Three hours about knives.
***
We cook.
Or more precisely: I cook, and Riley stands beside me, commenting on every move with the analytical precision of a woman who tracks faulty systems for a living.
“You’re cutting the onion wrong.”
“There is no wrong way to cut an onion.”
“There is. The fibers run lengthwise. If you cut across, you destroy the cell structure and it gets mushy.”
I hold the knife still and turn my head toward her. “How do you know that if you can't cook?”
“I have a very good memory for useless knowledge.” She shrugs. “I once watched a three-hour documentary on a Japanese swordsmith.”
“Three hours about knives.”
“It was a Saturday night and I had nothing else to do.”
That sentence hangs in the air between us.
A Saturday night where a twenty-seven-year-old woman watches a documentary on swordsmiths alone because her father forbade her from leaving the house.
It’s funny and devastating at the same time, and Riley seems to feel both, as she clears her throat and reaches for a tomato.
“What should I do?”
“Dice the tomato. About this size.” I show her the scale with my thumb and index finger.
She cuts slowly and with focus, her tongue tucked slightly between her teeth. Her cubes aren't even—some are too big, some too small, one looks like a parallelogram—but she cuts with a devotion as if she were painting a picture.
“Not perfect,” she says, surveying her work.
“Perfect is boring.”
“Spoken like a man who plans out his entire life.”
“Touché.”
We work side by side. I brown the meat next, she stirs the sauce.
Our elbows bump in the cramped kitchen. Once, she reaches for the salt shaker at the same moment I do, and our fingers touch.
She doesn't pull her hand back immediately.
One second. Two. Then she takes the shaker and acts as if nothing happened.
But her breathing has quickened. And so has mine.
We eat at the table. The bolognese is too salty because Riley apparently doesn't know the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of salt. We eat it anyway.
“Next time, less salt,” I say.
“Next time,” she repeats. The words float between us. They imply a future. Continuity. Something that goes beyond tonight. She notices it the same moment I do, as she lowers her gaze and pushes a noodle across her plate.
***
The days develop a sort of routine.
In the mornings, I make coffee. Riley appears between seven and seven-thirty.
Barefoot, T-shirt, sweatpants rolled up.
We drink in silence. Sometimes she reads one of her books; sometimes she stares out the window.
I respect her silence because I know she’s processing things in her head that are shaking the foundations of her world.
In the late mornings, I work on the laptop while she’s in her room. I wait for updates from Griffin or Valentino, but it’s been quiet lately.
At lunch, I cook. Riley comes into the kitchen and sits at the table. Since yesterday, she says thank you when I set the plate down. Quietly, almost inaudibly, but she says it. She’s also stopped insulting me and no longer constantly asks when she can go home.
In the afternoons, I train outside. Riley watches me through the window.
She thinks I don't notice. But I notice everything.
I notice that she watches longer than the day before.
That she retreats to her room afterward and closes the door softly—not with the defiant bang of the first few days, but gently, so no one hears.
In the evenings, we cook together and talk. She has avoided the conversation about her father since last time, and I’ve deliberately not restarted it. Instead, we talk about memories from our pasts.
She tells me she had a telescope as a child and watched the stars every night until her father had her room windows blacked out with curtains because the telescope light interfered with the security cameras.
I tell her I started playing chess as a teenager because it was the only game I could play alone, against myself, and still win.
She laughs at that. Not loudly, not freely, not like that night in Vegas. But it’s a real laugh. A brief flash of something beneath the anger and fear and confusion that refuses to disappear.
“You’re a strange man, Vaughn Mercer,” she says that evening while placing the plates in the sink. This time, she only washes up for three minutes.
“Strangely good or strangely unsettling?”
“Strangely both.” She turns to me. Her green eyes are darker than usual in the glow of the kitchen light. “You kidnapped me and stole my life. And yet, you’re the first person in… I don't know how long, that I’ve sat at a table with to talk in the evenings.”
The sentence hits me in a place I thought I had fortified. Somewhere between my ribs, on the left, where my heart beats—a heart that, after thirty years of revenge, supposedly had no weaknesses left.
“That says more about your life up until now than it does about me,” I answer.
“Maybe.” She hangs the dish towel over the rail next to the stove. “Or maybe it says something about both of us.”
She goes to her room. She doesn't turn around at the door. The door closes softly.
I stand in the kitchen and stare at the dish towel she just hung up. Neat, folded, the edges parallel. Riley Blackstone has started treating this kitchen as her space. She tidies up. She hangs things in places she’s determined. She leaves traces.
This wasn't planned. None of it was planned. Not the cooking, not the conversations, not the laughter. And certainly not the sensation spreading through my chest when she sits at the table in the evening, dicing onions into uneven cubes while tucking her tongue between her teeth.
I go into the living room, retrieve the satellite router from its hiding place, and activate the connection. Griffin’s latest message is waiting.
Blackstone has pulled the investigators. No police. No media. He’s waiting for your call. The man is shrewd—he’s playing for time, hoping you’ll make a mistake.
I type back: I won't.
Then I delete the message, disconnect, and stow everything back behind the blankets.
Before I go to bed, I place a glass of water outside Riley’s door. I do this every night. She’s never mentioned it. But every morning, the glass is empty.
Small gestures. Silent agreements. The language of two people who shouldn't trust each other, yet are slowly, reluctantly, and inevitably doing so anyway.
I lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling. Through the thin walls, I hear Riley turn over on her mattress.
Tomorrow, I will call Blackstone again and initiate the next phase. Tomorrow, I will increase the pressure.
But tonight, I’m not thinking about Blackstone.
Tonight, I’m thinking about Riley’s laughter, still ringing in my ears.