Love's Lethal Antidote

Chapter 1 Lumos Isla

Lumos

Isla

It’s one thing to create the perfect poisoned pastry to assassinate the man you’ve been hunting for the last three months.

It’s another to do it on the same night that a Michelin inspector shows up in your restaurant.

Well, it’s not really my restaurant. But it could be, someday. Or something like it. And I take my job very seriously.

Both of them.

“He dropped a fork,” Abigail hisses, holding up the offending piece of cutlery as though it’s a relic from antiquity that deserves our worship. “But I didn’t hear it drop, you know? He set it on the floor.”

Whispers bubble over the clank of plates and the rattle of lids covering pots of boiling water. Excitement and fear seem to float on the scents of garlic and spices, filling the kitchen with vibrating energy.

“He’s dining alone?” Sarah asks, sparing Abigail only a glance as she plates the main course for another table. The only outward sense of her heightened stress is a deepening flush to her cheeks.

“Yeah. Table seven.”

Several of us crane our necks to look over the pass toward the dining room.

Through the space between the stainless-steel shelves, I can see a man with black hair and olive skin sitting by himself, his attention focused on his phone as he spoons his soup.

His black suit is tailored yet simple enough to not stand out, though if his goal is to not be noticed, it’s a lost cause.

High cheekbones, firm jaw. Full lips. Long lashes.

Even in profile, I can tell he’s fucking gorgeous.

“Okay, everyone.” Sarah’s gaze flicks to each of us, her no-nonsense tone slicing through the chatter among the staff. “He might be a Michelin inspector, he might not. But if we want to keep our star, we’re going to give it our all.”

“Yes, Chef,” we say in unison.

And then we get to the grind.

From my dessert station in the kitchen, I steal glances not only at the potential inspector but at the table beyond him—one with eight guests that looks over the Chicago skyline.

The table with my target. Tomasz Nowak.

It’s his birthday, which is delightfully ironic.

And Nowak is a man who loves a good time.

His smile is too bleached. His laugh is too loud.

His suit is too garish. His hobbies include murdering colleagues and buying friends, golf equipment, expensive cars, and women’s temporary affections.

Occasionally also boatloads of cocaine. He enjoys spending all that money he earns selling weapons to my employer’s primary competitor—and let’s be real, any government without many scruples.

Which is most of them. Both personally and professionally, Tomasz Nowak is a pain in the ass.

And soon, he’ll be dead.

I’ve been here at Lumos for the last four months, preparing for this exact moment: when I could get close enough to this motherfucker to kill him, while staying far enough away to not be shot in the face like the last three assassins who’ve tried to get rid of him.

RIP Carl Donnelly. Damn, that guy was fun.

I sign the cross over my chest and scowl down at my choux pastry.

And then I keep my focus on my work.

It’s the second service of the night, and we’re in our groove.

The restaurant is full, just like it is every weekend.

The pressure is always on in a restaurant like Lumos.

Time seems to pass too quickly and yet not fast enough as the tables get through their courses.

But tonight, I focus on the karpatka that will go to Tomasz Nowak.

It’s the same dessert he orders every birthday, a sentimental fixture from his childhood in Poland.

So I take extra care in layering the choux pastry.

With a steady hand, I pipe the words Sto lat!

in dark chocolate onto the rim of his plate.

And most importantly, I sneakily pull the preloaded syringe from my apron pocket and inject the custard with a hemorrhagic poison that will make him bleed from his eyes and kill him within sixty minutes.

My grin stretches. It’s the little details that really make a dessert like this special.

I’m just layering on an embellishment of edible gold foil when there’s a commotion behind me. A plate smashes on the tile floor. A string of curses bites through the air. The sous-chef, Paolo, holds his hand up, blood trickling from a deep slice in his finger to drop across his rolled-up sleeve.

“Shit,” Sarah hisses, taking a rag and pressing it against the wound. Her eyes lock with mine, and she nods to the Uline first aid kit bolted to the wall. “Beth, get the gauze, quick.”

My name’s not Beth, of course, but I respond to it seamlessly, rushing to gather supplies as Sarah barks orders to the line cooks and waitstaff.

I guide Paolo to the sink and clean the wound, bandaging it tightly as the other staff members clean the debris from the floor and scramble to plate new mains.

By the time I return to my station, it’s as though the accident never happened.

Except . . . there’s another thing that seemingly never happened.

My painfully constructed karpatka.

A rising sense of dread climbs my throat as I look to Nowak’s table, where he’s still eating his main course.

“Shit.” I glance around my workstation as though the karpatka might magically appear. But it does not.

I rush to the pass and ring the bell for a server pickup. And then I ring it again. And again and again until Sarah “what the fucks” me into submission.

Abigail appears on the other side of the pass. “All right, jeez, what the—”

“The karpatka. Where the hell is the karpatka? The one with the letters on it.”

“Oh yeah, I took it to table seven.”

“Why?”

Abigail looks at me as though I’ve grown six heads. “Because he ordered karpatka . . . ?”

“But that one wasn’t his!” I whisper-snarl. “It was for that guy.”

I jam a finger toward the table where Tomasz Nowak sits, dodging his gaze as he glances our way. He doesn’t know me, but he’s cagey, especially after multiple thwarted attempts on his life. It won’t take much to arouse suspicion.

My heart drops as my eyes track to the man at table seven, his dessert already half finished.

“I’ve seen you make them before,” Abigail says, picking up a set of mains as she shoots me an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, you have plenty of time to make another one. You’ll be fine.”

She walks away with the meals. But she’s wrong. I won’t be fine.

Because I had only one vial of poison.

And the Michelin inspector is eating it all.