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Where I can be that excited seventeen-year-old girl again who got accepted into the mediocre culinary academy. Something they offered to foster kids and something most turned down, but to me, it seemed like the best fucking day.
And it was. It was the first day of my career, which skyrocketed after that. On my very first day there, one of the instructors saw the potential I had after I had mixed salmon and candy in one dish. I think it was something I’ve seen done on one of those shows mother used to watch when I was a kid, so when we were given the freedom to create one dish to show what we know, I decided to give it a try.
My instructor, Philipa Smith, immediately signed me up for the upcoming cooking show that one of her old friends was working on. Three months later, I was the youngest female chefto win such a competition. I also learned a shit ton from the best chefs in the world at that point and was sent to study in Paris under Guy Savoy.
My life took wild turns at different steps, and I had a few setbacks, but I prowled forward, clenching my teeth, and clawed my way to the top. This job, this career, was the only thing keeping me afloat, and I wasn’t going to give it up for nothing.
I turned my love for weird combinations into something different. I played with chemistry when I didn’t know much about it apart from what I thought myself. I had a GED since my foster family enrolled me in school again, but I wasn’t learning extra stuff, just the bare minimum, yet it never stopped me. I was hungry for this, for a new life.
I watched and learned until I was so good there was no one left to teach me. Within a few years, I won every culinary competition there was in all of Europe and North America. I fought so many egotistical males, I could stuff a restaurant full of them. I fought over every discriminatory comment and belittling words.
I became Kira fucking Clark.
I left my demons behind, drowned in the ocean, and became something my mother always feared.
I became free. Independent. Strong. Confident. Impenetrable.
And I kept it up until last night.
Or maybe it was until I made the mistake of hiring Vassar Levidis in the first place.
Because now, standing all alone in the darkness of the kitchen I fought tooth and nail for, I feel weak. I feel off-centered. Seeing a kid shouldn’t make me feel like that. I know better. I’ve taught myself better. Trained myself. But seeing his kid…it broke right through all that thick skin.
Because for the first time in a decade, I felt my loss.
I felt it to the bottom of my heartless soul.
And what do I do when I feel? I cook. I create. I snuff out any trace of emotion with routine. And I put as much distance between me and him as I possibly can. Fuck it, I’ll take Steven’s bullshit over feeling any day.
Song: Winona Oak, Robin Schulz – Oxygen
Well, I am one big, fat liar. Because a new menu, cut and scraped hands, and hours of solitude later, my blood-pumping muscle squeezes in pain as soon as Vassar Levidis steps inside the building.
I haven’t even seen the man yet, but I feel his presence. I freakingfeel it.
I look at the clock, it’s too early. He shouldn’t be here. Not yet. Not when I am being all feely over here. Not when my armor is lying around over an empty chair in my office. But before I can run away—which is something I haven’t done in a long time—he steps inside. His deep brown eyes drilling into me right away.
“We need to talk,” he says but doesn’t approach me from the doorway.
“Regarding?” I try my best to act as if everything inside of me isn’t dying right now. As if I can’t still see his little girl standing in that shitty apartment with her blanket clenched tightly in her tiny hands.
“Are you kidding me right now, Kira?” My impenetrable Sous-chef gives up, spilling all of his real emotion right over me as his hands fly up. “How about you showing up last night. Hell, we can even talk about you being a complete mute the whole day yesterday and then acting like a raging bitch. Or maybe something more fun, like the fact that I just gotevicted from my apartment!”
“You will find something else. That place was a walking health code violation anyway. I did you a favor, really. So, I don’t see a problem.” That’s good, Kira. Keep this up. Stay detached. I drop the cloth I was using to clean up the prep table with and start walking toward my office. Away from him.
But Vassar follows me. I hear the heavy thud of his steps, the angry breaths leaving his lungs, and that death glare he is sending my way. He reaches me in mere seconds, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me around so we are face to face. “A favor? Are you delusional?”
Well, now that you ask, I think I might be…
“No. You will call and undo whatever you have done,” he spits out, pointing an angry finger at me.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Vassar tips his head back as the most humorless laugh bubbles out of him. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? I get that you don’t care about me or my sister, but what in the world did my daughter do to you?”
