Page 2

Fifteen years had passed since that night. Memories have come and gone, but this one stayed as vivid as the day it happened. I was still haunted by the deathly stare of the masked man who discovered me in that closet.

The man I should kill. The man who chose to save me.

CHAPTER ONE

Sofia

I pulled my apron over my head and threw it onto the stainless-steel counter. My whole body hurt after another night of serving. It was the good kind of soreness, the one that came from getting through a rush. The kitchen looked like a storm had passed through it. Pots and pans were on every surface. Piles of plates were next to the sink and the smell of garlic and butter was strong in the air.

“Ben,” I said without looking up, “the next time you leave a pan of oil on the stove I’m making you tell the fire department why my kitchen almost caught on fire.”

“I’m really sorry. I only looked away for a second.”

“A second is all it takes.”

The guy looked like he wanted to explode. He was twenty, just out of culinary school, and thought every mistake meant the end of his job. I smiled. I used to be like him.

“You fixed it before anyone got hurt. You admitted your mistake. Learn from it. Don’t do it again.”

He nodded so much that I almost smiled. “Yes, Chef.”

The energy in the kitchen eased as everyone went back to cleaning their stations. The rush was finally over. The usual sounds of closing replaced the shouting from earlier. Water flowed into sinks, dishes hit each other, and someone in the back sang along to a song playing quietly through the speakers.

I loved this part of the night as much as the rush. Most people saw a kitchen and felt stressed. I saw order in the mess. Every problem had a fix if you stayed calm enough to find it. A sauce could be made again. A steak could be cooked again. A bad dessert could be replaced before it reached a customer. The kitchen made sense in a way the rest of life never did. Real life didn’t have recipes, and it didn’t tell you how long to wait or what to do when things went wrong.

“Are you done making my staff nervous?”

I turned to see Nora standing in the kitchen doorway with a smile. She’d already finished balancing the register and was putting her keys in her bag.

“I wasn’t making them nervous,” I said. “I was teaching them. If that’s making them nervous, well, that’s life.”

Ben looked between us and wisely stayed out of it.

Nora laughed. “That’s a nice way to say it.”

“He almost started a fire.”

“I heard.”

She looked around the kitchen, happy that everyone had made it through another night without burning the café down.

“You all did great tonight,” she said, speaking louder so the others could hear. “Go home and rest. We’ll do it again tomorrow.”

A chorus of goodbyes came as everyone grabbed their coats and headed toward the back door. I washed my hands one time before turning off the lights at my station. No matter how much soap I used, my fingers still smelled of herbs. I’d stopped trying to get that smell off years ago. Outside, rain hit the pavement steadily as I locked the kitchen door behind me and pulled my hood over my head.

I had a small apartment above an old laundry place. It wasn’t much to look at, but after moving from one foster home to another as a kid, having a place that was mine felt like a luxury I never took for granted. The streets were quiet and clean from the rain, and for the time all day everything around me was still.

I’d just walked two blocks from Nora’s Café when my phone started ringing. I took it out and smiled when I saw Leigh’s name on the screen.

“Please tell me you’re not calling because you miss me.”

“I definitely miss you,” Leigh said. “Unfortunately, I also have nothing to do with my life right now.”

I laughed as I stepped around a puddle. “Where are you again?”

“Somewhere in Europe, but I can’t even read the signs that say toilet.”

I laughed, imagining her confused expression as she tried to read the sign.