Chapter 6 - The Salt of the Cellar
The estate’s industrial kitchen was situated deep inside the stone foundations of the manor house.
Thick vaulted arches of granite supported the ceiling, keeping the temperature cool and damp.
A massive stainless-steel preparation table ran down the center of the flagstone floor.
Gabriel locked the heavy iron-reinforced door behind us, sliding three brass bolts into their sockets.
“Nobody enters this room except you, me, and my personal driver, Marco,” Gabriel said, turning to face me.
His tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, exposing the corded tension in his throat.
“Vincent controls half the staff on the domestic payroll,” Gabriel continued, his voice echoing against the stone walls.
“The head chef took an unscheduled vacation to Florida three days ago, leaving two of Vincent’s cousins in charge of the pantry.”
“Then your father has been eating poison in small doses for weeks,” I said, stepping toward the dry-storage racks.
The shelves were lined with imported canned tomatoes, sacks of arborio rice, and gallon tins of cold-pressed oils.
I pulled down a five-pound terracotta crock of coarse Sicilian sea salt and popped the cork lid.
I scooped a handful into my palm and brought it close to my nose.
The scent was clean, sharp, and mineral, carrying the unmistakable tang of Mediterranean seawater.
“This salt is pure,” I murmured, letting the coarse crystals fall through my fingers back into the crock.
I moved down the row to the glass bottles of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.
I uncapped the first bottle and tilted it toward the fluorescent work light.
The green hue was cloudy and thick, exactly as stone-milled winter harvest oil should appear.
I dipped the tip of my clean pinky finger into the oil and touched it to the tip of my tongue.
It bloomed with the sharp, peppery sting that catches in the back of your throat.
“The oil is untouched,” I said, wiping my mouth with a paper towel.
Gabriel watched my movements with a quiet, unsettling concentration.
“Where did a twenty-four-year-old girl from Hell’s Kitchen learn to test rations like an ancient Roman taster?” Gabriel asked.
His voice was softer now, stripped of the cold authority he used with his cousins and enforcers.
“My father died of a lung hemorrhage in an auto repair shop when I was eleven,” I answered without turning around.
“My mother took three cleaning jobs in commercial office towers and worked until her heart stopped on the subway platform.”
“When Leo was six, he ate rat poison that a slum landlord had scattered under the kitchen sink without telling us.”
“I spent four days in the emergency room watching the doctors pump charcoal into his stomach.”
“After that, I smelled every piece of bread and every glass of tap water before I let my brother put it in his mouth.”
Gabriel stood motionless in the shadow of the stone archway, his eyes dark with an unreadable emotion.
“And Bernardo?” Gabriel asked quietly.
“Bernardo saw me scrubbing the hallway floor when I was sixteen,” I said, inspecting a braid of dried garlic bulbs.
“He asked me why I looked at the world like everyone owed me a funeral.”
“I told him the world already took everything my family had, and I was just waiting for the invoice.”
“He laughed, threw me an apple, and told me never to eat anything offered by a man wearing gold jewelry.”
Gabriel looked down at the gold signet ring on his right hand, the heavy crest of the Rossi family etched into the surface.
A faint, rueful smirk crossed his mouth, but it vanished as his encrypted smartphone vibrated against his hip.
Gabriel drew the phone from his coat pocket and tapped the screen with his thumb.
As he read the message, the subtle softness in his expression died instantly.
His jaw locked with enough force that I could hear the grinding of his teeth across the quiet kitchen.
“What is it?” I asked, my instincts prickling with sudden alarm.
Gabriel looked up from the glowing screen, his grey eyes turning to frozen glass.
“Vincent just ordered two of his suburban associates to leave Queens,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
“Where are they going?” I demanded, taking a step toward him.
Gabriel did not answer immediately, but the pity in his gaze struck me harder than any fist.
May you like
“Mount Sinai Hospital,” Gabriel said.
“Pediatric respiratory wing, fourth floor.”
