Chapter 15 I Could Show You #2
“Good thing I’m not civilized then.” But she took the glass anyway, the crystal cool against her palm as she sank onto the stool. She took a sip, watching him as he moved to the refrigerator.
He pulled out ingredients with an efficiency that spoke of familiarity—vegetables she recognized and some she didn’t, another package of meat, bottles and jars of things that might have been spices or sauces. Each movement was relaxed, economical.
Shadera watched, suspicion warring with curiosity as he arranged the ingredients on the counter. “What are you doing?”
“Cooking,” he answered without looking at her.
“You?” She couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. “The Executioner knows how to cook?”
“The Executioner has a name,” he replied, pushing the vegetables into the sink and turning on the water. “And yes, I cook.”
The admission surprised her. She took another sip of vodka, let it burn away the questions that wanted to follow.
He reached for something on the counter—a small tablet—and pressed a button.
Music filled the kitchen, nothing like the thundering bass from the clubs in the Boundary.
This was something instrumental, complex, a blend of sound that seemed to wrap around the space.
Then he rolled up his sleeves
The movement shouldn’t have caught her attention, but the vodka made her notice things she usually wouldn’t. The fabric folded back to reveal forearms that were . . . She took another drink. They were just arms. Nothing special about the subtle flex of muscle under skin as he reached for a knife.
The domesticity of the scene was so at odds with everything she knew about him that for a second she wondered if she was dreaming as he began to cut the vegetables.
The knife moved through the items with ease, reducing them to uniform pieces.
He had surgeon’s hands, she thought hazily.
Killer’s hands. She’d seen those hands sign death warrants, had imagined them covered in blood.
But watching them work now, she could almost forget what they had done.
How many necks they’d snapped. How many triggers they’d pulled.
Now they were almost gentle, careful, creating instead of destroying.
She found herself watching his fingers—long and elegant, yet powerful—as they guided the blade.
“Where did you learn to cook?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.
He paused, knife hovering above a red pepper. “My mother taught me the basics. The rest I learned on my own. I find it . . . cathartic.”
“Your mother?” The concept seemed absurd—the Executioner as a child, standing at his mother’s side, learning something as ordinary as cooking.
“Contrary to what you may believe, I wasn’t born with a gun in my hand.” There was a hint of something like amusement in his voice. “I had a childhood. Of sorts.”
She didn’t answer, instead took another slow sip from her glass as she watched him, the alcohol softening the edges of her perception. Her eyes traced the line of his jaw below the mask, the way it flexed as he concentrated.
The muscles in his back moved beneath his shirt as he worked, and she found herself tracking the movement with unconscious interest. His movements were graceful, controlled, a body trained for violence.
He was built like a fighter—not bulky, but carved from consistent training.
She wondered what kind of training produced a body like that.
What kind of pain he’d endured to earn those muscles.
A traitorous part of her mind whispered that he was beautiful, in the way that dangerous things often are—a predator in motion, a storm rolling in, a blade catching the light. She crushed the thought immediately.
Sure, he was objectively attractive, if you liked the tall, brooding, homicidal type. Which she didn’t. Obviously.
This was the man who executed citizens for petty crimes. The man who stood on that platform day after day, ending lives with no emotion. The embodiment of everything she’d spent her life fighting against.
And yet, she couldn’t look away from his hands.
The smell that began filling the kitchen was nothing like her failed attempt. Rich and heavy, layers of flavor she couldn’t identify. Her stomach cramped.
“What are you making?” she asked, needing something to redirect her thoughts.
“Pasta,” he answered, scraping the chopped vegetables into a pan. “Simple but filling. And hard to burn,” he added, the ghost of mockery in his tone.
She should have been offended, should have snapped back with something caustic. Instead, she found herself watching as he added seasoning and adjusted the heat with a confidence she envied.
Her mind drifted to more questions, wondering about the life he lived that she didn’t know. He’d been gone all day. After threatening her this morning, after wrapping his hands around her throat, he’d disappeared.
Shadera lifted her fingers to her neck at the memory, the skin where he had touched tingling.
“Where were you today?” Another question fleeing her lips without permission.
He didn’t look up from the pan. “Does it matter?”
“You threatened to kill me this morning.” She took another sip from the crystal glass. “Then left me locked in here.”
“I needed space.” Simple, honest.
“From me?”
“From the temptation to follow through on the threat.”
The admission should have frightened her, knowing what he was capable of. Instead, she found herself appreciating the honesty. No pretense, no games. Just truth.
Silence fell between them again as she studied his profile. It was a shame, really. A shame that such a pretty face belonged to someone she had to kill. A shame that those beautiful, strong hands had so much blood on them. A shame that—
No. She pulled her thoughts back sharply. The vodka was trying to make him into something human. He was the Executioner. That was all he was.
An hour had passed in strange suspension, the only sounds the sizzle of the pan and the classical music playing softly over the speakers.
Shadera had switched from vodka to water at some point—when, she couldn’t quite remember—but the alcohol still swam through her blood, making everything soft and dangerous.
Callum emerged from the study like he’d been born from shadows, quiet despite his size. “We’re invisible,” he announced, satisfaction threading through his voice.
A small smile crept onto Shadera’s lips. Something about him reminded her of Jameson, how he could sneak into any place with complete silence, his effortless charm and confidence.
Without hesitation, Greyson reached up and pulled off his mask.
The casualness of it stopped Shadera’s breath. The way he just removed it, like taking off a coat, setting it on the counter with no more thought than that. His dark hair was slightly mussed from the mask’s pressure, and he ran a hand through it absently, making it worse.
“You have a death wish,” she snapped, as Callum smirked in her direction.
Greyson ignored her, turning to Callum. “Completely clean?”
“Clean as we can make it.” Callum moved into the kitchen, helping himself to a glass from the cabinet like he lived here.
“Left all the devices in place, of course—moving them would raise suspicion. But I’ve created a loop.
As far as anyone monitoring knows, you’re both having a riveting evening of silence in separate rooms.”
“How?” Shadera asked, professional curiosity piquing. “Heart surveillance systems run interference recognition algorithms that detect synthetic loops.”
Both men turned to look at her, surprise evident in their straightening postures.
“Murderous and curious, I like that,” Callum quipped, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“I’ve got a signal interceptor in the study now.
It catches their feed, splices it to be on a believable loop then feeds it back to them.
So technically, nothing is synthetic. It’s all their footage, just—adjusted. They only see what I want them to see.”
“But the audio signatures would show the splice pattern.” She leaned forward. “Unless you’re using a randomizer to vary the ambient noise when you feed it back through their surveillance.”
Callum blinked at her as Greyson’s mouth dropped slightly open.
“Exactly.” Callum sounded delighted. “I’ve got it cycling through over twelve thousand different background variations. Enough that pattern recognition software won’t flag it.”
“What about thermal imaging? The new Heart surveillance systems usually have heat detection.”
“You know your shit,” Callum replied, moving closer with genuine interest. “Thermal spoofing projectors. Three of them now floating around in the ventilation system, calibrated to project heat signatures that match your normal patterns. Took me about thirty minutes to map your typical movement patterns from the last day’s footage. ”
“Smart.” She found herself almost impressed. “But what about voice? They’re expecting conversation—”
“Ah, that’s the beautiful part.” Callum pulled out a small device from his pocket. “Voice synthesis. I pulled your voices from the recordings, fed it through an AI processor. Now I can make you say anything.”
He pressed a button, and Shadera heard her own voice say, “I’m going to bed. Stay away from me.”
Then Greyson’s, “Gladly.”
The accuracy was unsettling. Perfect pitch, perfect tone.
“How the hell,” Greyson interjected, looking between them, “do you know surveillance technology this well but can’t operate a stove?”
Shadera’s jaw tightened as she forced away the small smile forming from his bewildered tone. “Survival in the Boundary requires different skills than your pampered existence, little heir.”
“Learning to disrupt Heart security systems is survival?” His tone had shifted to genuinely curious.
If he understood what was truly happening in his city, he would realize what a stupid fucking question that was.