Chapter 24 Daniela
DANIELA
The envelope is the pale pink of a little girl’s stationery, the kind she’d use to send thank-you notes for birthday presents.
Inside is a single sheet of printer paper folded into thirds.
Then an address and no signature. None needed.
The words tilt on the page. I steady it with both hands, and the kitchen swims anyway. The blue thing. Of course. He would remember.
For one second—one stupid, wobbling second—I tell myself maybe this is a coincidence. Maybe some other psychopath has a fondness for blue dresses and early appointments and cruel games.
No.
I know whose note this is. The tone, the control masquerading as courtesy, the way he flattens me into a thing—the blue thing, not your dress, not that gown—like I’m a prop that belongs to a scene he’s been rehearsing for years.
I read it again. Meet me alone tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow. If it were now, I could move without thinking. I could ride the adrenaline straight into a bad decision that might still save a life. But he gave me twelve hours to think, and that’s enough for panic to breed.
The blue thing.
Cinderella blue.
“Dani, what does it say?” Raven asks.
I crumple the note.
The kitchen’s fluorescent lights buzz. The refrigerator hums.
I don’t want to remember, but the note drags the past into the room and sets it on the counter beside the coffee maker. I blink, and the kitchen changes.
A different kitchen. A different country. But the same girl.
The same me.
* * *
Three years earlier…
I love my blue dress. It’s the color of the morning sky. The skirt sways when I walk.
I feel fresh and clean in the dress, even though inside I know I’m dirty. After that man—Senor Reyes is his name—made me…
I don’t want to think about it, even though I can still hear his voice slithering like a snake, still feel his big and clammy hands on me. Still remember how I gagged…
In this dress, I can pretend I’m Cinderella, except Cinderella got to scrub ashes out of the fireplace instead of nauseating images out of her head. She also got a happy ending.
Not in the cards for me.
I stand at the top of the stairs and watch staff members unload cases of wine. I hold onto the banister and tell myself to swallow what I feel, because my father smells tears before he sees them, and there is nothing he hates more than weakness.
The doorbell rings. Voices. The house fills. I smile where I’m supposed to, bow my head when my father speaks in that smooth, oiled tone he keeps for men richer than he is. I say bienvenidos and qué gusto and gracias por venir and es un honor until the phrases turn to ash in my mouth.
And then the heat pushes at the back of my neck, and the stench of all the expensive cologne—too sweet, too thick, too much—makes me dizzy and the room blurs. I excuse myself mid-sentence and walk—don’t run, never run—through the nearest door.
The kitchen.
How I love the kitchen.
Cooler air. Real smells. Citrus, garlic, earthy cumin. Every surface shines with the practiced sheen of someone who loves things enough to make them gleam.
Chef stands at the far counter with his sleeves rolled and his knife moving like lightning. He doesn’t startle when I enter. He never does. He seems to know the sound of my shoes.
“Cachama,” he says, lifting the knife to flick a smear of green off the blade. “We’re roasting it whole. Fresh this morning. Your father says the ambassador likes a show.”
The fish lies on a sheet, skin cleaned and scored, white flesh peeking through neat diagonal cuts. The sight of it calms me the way clean lines calm anyone who lives under chaos.
I step closer, my blue skirt swooshing around my ankles. “What are you putting on it?”
He doesn’t answer. He reaches for a bowl and sets it closer to me. “Smell.”
It’s lime and garlic and something smokier. Cilantro, chopped until it looks like confetti.
He hands me a wooden spoon and a wedge of lime. “Finish,” he says and nods at the bowl.
I squeeze the lime and stir. “I’ve…never done this,” I say.
He grins. “I see you watching. Reading cookbooks. It’s time to learn.”
I taste the sauce with the tip of the spoon. My eyes flutter. Acidic and garlicky and so delicious. I want to climb into the bowl and live there.
“Good,” I say and smile despite myself. “It’s—”
“Don’t taste with the preparation spoon,” he says, but he isn’t scolding. He’s amused. He takes a different spoon, dips it again, and holds it toward me. “Taste properly.”
I do. The lime lifts and the cumin warms.
When I set the spoon down, he’s closer. He takes my hand, pinches the pad of my index finger, and guides it across a streak of marinade that has slopped onto the rim. “This is how chefs taste when they’re too lazy to dirty another dish,” he says lightly. He lifts my hand—my finger—to his mouth.
He shouldn’t.
But he does.
His tongue is quick, a damp swipe, and then he chuckles like we’ve shared a private joke.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though sorry isn’t the right word. I’m not sorry for my hand. I’m sorry for existing in here.
“Don’t be.” He looks me over, touching the full skirt of my dress. “This color makes promises you should be careful making.”
Heat surges up my neck. I step back. “I should— They need me in the parlor.”
“They don’t,” he says, arranging the fish on the tray. “Stay here. Learn something useful.”
I stay. He hands me a bowl of minced garlic. I tip it into the marinade and stir. “How much salt?” I ask.
“A dash,” he says and nods toward the walk-in pantry. “More cumin. Top shelf.”
The pantry is cool and smells like dry things—grains, spices, the whisper of onions. I reach for the cumin and set my fingers on the jar when the door swings shut behind me.
It isn’t the loud thump of someone slamming. It’s a deliberate click.
Fear surges through me.
“Chef?” I say, half laughing, because I’ve learned that laughing makes everything a bit more tolerable. “Is there a trick to the latch?”
He answers by closing the distance between us. The shelves dig into my hips, and I let go of the jar of cumin. Chef sets his hand on the shelf beside my shoulder and leans in close enough that I can smell his breath—a strange mixture of garlic, onion, and peppermint.
“Your father expects you to be charming tonight,” he says. “Do you want me to tell him you were hiding in the pantry while the guests arrived?”
“No,” I say. My voice cracks. “I came to— I just— The marinade.”
“Mmm hmm.” He sets a fingertip under my chin and lifts it a fraction, enough that I have to look at him or close my eyes.
I close them.
He laughs, low. “Blue suits you,” he says.
Next he…
I can’t think.
I can’t move.
The girl in that pantry is sixteen and afraid and trying to hold onto a shred of herself in a house that expects too much from her. So she does what girls do when grown men corner them in rooms with no windows.
She survives.
Mouth open.
Throat gagging.
Big smelly dick in her mouth.
Hammy hands on her cheeks.
And movement. Lot of movement.
When the door opens again, the kitchen looks the same as it did five minutes earlier, and I look almost the same, if you don’t know where to look. Chef goes back to the fish. I go back to the marinade. My dress is still blue.
On my way out of the kitchen, he grins again, raking his gaze over me. “Wear that again. It’s lovely.”
* * *
Present Day…
Back in Raven’s kitchen, the present snaps back over the past like a fitted sheet. I’m holding the counter with both hands, arms locked, shoulders burning.
Wear the blue thing I like.
I swallow bile. He wants me dressed the way I looked when he figured out precisely how far he could push me before I broke.
Belinda.
I shut my eyes and picture her innocent beauty, her blondness, her immature intelligence and her mature musical talent. The way she plays scales too fast because she wants to get to the actual music.
She’s not my daughter. She’s not my sister. Yet in some way she’s both. She’s the person I’d steal and lie and run for. She is what the word family means to me. She’s more of a family to me than my own flesh-and-blood father ever was.
I can’t let the chef have her. I don’t care if he says he won’t touch her. He’d be lying. I don’t care if he thinks she’s a pawn he can push two squares at a time. She is a child. She will not learn the taste of lime and garlic marinade the way I did.
Not because of me.
Not again.
Not ever.
“Dani…” Raven’s voice.
I meet her gaze.
“This note,” she says. “Let me see the note.”
“It’s nothing,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant.
Raven shakes her head. “That’s bullshit and we both know it. What does it say, Dani?”
“It’s disgusting,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t repeat what it says.”
“Dani…”
“Please,” I say. “Don’t make me show it to you.”
I have to let Raven think it’s something disgusting that embarrasses me. If I show her what it really says, she won’t let me out of her sight.
That can’t happen.
Because I am going. I can’t not go.
I recite the note in my head.
Meet me alone tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. Wear the blue thing I like.
“Did you hear me?” she asks.
I nod.
“Hey,” she says. “Are you okay?”
I unclench my hands. “Just tired. Has Vinnie found anything new?”
“He’s cursing at three different databases,” she says, clearly trying to ease the mood…and failing.
I leave the envelope. “You may need this for fingerprints,” I tell Raven. Then I feign a yawn. “I’m going to go back to my suite. I’m exhausted.”
“Dani… Please let me see the note. I can take it.”
I paste on a smile. “I will. I just need a few minutes.”
She sighs but nods.
I walk down the hallway to the door that leads to my suite from the house and head straight to my bedroom.
I sit on the edge of my bed with the note in my lap and try to think.
I can tell them. I can take the letter to Vinnie and Raven and say, “Here. He wants me. He’ll trade me for her.”