Chapter 36 - Daniela
DANIELA
I stand still and listen, place the garment bag on the floor. No footsteps above. No murmurs. Just the breath of a place abandoned.
Why this place?
And why is Hernando Reyes here?
Maybe Reyes gave Chef a place to stay after he left Chef Charleston’s place because he couldn’t be there while Belinda had a sleepover. Maybe they knew each other from my father’s house in Colombia.
Or maybe it’s all just a fucked-up coincidence.
I walk back up the stairs.
One step. Another.
I count without meaning to. Eight, ten, twelve, thirteen steps. My heart taps time against my ribs.
At the bottom, I finally let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Concrete floor, low ceiling with exposed joists, a single square window near the far corner chalked over with grime.
And in the middle of the floor…
A table.
I move closer.
It’s not just a table.
A white cloth falls to the floor in perfect, heavy drape, the fabric embroidered in an old-world pattern—tiny climbing vines and a border of interlocking blossoms. I know the motif instantly.
It’s the same as the bedsheets Diego Vega gave me.
I wore it once, unintentionally, when Vega wrapped me in it after.
The muscle in my jaw ticks. The threadwork is identical.
Two plates sit side by side, bone china edged with a hairline of gold. The silver beside them is old and heavy. I lift a fork. It’s gleaming, clearly recently polished. I can see my face in the tines—distorted and eerily calm.
Two wine glasses face each other. They’re hand-painted with cobalt flowers. Five candles run the length of the table. Four are beeswax, their wicks long and neatly trimmed, little thumbprint pools at their tips as if they were tested and then pinched out.
The fifth is wrong. It’s too smooth, too perfect.
I lean in.
The wick is not a wick at all, just a dark nub pressed into one end.
Dynamite. Wrapped in sackcloth stamped with faded letters I don’t read.
My throat tightens.
“Do you see it?” a voice asks from the dark.
I don’t flinch. I turn slowly.
He steps from the shadows.
Chef.
He’s older. The years have hollowed his cheeks, added lines around his mouth. His eyes are the same. Too bright. Too hungry.
“Sit,” he says softly, trailing a finger along the table’s edge. “Please.”
I stay standing. “Where is she?”
He smiles with his mouth, not his eyes. “On her way home.” He draws a phone from his pocket, unlocks it with a casual swipe, and shows me the screen. Grainy footage of her on the bus. The bus I’m sure he’s rigged to do something terrible if I don’t comply.
“Why should I believe you?” I ask.
“Because I wanted your undivided attention,” he says, tucking the phone away. “And because I know you. If I’d kept her, you’d have brought wolves. I prefer my meals quiet.”
The word lands on me with precise cruelty. Meal.
My fingers itch for the object I have hidden.
But no. Not yet.
“What do you want?” I ask.
He steps closer, studying me the way I remember him contemplating a simmering sauce. He doesn’t touch me. Not with his hands. With his eyes, he handles me completely.
“Perfection,” he says finally. “One last meal executed exactly as I imagined it. Beginning, middle, end. Five courses. Five candles for five courses.” He burns me with his gaze and gestures to the garment bag at the bottom of the stairs. “Put it on.” He turns around.
“You’re actually giving me some privacy?” I say.
Then I berate myself. What if he wants to look now? He’ll see what I have strapped to my thigh.
“Let me play out my fantasy,” he says. “You should have arrived in the dress. The perfect dessert.”
“I’m not a course,” I say before I can stop myself.
But he stays turned away, thank God. I scurry into the dress, making sure not to reveal what I’m hiding. The skirt covers everything nicely.
I clear my throat.
He turns around, walks toward me, slides his fingers over my cheek.
I suppress a disgusted shudder.
“You were always so captivating—the first flavor I learned without a recipe,” he murmurs.
“You and your fear, you and your stubbornness. You were like a curse. A captivating curse.” He closes his eyes, breathes deeply.
“Do you remember the pantry? How you shook and still held my gaze? I’ve never forgotten that. I won’t forget you today.”
I let my face be stone. Inside, everything is moving. Belinda on a bus. A bomb on that bus.
I know him. And he knows me. He banked on me walking into the dark for the child I love.
He was right.
“Sit,” he says again, opening his eyes. “We will eat. Then we will discuss dessert.”
I hold his eyes and think of the knife.
Not yet.
I’m going to be exactly what he taught me to be in the kitchen—precise, patient, and lethal.