36
DANIELA
I stand still and listen,place the garment bag on the floor.No footsteps above.No murmurs.Just the breath of a place abandoned.
Why this place?
And why is Hernando Reyes here?
Maybe Reyes gave Chef a place to stay after he left Chef Charleston’s place because he couldn’t be there while Belinda had a sleepover.Maybe they knew each other from my father’s house in Colombia.
Or maybe it’s all just a fucked-up coincidence.
I walk back up the stairs.
One step.Another.
I count without meaning to.Eight, ten, twelve, thirteen steps.My heart taps time against my ribs.
At the bottom, I finally let my eyes adjust to the darkness.Concrete floor, low ceiling with exposed joists, a single square window near the far corner chalked over with grime.
And in the middle of the floor…
A table.
I move closer.
It’s not just a table.
A white cloth falls to the floor in perfect, heavy drape, the fabric embroidered in an old-world pattern—tiny climbing vines and a border of interlocking blossoms.I know the motif instantly.It’s the same as the bedsheets Diego Vega gave me.I wore it once, unintentionally, when Vega wrapped me in it after.The muscle in my jaw ticks.The threadwork is identical.
Two plates sit side by side, bone china edged with a hairline of gold.The silver beside them is old and heavy.I lift a fork.It’s gleaming, clearly recently polished.I can see my face in the tines—distorted and eerily calm.
Two wine glasses face each other.They’re hand-painted with cobalt flowers.Five candles run the length of the table.Four are beeswax, their wicks long and neatly trimmed, little thumbprint pools at their tips as if they were tested and then pinched out.
The fifth is wrong.It’s too smooth, too perfect.
I lean in.
The wick is not a wick at all, just a dark nub pressed into one end.
Dynamite.Wrapped in sackcloth stamped with faded letters I don’t read.
My throat tightens.
“Do you see it?”a voice asks from the dark.
I don’t flinch.I turn slowly.
He steps from the shadows.
Chef.
He’s older.The years have hollowed his cheeks, added lines around his mouth.His eyes are the same.Too bright.Too hungry.
“Sit,” he says softly, trailing a finger along the table’s edge.“Please.”
I stay standing.“Where is she?”
