Chapter 5
HARLOW
"Are you getting enough sleep?" Gina stood in the middle of the doorway, her arms crossed under her breasts. One of her eyebrows was slightly higher than the other, her mouth set like she wouldn't accept anything other than a straight answer.
"Are you my mother now?" I went on making sheets of lasagne, carefully placing each on the rack to dry.
"Absolutely not, for so many reasons," she said with a dry laugh. "Including the fact we're about the same age. Medical science can do some interesting things, but that? Not so much."
"Just as well." I added more flour to the pasta dough and went on winding the handle on the pasta maker to move it through. "That would be weird."
"That's an understatement," she said. "I can't help noticing you didn't answer the question."
"Very observant of you," I said dryly. "I could do with a bit more sleep, but I'm fine. Thank you. You don't have to worry about me."
She was right though, I was tired from a late night and the vigorous start to the day. I was going to have to get some rest after the lunch service. If I let myself get too tired, I was going to make a mistake. I couldn't afford that in the kitchen, much less out of it.
She lowered her arms, stepped over to place her hands on my shoulders and lightly hugged my back.
"Of course I don't have to worry about you, but I do anyway. You're like a sister to me. If anything happened to you, I'd be stabby. You know if you ever needed help burying bodies, I'd be right there for you."
"Who's burying bodies?" Erin appeared from the direction of the loading dock, carrying a delivery of fresh vegetables.
"No one is," I said quickly.
If only they knew.
"I was just telling Harlow we care about her," Gina said. "And we're worried she's overworking herself."
"Are we?" Erin placed the box down on the counter. "I mean, of course we are. Definitely."
I smirked at her. "Don't you start. Like I said, I'm fine." I turned around and narrowed my eyes at both of them. "You two work as hard as I do. Is this your way of saying I'm overworking you both?"
Would they get together and gang up on me like that?
Who was I kidding? Of course they would. I'd like to think I was more approachable than that, but maybe I wasn't. After all, I was known to literally get stabby. Not to them, but still…
"I've been thinking about getting some more staff in, I've been too busy to get to it." I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
"That's not what this is about," Gina said. "But we could use more pairs of hands in here. If you need someone to interrogate, um, interview prospective employees, I'm happy to help. I'd try not to scare them away."
"Please don't scare prospective employees away," I said. "I'll start by putting an ad up and we can go from there."
"And get some rest," Gina added on my behalf.
"Yes, Mom," I teased. "Lucky it's Sunday. We can all have a couple of days to rest."
"Don't think I won't be checking up on you." Gina peered out into the sitting area as the bell above the door tinkled. "We've got company." She drew out the last word ominously, but grinned and sashayed out to greet our customers.
"She's right, you know," Erin told me as she started to wash the vegetables. "Those boyfriends of yours keeping you up too late?"
"Maybe they are." I turned back to making the lasagne. "Before that, you would have told me I wasn't getting enough attention."
She laughed. "That's true. Who needs middle ground anyway? I'm happy for you. Have all the orgasms." After a moment she added, "Can I live vicariously through you?"
"Can I stop you?" I placed the last of the lasagne sheets on the rack and started to clean the flour off the counter.
"Now you mention it—" She glanced over at me and grinned.
I flicked a handful of flour in her direction, not getting it within a foot of her. Instead, it sprinkled to the floor. Lucky for me, my knife skills were better than my flour-flicking skills.
She laughed until she realized who was going to be the one to clean that up.
"You suck," she said affectionately.
It was my turn to grin. "I have my moments. I could make a bigger mess if you like?"
"Is now the time to tell you that you have flour all of your face?" She cocked her head at me.
"I do not," I protested.
I glanced at my reflection in the stainless steel backsplash. Sure enough, I had a smear of flour across my forehead and another down my cheek.
Erin giggled. "Told you so."
Being the mature, professional I was, I stuck out my tongue at her before washing my hands in the other sink and wiping my face with a cloth, ignoring her amusement.
"See, this is what I like about working here," she said after a couple of minutes. "Who else would let us joke around the way you do?"
"Good point," I said. "I should run a tighter ship from now on." I waved the cloth in her direction. "No more laughing. No more joking. Not even smiling."
I struggled to hold back a smile of my own.
"Good luck with that," Gina said, pinning an order to the board. "We wouldn't last fifteen minutes."
"That sounds like a challenge." I took a quick look at the orders before starting to put them together.
"If I last an hour without doing any of those things, can I get a pay raise?" Erin asked.
"See?" I said without taking my eyes from Gina. "Erin can't even last a minute without making a joke."
I flicked a quick smile over in her direction to show I was teasing. Both of them were already paid above the usual wage. What Gina got in tips was extra, not a subsidy.
Of course, living in New York City, she needed every cent she got. Erin too. If I could give them more without it looking suspicious, I would. It was better they didn't know how much money I had sitting aside. If they knew, they'd ask all sorts of questions I wasn't going to answer.
Erin pouted, but she was still smiling. She had it good here and she knew it. She could certainly do a lot worse. That reminded me of Granger Fairfield and his associates.
And those photos.
I glanced down at Erin's shoes and froze.
Okay, it had to be a coincidence. Hundreds of people had the same kind of shoes. Thousands. They were as generic as they came.
That didn't change the fact hers looked exactly like the ones in the clear photo.
Before they realized I was staring, I jerked my gaze back up and returned my attention to making customer's lunches. I could come up with an explanation for most things, but why I was interested in her shoes was something I couldn't explain. As it was, my head was spinning.
Was there a chance those photos were of Erin's feet? If they were, what did that mean? Was it a coincidence, or were those photos meant for me? If they were hers, what had they done to her? Was her working here in the first place some kind of set up?
I couldn't bring myself to believe that. Didn't want to believe it. If she knew what I was…
"I heard something interesting," Gina said, breaking through my thoughts.
"You know Wolfgang Taylor-Francis? The businessman?
Apparently he was murdered. The news said the guy that did it cut out his heart.
They're calling him the Heart-Renderer. Because, you know, he rendered the heart out of the guy’s chest." She made a tugging motion with her hand.
"That's disgusting," Erin declared.
If only you knew I have that heart sitting in a jar in my apartment, I thought.
"That's terrible," I said vaguely. "Do they think it was a one-off?”
"Seems a few high-profile men have died recently," Gina said. "They think there might be a serial killer."
I slid a glance toward Erin. If she was here watching me, hearing that might evoke a response from her.
She shrugged. "What's a couple less billionaires?" Her eyes were glazed, thinking back to the life she had before I found her and took her in. She wouldn't mind if a few abusive men met a sticky end.
"Yeah, well, be careful," I told both of them. "They might decide to deviate from killing men like that." Of course, they were safe from me and my men, but we weren't the worst of the worst around town.
We were…the best of the worst.
Gina shuddered. "If that doesn't give a girl nightmares, nothing will. What sort of sicko carves out someone's heart? Killing him is bad enough." She stuck out her tongue in revulsion.
"Depends what they did," Erin said softly. "I mean, some people are assholes."
"That doesn't mean they deserve to die," Gina said. "That's what prison is for."
She took the ready plates I handed her and bustled away to serve them to the waiting customers.
"Sometimes they don't go to prison," Erin said, her voice still low but with an edge of emotion.
"No, they don't," I agreed. "Sounds like this Heart-Renderer is dealing with them." Quickly, I added, "If what they're saying about Wolfgang Taylor-Francis is true. He didn't seem like a good guy."
"You almost sound like you admire this Heart-Renderer guy," Erin said, tilting her head and regarding me.
I did admire him. Archer was smart and believed the same things I did. He was romantic, carving out hearts to give them to me. How could I not like him?
Admittedly, I was a little jealous he'd been given a cool nickname and I hadn't.
Although, I was good at disappearing my kills, and we weren't able to do that with Taylor-Francis. If I had to guess, I'd think the police didn't realize two of us were involved that night.
Otherwise, they would absolutely have given me a cool nickname. Right?
What would it be? If they knew Archer carved the heart out for me, they might call me something like The Collector, or Heart-Taker.
Okay, neither of those were cool. Still, it was better than nothing, right?
"We should get those vegetables put away," I said, seeing her waiting for a response.
"And by we, you mean me." She picked up the cleaned vegetables, gave them a wipe and took them into the fridge to put them away.
I couldn't help my gaze dropping to her shoes when her back was turned. It had to be a coincidence. The only other explanations were too fucked up to consider. I hated not trusting her, but I was going to have to keep an eye on her for the next while.
If she was working for someone else? She might be in meatballs instead of learning how to make them.