He smiles with his mouth, not his eyes.“On her way home.”He draws a phone from his pocket, unlocks it with a casual swipe, and shows me the screen.Grainy footage of her on the bus.The bus I’m sure he’s rigged to do something terrible if I don’t comply.
“Why should I believe you?”I ask.
“Because I wanted your undivided attention,” he says, tucking the phone away.“And because I know you.If I’d kept her, you’d have brought wolves.I prefer my meals quiet.”
The word lands on me with precise cruelty.Meal.
My fingers itch for the object I have hidden.
But no.Not yet.
“What do you want?”I ask.
He steps closer, studying me the way I remember him contemplating a simmering sauce.He doesn’t touch me.Not with his hands.With his eyes, he handles me completely.
“Perfection,” he says finally.“One last meal executed exactly as I imagined it.Beginning, middle, end.Five courses.Five candles for five courses.”He burns me with his gaze and gestures to the garment bag at the bottom of the stairs.“Put it on.”He turns around.
“You’re actually giving me some privacy?”I say.
Then I berate myself.What if he wants to look now?He’ll see what I have strapped to my thigh.
“Let me play out my fantasy,” he says.“You should have arrived in the dress.The perfect dessert.”
“I’m not a course,” I say before I can stop myself.
But he stays turned away, thank God.I scurry into the dress, making sure not to reveal what I’m hiding.The skirt covers everything nicely.
I clear my throat.
He turns around, walks toward me, slides his fingers over my cheek.
I suppress a disgusted shudder.
“You were always so captivating—the first flavor I learned without a recipe,” he murmurs.“You and your fear, you and your stubbornness.You were like a curse.A captivating curse.”He closes his eyes, breathes deeply.“Do you remember the pantry?How you shook and still held my gaze?I’ve never forgotten that.I won’t forget you today.”
I let my face be stone.Inside, everything is moving.Belinda on a bus.A bomb on that bus.
I know him.And he knows me.He banked on me walking into the dark for the child I love.
He was right.
“Sit,” he says again, opening his eyes.“We will eat.Then we will discuss dessert.”
I hold his eyes and think of the knife.
Not yet.
I’m going to be exactly what he taught me to be in the kitchen—precise, patient, and lethal.
