Chapter 3 Dining with the Beast
Dining with the Beast
Kaz
The garlic clove explodes.
I'm holding it between thumb and forefinger—just holding it—and it ruptures like I've put it in a press. Pulp and juice spray across the cutting board, across my wrist, across the marble counter that now has a hairline crack from where I gripped it ten minutes ago.
"Boss." Thysa's voice from the doorway. "You're scaring the produce."
I don't look up. Reach for another clove. This time I use the flat of the knife, like a person who hasn't spent forty-five years learning to crack bone with his bare hands.
"It's already dead," I say.
"I meant the tomatoes. They look like hostages." She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, the picture of someone thoroughly enjoying a crisis that isn't hers. "You know, most people don't treat dinner prep like hand-to-hand combat."
"Most people aren't trying to make octopus tender in two hours."
"Most people also aren't vibrating with barely suppressed everything while cooking for a woman they fancy."
I set the knife down. Carefully. "I don't fancy her."
"Right. That's why you've checked the perimeter six times in the last hour, updated the security protocols twice, and you're cooking enough food for eight people.
" She picks up a piece of lemon from the counter.
"Also, you ironed a shirt. You've never ironed a shirt. I didn't know you owned an iron."
"I own several irons."
"Weapons don't count, boss."
I section the octopus tentacle with the precision of a male who used to take apart much larger things with much less pleasant outcomes. The knife goes through flesh and stops exactly where I want it to. The cutting board doesn't shift.
The kitchen tells the story of my afternoon: fresh herbs I stripped from the garden with hands that wanted to tear something apart.
Lamb I deboned with quiet, focused efficiency, the kind of meditative violence that used to keep me sane between arena fights.
Figs and honey and bread dough I've been kneading until my shoulders ache, because the alternative is thinking about the assassin who landed on this island four hours ago.
"You're stress-cooking," Thysa says. Not a question. "You only stress-cook when you're trying not to kill something."
"There's an active Syndicate operative on my island."
"There's also a pretty whistleblower in your shower." She grins. "Which one are you stress-cooking about?"
I give her a look that would have made grown fighters in the arena reconsider their life choices. Thysa, who once watched me dislocate a Syndicate enforcer's shoulder and then asked if I wanted tea, is utterly unmoved.
"Both," I admit, because lying to Thysa has never worked, and I'm too tired to try.
"Progress." She pushes off the doorframe and moves into the kitchen, picking up a fig and examining it with professional interest. "So what's the plan? For the operative, I mean. I assume you've already planned the dinner down to which fork she uses."
"Zeno Christopoulos. Professional. Methodical.
He'll search hotels first, then rentals, then private estates.
I've got maybe forty-eight hours before he works his way to us.
" I arrange octopus on the grill pan without looking up.
"I need to keep Edith inside the resort perimeter. If she goes into town, she's exposed."
"And if she wants to go into town?"
"I'll convince her not to."
"With your legendary charm and conversational skills." She bites the fig. "Boss, you said four words to her this afternoon that weren't about plumbing. And one of them was 'fine.'"
"I said more than four words."
"'You deserve beautiful things' doesn't count as normal conversation.
That's the kind of thing people say in perfume ads.
" She licks juice from her thumb. "You're going to have to talk to her tonight.
Like a human. About human things. Ask her questions.
Show interest. If you sit across from her looking like you're solving a differential equation, she's going to think you're a serial killer. "
"I'm not a serial killer."
"You are quite literally a killer. Many times over. In series." She pats my shoulder. "But she doesn't know that, so let's keep it breezy."
"Breezy."
"Casual. Friendly. Not like you're about to propose combat or a blood oath." She's heading for the door now. "I'll set the terrace. You finish brutalizing that innocent seafood. And boss?"
"What."
"Try to eat something. You get weird when you're hungry."
"Weird how?"
"More you." She disappears before I can respond.
By sunset, the terrace is a study in dual purpose.
Edith's chair backs against the stone wall—reinforced, no sightlines from sea or road.
Mine faces outward, clear view of every approach.
Candles positioned to preserve my night vision while casting her face in warm gold.
Wine within my reach rather than hers; if something happens, I need to control the table.
It looks like a scene from a travel magazine. The caldera glowing amber and rose behind us, white stone catching the last light, bougainvillea dripping crimson over the pergola above. Two place settings, linen napkins, crystal that catches the dying sun.
It's a defensive formation dressed in romance.
I'm adjusting the final placement when her footsteps sound on the stone path.
Bare feet; I can tell from the soft pad of skin on warm tile.
She walked fifty meters from the villa without shoes, which means she's relaxed, which means the champagne and the view and the privacy are doing what I need them to do.
Then she rounds the corner and the tactical assessment evaporates.
Blue dress. Simple cotton, skimming her curves in a way that's more devastating than anything designed to cling.
Hair down, still damp at the ends where it curls against her collarbones.
Bare feet, sandals dangling from one hand like an afterthought.
No makeup, or none I can detect, just sun-warm skin and freckles across her shoulders that I didn't notice this afternoon.
Freckles. Stars. She has freckles.
Her scent arrives a second before she does—vanilla and jasmine layered over warm skin and something underneath, something my hindbrain recognizes as specifically, dangerously her.
Different from the shower, when it was soap and water and steam.
Now it's concentrated by the heat of the day, baked into her skin, rising off her body in waves that make my jaw ache.
"Hi." Her smile is uncertain, like she's not sure this is real. "I hope I'm not late? You said sunset, and I wasn't sure if that meant when the sun touches the horizon or—" She stops. Laughs. "Sorry. I'm babbling. This is just..." She gestures at the table, the view, me. "A lot."
"You're not late." My voice comes out rougher than it should. I clear my throat and try to sound like a male who owns a resort instead of one who spent the afternoon fantasizing about the woman now standing in front of him. "You look nice."
Nice. Ninety-two years of vocabulary in six languages and that's what I produce.
"You look pretty nice yourself." Her eyes move down my chest, pause on the collar I left open, travel back up. "Is that a new shirt?"
"It's clean."
"Well, it's very..." She pauses, eyes dancing. "White."
"Thank you?"
"That was a compliment. I think." She moves to the table, and I pull out her chair before conscious thought catches up with muscle memory. "Wow. Kaz, you didn't have to do all this."
"It's no trouble." I pour wine—Assyrtiko, local, the bottle cold enough that condensation beads on the glass. My hands are steadier than they have any right to be. "I like cooking."
"This is more than cooking. This is..." She surveys the spread: grilled octopus with lemon and oregano, slow-roasted lamb with rosemary, bread still warm from the oven, olives and cheese and honey. "This is obscene. In the best way."
"I had time." I sit across from her and position myself with the sea at my back, the path in my peripheral vision, her face centered in my field of view. "I wanted you to have a proper welcome to Santorini."
She picks up her glass. Her fingers wrap around the stem—small hands, practical nails, a callus on her right middle finger from years of holding a pen or gripping a mouse. Not soft hands. Working hands. Hands that have done things.
"Aren't you eating?" she asks.
"I tasted everything while I was cooking." A half-truth. The other half—that my body is running combat hormones and the idea of food makes my stomach clench—stays where it belongs. "Hazard of being the chef."
She takes a bite of octopus and makes a sound that should require a license.
Her eyes close. Her throat works. A drop of olive oil catches the candlelight at the corner of her mouth, and she chases it with her tongue in a motion so unconscious, so unselfconscious, that my hands curl into fists under the table.
"Oh my god." She opens her eyes and stares at me like I've performed a miracle. "This is the best thing I've ever put in my mouth."
The words hang between us. Her cheeks flush when she hears what she said.
"In terms of food," she adds quickly. "Obviously."
"Obviously." I keep my voice even. The effort is considerable.
"How long have you owned this place?"
"Five years."
"And before that?"
"Security work. Corporate contracts mostly."
"That explains the..." She gestures at me. "You have that look. Like you're always scanning for exits."
"Do I?"
"You're doing it right now. Your back isn't to anything. You've got sightlines to—" She follows my gaze, mapping what I'm watching. "The path, the gate, and the kitchen door. Military?"
"Something like that."
She waits for me to elaborate. I don't. She picks up her wine, takes a sip, and lets it go with a small smile that says she's filing the information away rather than forgetting it.
Smart woman. Dangerously smart.
"So." She sets down her glass. "Tell me about Santorini. What should I see?"