Chapter 15 I Could Show You
Chapter fifteen
I Could Show You
The vodka had seemed like such a good idea three hours ago.
Now, as black smoke billowed from the oven and something that might have once been steak sizzled angrily in a pan, Shadera was beginning to reconsider.
The kitchen of Greyson’s apartment swam before her eyes, all gleaming surfaces and complicated appliances with holographic displays.
She grabbed the oven door, yanking it open. A wall of smoke hit her face, acrid and choking. Whatever she’d shoved in there—bread? She thought it had been bread—was now a blackened lump that might have been useful as a weapon but certainly wasn’t food anymore.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she hissed, stumbling backward over her own feet. The room tilted, reminding her that she’d finished most of the bottle. Good vodka, too. The kind they’d kill for back home.
Her stomach cramped with hunger. Days of barely eating had left her hollow, and the vodka only sharpened that emptiness. She grabbed the bottle from the counter and took another pull as smoke saturated the room. The burn was familiar, comforting. Unlike everything else in this glass prison.
The meat wasn’t cooking right. Parts were black, parts still raw. She turned the flame higher, reasoning that more heat meant faster cooking. The oil in the pan began to bubble. Then to smoke. Fire erupted from the pan. Orange tongues licked upward, catching the oil she’d poured too liberally.
“Fuck.” The word came out slurred, frantic.
She spun toward the sink, her movements loose and uncoordinated, grabbing the first thing she found—a pitcher of water.
The fire alarm started shrieking, the sound drilling into her skull.
The flames were higher now, licking at the range hood.
She raised the pitcher just as the front door exploded open.
Greyson stood in the entryway for a fraction of a second, taking in the scene—the inferno on his stove, the smoke pouring from his oven, and her standing in the middle of it all with a pitcher of water and what she imagined was a spectacularly guilty expression.
“Stop!” He moved faster than her drunk eyes could properly track, shoving her out of the way. “Not water on a grease fire, you fucking—”
The pitcher in her hand went flying as she fell backward, crashing to the floor as water rained down on her. The pitcher shattered as it met the ground beside her, sending shards of glass to her uncovered legs.
Shadera hissed as a piece of broken glass lodged itself into her calf and Greyson barked an order to whoever had entered the apartment with him.
The man was already moving, throwing open every window he could reach and cracking the door to the living room balcony.
Greyson had already tamed the fire, slamming the lid over the flames as the remaining black smoke billowed out of the now open airways.
Greyson turned to take a step toward her, his eyes hard. Glass crunched under his boots in the first second, and in the next he was slipping on the water slicked floor, plummeting toward her. She scrambled backward, but her drunken limbs didn’t move fast enough.
He caught himself before his body crushed hers, his bare palms meeting glass of either side of her head.
A small, pained groan slipped through his clenched teeth as his mask reflected her face back at her—soot streaked, eyes wide with shock and vodka.
She could feel his heart hammering through his chest where it pressed against hers.
“What the fuck were you doing?” The words came out arctic, each one perfectly placed to make her feel like a child being scolded.
Shadera’s throat worked as she swallowed. The proximity, his warm body pressed against her sent heat, and warning signals through her intoxicated nerve endings.
“I was hungry,” she answered, pushing onto her elbows. The movement closed the small distance between them. Greyson studied her, his eyes boring into hers, and for one single heartbeat they dropped to her lips before he shoved himself to his feet.
He didn’t offer her a hand to help her up, just strode to the stove and snatched the pan off its surface. She watched him from the ground as he made his way to the trash chute by the fridge, and shoved the pan down it. Shadera scoffed as she rolled to her side and pushed herself from the floor.
He’d probably never washed a dish in his fucking life.
“You nearly burned down my apartment because you were hungry?” Greyson’s voice was climbing now, incredulity breaking through the cold fury. “There’s a comms system for a reason. Chapman would have—”
“I don’t support slavery,” Shadera cut him off, gripping the corner of the island as the room swayed.
“Slavery?” Greyson snapped as his eyes locked back on to hers. “Chapman is—”
“I’m Callum.” His voice cut through the tension and both their heads turned toward him. He stood by the window, having shed his suit jacket at some point. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms marked with tattoos and old scars Shadera’s trained eye recognized as defensive wounds.
He moved toward them casually, stopping just outside striking distance—a man who knew how to navigate violence without inviting it. His mask was copper and gold, more ornate than Greyson’s austere obsidian.
Callum inclined his head to the side. “Long-time friend of our brooding Executioner here.”
Greyson shot him an annoyed glance before taking a deep breath and letting his shoulders relax by a fraction. “He’s here to do some work on the locks.” He nodded toward the kitchen island.
Shadera followed his gaze, noting the surveillance scanner he had used her first night sitting on the edge. Understanding clicked into place. Not locks. The surveillance devices.
She studied Callum with new interest, her drunk mind working to categorize him. Heart elite, obviously, but something else too. The way he moved, the scars, the casual comfort with crises.
“What do you do?” she asked, hearing the slight slur in her words. “Murder people too?”
Callum’s laugh was genuine, warm in a way that nothing in the Heart should be.
“No, I have people for that.” The honesty of it, delivered with such casual charm, made her blink.
“I do many things. Run the Entertainment District. Procure things that need procuring. Currently, I’m helping you two lovebirds. ”
Shadera nearly gagged at the word as he winked at Greyson who looked like he might murder him right there in the kitchen.
“The study?” Greyson ground out.
“The study,” Callum confirmed, with a mischievous glint in his eye as he turned back to Shadera. “Try not to burn anything else down while I work.”
Shadera didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling at himself behind the mask as he disappeared off into some corner of the apartment, leaving them alone with the mess.
The kitchen still reeked of smoke as Shadera leaned against the counter and pulled the jagged piece of glass from her leg then tossed it onto the counter. She let her eyes wander to Greyson, watching him survey the damage with those cold blue eyes.
“How drunk are you?” He didn’t look at her when he asked, just started gathering the broken remains of the pitcher from the floor.
“Wouldn’t mind being drunker.” She reached for the vodka bottle, but he moved it away from her before her fingers could hook around the neck.
“You should have called Chapman.” His voice carried that particular tone that made her want to throat punch him. “That’s what he’s here for.”
“Like I said, just because I’m currently a prisoner here does not mean I’ll add to your workers’ suffering.” The words came out just as she intended, sharp and accusatory.
Greyson stopped moving for one second then turned to fully face her. They stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island now, the granite between them like a battle line.
“Chapman isn’t a slave,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s paid well. Very well. He’s from the Cardinal, has family there. He’s been with me for ten years now, by choice.”
Shadera scoffed, the sound ugly in her throat. “Right. Because someone from the Cardinal has so many choices working for the Heart’s Executioner.”
Greyson’s jaw shifted, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. “He can leave whenever he wants. I’ve offered to help him relocate three times. He stays because—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “Why am I explaining this to you?”
“Because you’re trying to pretend you’re not a monster,” she said, with a mock pout and sarcasm lacing every word. “Good help must be hard to find when you murder children for a living.”
His hands flattened against the granite, and she watched the tendons in his forearms go taut. For a moment, she thought he might come around the island, might wrap those hands around her throat again. Part of her wanted him to. Fighting was easier than talking.
“Can you cook?” The question came out of nowhere, his tone shifting to something almost curious.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Can you cook?”
The vulnerability hit her before she could stop it, cutting through the vodka haze like cold water. Her shoulders went rigid, defensive. “No.”
He waited, those eyes steady on her face.
“In the Boundary, we don’t—” She hated the way her voice cracked. “Food comes in cans. Packages. Already made. We don’t have fresh anything. Don’t have fancy stoves with temperature controls and timers and—” She gestured vaguely at the kitchen. “We don’t have any of this.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. Not pity—she would have hit him for pity. Something else. Understanding, maybe, though that seemed impossible from someone who’d never known hunger.
“Sit,” he said.
“I don’t take orders from—”
“Just fucking sit, Shadera.” It was softer this time, tired, but still a command. He pulled a crystal glass from a cabinet, set it on the island between them. Then he retrieved the vodka, pouring two fingers into the glass. “Civilized people use glasses.”