Chapter 2 - The Man Who Knew My Mother’s Recipe
Gray did not take me through the lobby.
He took me through Ember Room’s kitchen.
“Where are we going?”
“Service elevator.”
“You own the building?”
“No.”
“You’re walking like you do.”
“I walk like this everywhere.”
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
Dana intercepted us beside the freezer.
“Tess?”
Gray stopped.
Dana stared at him.
He looked even more intimidating under fluorescent kitchen lights.
“She knows?” he asked.
“Enough,” I said.
Dana crossed her arms.
“I know Mercer plans to grab her in the parking lot.”
Gray’s expression hardened.
“You heard that personally?”
“Yes.”
“Names?”
“Clint Voss and Ray Tanner.”
Gray took out his phone.
“Marco.”
A pause.
“Two men. Voss and Tanner. Employee parking garage. Keep them there. No violence unless they force it.”
He ended the call.
Dana blinked.
“That was fast.”
Gray looked at me.
“Move.”
We descended to a private underground level.
A black sedan waited.
Gray opened the rear door.
I stopped.
“No.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“You asked me for help.”
“I didn’t ask to disappear into a mafia boss’s car.”
“Reasonable distinction.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“My house.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It has forty-two cameras, twelve armed security personnel, reinforced gates, and nobody enters without my approval.”
“Still sounds worse.”
Gray looked at me for a long second.
“Your other option is the employee parking lot.”
I got in.
Twenty minutes later, iron gates opened onto a stone house overlooking Lake Michigan.
Inside, Gray led me into a kitchen.
Not an office.
Not a basement.
A kitchen.
“Why are we here?”
He opened a cabinet.
Inside sat an old blue enamel cooking pot.
My knees nearly gave out.
I knew that pot.
A white chip marked one handle.
My mother had owned one exactly like it.
Gray watched my face.
“You recognize it.”
“My mother had that pot.”
“She gave me this one.”
I turned.
“You knew her.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
I calculated quickly.
“I was twelve.”
Gray nodded.
“What was she doing here?”
“Saving my life.”
Silence.
Gray touched the chipped handle.
“I was twenty. My father had been killed. Half the people around me were deciding whether I was worth following or easier to bury.”
He looked at the pot.
“I stopped eating.”
“My mother cooked for you?”
“Your mother told me I was an idiot.”
That sounded like her.
I almost smiled.
“She said starvation was a stupid way to prove masculinity.”
“That definitely sounds like her.”
“For six weeks, she cooked.”
“Why?”
“I never knew.”
Gray opened a drawer.
From the back, he removed an envelope.
On the front was my mother’s handwriting.
FOR GRAY — IF MERCER EVER COMES BACK
My breath caught.
“Mercer?”
Gray nodded.
“Your mother knew Boyd Mercer before either of us did.”
“Give it to me.”
He did.
Inside was a recipe card.
Chicken.
Garlic.
Dill.
Lemon.
Browned butter.
Nothing else.
I stared at him.
“This is a soup recipe.”
“No.”
Gray pointed toward the measurements.
**4 cups stock.
11 peppercorns.
3 garlic cloves.
9 minutes simmering.
27 grams butter.**
“Your mother never measured peppercorns,” he said.
My heart started beating faster.
“No.”
“Did she use numbers for anything else?”
I looked at the card.
Then remembered.
“Books.”
“What?”
“She used to hide money in cookbooks.”
Gray leaned closer.
“She said nobody stole cookbooks.”
“Smart woman.”
“She numbered every recipe.”
We compared the strange measurements.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Gray walked to a locked cabinet and removed an old ledger.
On page twenty-seven was an entry dated seventeen years earlier.
MERCER LOGISTICS.
Below it:
E. HART — witness.
My stomach dropped.
“What did my mother witness?”
Gray looked at me.
“A shipment.”
“What kind?”
“People.”
I stopped breathing.
“Mercer was doing this seventeen years ago?”
“Yes.”
“And my mother knew?”
“She helped me stop one shipment.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“To protect you.”
My phone rang.
Boyd Mercer.
Gray looked at the screen.
“Answer.”
“Are you insane?”
“Yes.”
The phone rang again.
Gray nodded.
“Speaker.”
I answered.
“Tessa.”
Mercer sounded calm.
“Where are you?”
“Safe.”
A pause.
Then:
“You’re with Donovan.”
Gray said nothing.
Mercer laughed softly.
“Ask him about Evelyn.”
My blood went cold.
Mercer continued.
“Ask your new protector why your mother spent the last years of her life running.”
The call ended.
I looked at Gray.
He did not avoid my eyes.
“What did he mean?”
Gray’s answer came quietly.
“Your mother wasn’t hiding from Mercer.”
My throat tightened.
May you like
“She was hiding from someone inside my organization.”
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