Chapter 7
Raze
After she recovered from her initial embarrassment, I told her dinner was ready.
The look in her eyes told me she was starving—properly so—even though she’d had full access to my kitchen earlier.
I hadn’t seen her eat a single thing. Either she didn’t trust my food or she’d been too busy casing the place like a raccoon with anxiety.
We walked side by side to the kitchen, and Little Miss Chatty filled the space with questions. Where was I from. How long had I lived here. Did I actually cook or was this a once-a-year performance. I answered maybe half of them. Generous, all things considered.
She took one look at the plate.
Just one.
Then she blinked slowly, like she needed a second to process what she was seeing—and
“This smells like something I’ll regret ingesting.”
I stared at her across the island, spoon hovering uselessly over the pan. Steam billowed up between us, carrying the scent of garlic, tomatoes, and apparently betrayal.
“It’s pasta.”
“It’s overcooked pasta,” she amended, leaning in closer as if the dish might confess under pressure. “And whatever that sauce is trying to be—it’s failing. Impressively, actually.”
I waited.
For the moment people usually had—when awareness kicked in. When they remembered who I was. Where they were. How thin the margin for honesty tended to be in my presence. The backpedal. The apology. The sudden interest in self-preservation.
It never came.
She picked up her fork.
And ate it anyway.
No hesitation. No drama. Just a bite, chewed thoughtfully, like she hadn’t just insulted my cooking and my character in the same breath. I watched her, fascinated despite myself.
“Well?” I demanded.
She swallowed. Considered. Then shrugged.
“I’ve had worse.”
She continued to chew thoughtfully, frowned, and took another bite like survival didn’t require manners—or fear.
Like she wasn’t trying to impress me. Or placate me. Or earn a place in my good graces.
I found that… refreshing.
“God,” she made a face, swallowing. “Yeah. Still bad.”
I snorted before I could stop myself.
Her eyes flicked up, surprised. Then she smiled—quick, crooked, unapologetic.
“That a laugh?” she asked.
“Hardly,” I straightened, regaining my composure. “It was a lapse in judgment.”
“Well, don’t let it happen again. Wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation.”
She twirled pasta around her fork, then glanced up at me. “So. Is interrogating your captives over dinner your thing, or am I getting special treatment?”
“That depends. Are you planning to confess to anything?”
She considered that, then shrugged. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Being hungry and having very low standards when starvation is involved.”
I leaned back against the counter, studying her. “You’re remarkably calm.”
“Don’t confuse calm with acceptance. I just panic better internally.”
Interesting.
“So,” I started, twirling my fork once and setting it down again, “what is it exactly that you do?”
I kept my tone casual. Light. Like we were two normal people sharing a meal instead of captor and captive circling each other with careful precision.
She glanced up at me, eyes bright with something that looked suspiciously like amusement. “You mean other than spying on yours truly?”
I laughed at that—an actual laugh this time. It caught me off guard, her timing perfect, the jab precise. She’d dodged the question neatly, wrapped the evasion in humor instead of defensiveness.
Interesting.
Maybe she wouldn’t lie outright.
But sidestep?
Oh, she’d do that.
Tactfully.
I stared at her a moment longer than I should have, cataloguing details I had no business remembering.
Her eyes were the first thing that caught me—honey-coloured, warm and bright, the kind that didn’t just look at you but engaged. They winked at me in amusement, like she found this entire situation mildly inconvenient rather than life-altering.
It was unsettling.
Those eyes were full of life. Of laughter that hadn’t been beaten out of her yet. Even now. You couldn’t get much worse than being held in a stranger’s house under armed guard, and yet she carried herself like someone who expected to walk out of it eventually.
Cool as a cucumber, as if she’d always been this way—unflappable in the face of adversity, refusing to give fear the satisfaction.
Her hair was a rich brown, falling in soft waves around her face, loose and untamed, cascading past her shoulders and down the middle of her back like it had never known discipline. I had the strange urge to reach out and tuck a strand behind her ear, just to see if she’d let me.
She had a wholesome fullness girl-next-door vibe about her that made her look real, tangible. She looked like someone who laughed easily. Someone who felt deeply.
When she smiled, it wasn’t submissive or careful. It was knowing. Challenging. As if she were in on a joke I hadn’t quite caught up to yet.
“I work two jobs.” It felt as though my silence made her think better of not answering the question. “Barista in the mornings. Freelance graphic work where I can get it.”
“And you live alone, you said?”
She didn’t say.
She met my gaze without flinching. There was no pause to edit herself into something impressive.
“I live with my boyfriend.”
“Ahhh…yes. The elusive missing boyfriend.”
“You think I made him up?”
“I don’t think anything. Assuming in my line of work gets you killed. So I don’t go there.”
Her fork slowed. Not stopped. Just… slowed.
She gestured vaguely with her fork. “Your turn. What is your line of work?”
I smiled thinly. “I solve problems.”
“Mm. Of course you do.”
She took another bite, grimaced again, then pushed the plate away. “I think my dignity’s full.”
“We should get you some clothes.”
“Sounds like I’ll be here for a while,” she mused, staring down at her nails.
“As long as it takes,” I remind her.
“Why did you cook, anyway?” She asks, looking around the chef’s kitchen. “All this grandeur, and you don’t have a maid or a cook?”
“You’re a curious little one, aren’t you?”
“Don’t insult me. Not so little. And I can’t help it if I like to know things. Why don’t you have a cook?”
“I do have a cook.”
Her eyes slide suspiciously to her discarded plate, before she gives me a look that’s questionable at best.
“If you intend to keep me prisoner,” she starts, “you should at least feed me well.”
The house had already changed around her.
It wasn’t a switch being flipped or a spell being broken. It was calmer than that—insidious. And it came out of no-where. The kind of change you only noticed when you’ve already lost ground.
I didn’t realize it until later that night. After she abandoned the rest of the pasta, yawned into her arm like she’d just completed an endurance event, and rewarded me with a pair of unearned, thoroughly distracting moony eyes for dessert.
I’d been moving through the halls on instinct, the way I always did, avoiding rooms I hadn’t entered in years. Rooms I’d sealed off not with locks, but with will. With discipline. With the understanding that some doors stayed closed because opening them meant bleeding.
Except now the silence didn’t cut as sharply.
The walls didn’t echo the same way. The air didn’t feel as tight, as suffocating. There was sound where there hadn’t been before—not noise exactly, but presence.
Footsteps earlier in the evening.
Soft, unguarded laughter drifting down a corridor she had no business wandering.
The faint hum of music she’d put on while she danced, like the house might appreciate it.
Breathing. Life.
The kind that didn’t belong to ghosts or memories or men who had taught themselves how to exist without feeling.
She left traces of herself everywhere. A blanket folded wrong over the back of the couch. A book left face-down on the table, her place marked with a scrap of paper. A mug abandoned in the sink, a faint fingerprint left on the handle like a signature she hadn’t realized she’d signed.
She filled space without asking permission.
And worse—she filled it with warmth.
The house responded to her. I could feel it, like something old and starved stretching awake.
Rooms that had stayed dark seemed to soften.
Corners I’d learned to avoid no longer felt quite so hostile.
Even the air smelled different—less like stone and restraint, more like food and soap and something alive.
I hated that I noticed.
I hated that I cared.
After she’d gone to bed, I stood alone in the kitchen, staring at the plate she hadn’t finished. Pasta gone cold. Fork resting crooked where she’d left it. The chair across from me was still warm when I touched it, heat lingering like an accusation.
For the first time in years, the house didn’t feel empty.
That realization hit hard and unwelcome—like stepping too close to an edge you hadn’t realized you were standing near. The kind of moment that made your stomach drop, your instincts scream.
I clenched my jaw and shoved the plate into the sink harder than necessary, porcelain clattering against steel.
Attachments were liabilities.
Distractions.
They burned. They exploded. They left nothing behind but destruction and ruin.
I knew this. I’d lived it. I’d paid for it in blood and fire and the kind of loss that never really loosened its grip.
Which meant whatever this was—whatever she was—it needed to end.
And the fact that I didn’t want it to only made it worse.