Chapter 5 - THE SLIP OF THE MASK
Carmine didn't look at Benny. He kept his dark, intense gaze locked onto Nell’s hazel eyes, his hand remaining flat against the white linen.
"Seven minutes?" Carmine repeated, his voice dropping an octave, becoming impossibly soft, like velvet wrapped around cold steel.
"Yes, sir," Nell said, her voice remaining steady, though her heart gave a sudden, violent thud against her ribs.
"Where did you learn to cook like that, Miss Brisco?" Carmine asked.
For the first time in three years, Nell’s rigid, impenetrable composure faltered.
A faint, fraction-of-a-second twitch passed over her left eyelid. Her chest hitched slightly as the air in her lungs suddenly felt thin. She realized, with a cold spike of panic running down her spine, what she had just done. She had recited the exact, proprietary technique used by the head chef of the famous L’Etoile du Sud—a legendary French Quarter restaurant that had belonged to the rival Vane family before it was burned to the ground ten years ago during the bloodiest night of the New Orleans mob wars.
A restaurant where her father had been the master pastry chef.
Nell slowly lowered her gloved hands into her lap beneath the edge of the table, wrapping her fingers around one another to hide the sudden, subtle tremble in her fingertips.
"My mother taught me," Nell lied, her voice dropping lower, devoid of its earlier confidence.
Carmine didn't blink. He leaned an inch closer, the faint scent of his expensive cedarwood cologne and rich tobacco drifting across the short space between them.
"Your mother taught you to count seven minutes?" Carmine asked softly. "In a small farmhouse in Houma?"
Nell knew she was trapped. The air in the room felt thick enough to choke on. The fourteen guests were staring at her, sensing the sudden shift from an eccentric dinner curiosity to a deadly, high-stakes interrogation.
Without saying another word, Nell abruptly pushed her chair back. The heavy mahogany legs scraped sharply against the floorboards, cutting through the silence like a blade.
May you like
She stood up quickly, reaching out with both hands to grab her silver tray from the marble sideboard behind her.
"Excuse me, sir," Nell stammered softly, keeping her eyes glued to the carpet. "I have duties to attend to in the kitchen."
