under the sconces.

The ceiling fan turned slow and lazy overhead. Nothing was out of place.

Except me.

I didn’t go upstairs.

Instead, I stepped outside and walked down the stone path through the courtyard, trailing my fingers along the tops of the tomato plants, letting the leaves brush my skin. The scent of basil was sharper now, almost medicinal. Somewhere nearby, a wind chime danced softly against the breeze.

I stopped at the iron gate and looked out through the bars toward South Battery.

It was late. The street was empty. The harbor stretched black and endless beyond the seawall, broken only by the glimmer of boat lights in the distance.

I could hear the faint sound of horse hooves a few blocks over—one of the late-night carriage tours.

A reminder that Charleston never really slept, even if it liked to pretend.

I leaned against the gate, still holding the empty glass, and let myself feel the quiet.

It didn’t last.

A sudden flicker of movement caught my eye—just past the line of hedges across the street. A figure, maybe. Standing still. Watching.

I blinked. Looked again. Nothing.

A trick of the light, I told myself.

I wasn’t the kind of woman who jumped at shadows. I wasn’t the kind of woman who felt things before they happened. I wasn’t my mother.

I shook the thought loose, locked the gate behind me, and turned back toward the house.

Halfway up the stairs, I paused.

There was a letter in the mailbox slot. No postage. No name.

Just a folded sheet of thick, expensive paper tucked under the brass handle like it had been placed there deliberately.

I stared at it for a long time before I picked it up.

My name was written on the outside in clean, block handwriting.

No return address. No branding. Just a simple card inside, printed with one sentence:

I’m coming for dinner.

No date. No reservation code. No signature.

Just that.

I read it twice before I folded it back up, walked into the house, and turned the bolt behind me.

Then I locked the bolt again.

Just in case.

I left the note on the counter beside the wine, its sharp edge catching the dim light like it might slice open more than paper.

I told myself it was nothing. Just a stunt.

Some smug investor or food-obsessed creep who thought he was clever.

That happened sometimes. Men with more money than sense, trying to prove they belonged in rooms they didn’t earn.

I’d shut them down before. I’d shut them all down.

Still, I peeled off my apron with a little more urgency than usual.

The weight of the note clung to my skin like steam in a closed kitchen.

I headed up the narrow servants’ stairwell instead of the main hall, barefoot now, heels in one hand, careful not to let them knock against the wall.

The old house groaned beneath me like it remembered every footstep that had ever passed through it.

The floorboards creaked just outside my bedroom door, and I paused with my hand on the knob, listening again.

Nothing.

Still, I locked that door, too.

Then I stripped off my clothes one piece at a time—button by button, clasp by clasp—until I was standing naked in front of the tall window facing the courtyard. I didn’t bother with the curtains. There was no one out there. Just shadows and wind and the faint rustle of leaves.

And yet, a part of me wondered if someone was watching.

The idea should have unsettled me.

It didn’t.

My skin prickled with something dangerously close to want. Not the simple, polished kind of want you admitted to friends over drinks. No, this was darker. Wilder. It moved through me like a storm tide, rising from somewhere old and buried. It didn’t make sense.

Maybe I was losing it.

That thought should’ve sent me straight to bed, but instead, I padded to the bathroom and turned on the shower—hot enough to sting. The steam fogged the glass as I stepped under the spray, letting it scald the back of my neck, trail over the curve of my spine, down the backs of my thighs.

My fingers curled around the tile edge as I braced myself against the rush of heat.

I could still feel the note between my fingertips.

I’m coming for dinner.

It wasn’t the words that got me—it was the certainty. The calm, unapologetic dominance of it. No request. No question. Just intention. Unmistakable. And there was something about that kind of clarity that felt obscene in a world where everyone else only pretended to know what they wanted.

Could the note be a good thing? The beginning of something?

I was used to hunger. The kind I fed. The kind I fought. The kind I burned into reduction sauces and seared into duck skin and buried beneath foam and edible gold leaf. But this was something else entirely.

I shut off the water and stood dripping in the stall, too wired to move.

When I finally wrapped a towel around myself and walked back into the bedroom, I didn’t go for pajamas or my usual tank top and shorts.

I pulled open the top drawer of my dresser and reached for the silk slip I never wore.

Black. Barely there. A gift to myself from a trip I’d taken to New York to forget someone I didn’t want to admit I’d once loved.

I didn’t forget him. I just built a restaurant instead.

The silk clung to my skin like it had been waiting. I caught my reflection in the mirror and didn’t look away.

Strong shoulders. Sharp collarbones. Mouth set in a line that didn’t soften, even when I tried.

My body wasn’t soft, either. It was honed.

Fit. Made to endure. There were moments I wished I looked a little more inviting—rounder, warmer, easier.

But then I remembered how many men had tried to own that softness, to tame it, and I felt better for not having it.

Still, I wondered what a man would see when he looked at me.

I slipped under the covers and reached for my phone on the nightstand. There were three texts from Finn.

You good?

Hello?

Lock the damn gate.

I replied with a thumbs-up. Then powered the phone off.

I lay in bed with the lights out and the windows open, staring at the shadowed ceiling, listening to the slow creak of the house and the deeper silence beneath it. My body thrummed like a struck tuning fork. My skin still warm from the water. My thighs pressed tight together beneath the sheet.

I wasn’t scared. That was the worst part.

I was … aware.

Like something had shifted in the air tonight, subtle but irreversible. Like I was no longer the only one inside this house.

And if I wasn’t?

Then God, help the man who thought he was chasing me.

Because he wasn’t ready.

Not for me. Not for this.

Not for what I’d become in the pursuit of perfection.

Still, I reached over and set the folded note on the pillow beside mine.

Let him come.

I was already waiting.