Page 43 of The Reaper
Salted fig butter at the base. Goat’s milk panna cotta, just barely set. Shaved ramp petals on top. I hit it with citrus zest and finished with a brushstroke of duck fat along the rim.
It was strange. Unexpected.
I wanted it to make someone pause.
I grabbed a spoon and tasted. It needed something—acid, maybe. Or a whisper of heat.
I opened the spice cabinet, brushing past cumin and fennel until I found it: Aleppo pepper.
One pinch. No more.
I tried again.
Better.
I jotted a note beside the dish:startle, don’t shock. wake the palate slowly. seduce, then slap.
I laughed under my breath.
It was perverse, really—the way this work consumed me. The way I’d let it shape every hour of my life. But it was the only thing that made me feel like me.
The candle burned lower.
I plated again.
And again.
The dishes weren’t for the menu. Not yet. Maybe never. They were for me. For the Guide. For whoever had written that note. For the parts of me that still believed in magic.
Sometime after five, the birds started their early chorus. I could hear them outside the window, chirping into the indigo sky. The city hadn’t stirred yet, but the harbor would be stirring soon. Boats creaking. Water lapping. Engines roaring to life.
I rubbed the heel of my palm against my sternum, trying to soothe the ache there. It wasn’t pain. Not exactly. It was need. Hunger. The kind that didn’t go away with food or sleep or touch.
The kind you build empires around.
My notebook was nearly full. The last page was curled at the corner, stained with a drop of sauce I hadn’t noticed. I flipped it and stared at the blank back cover like it could offer a sign.
Nothing came.
Just the burn in my chest.
The craving for more.
And the memory of a man who didn’t flinch.
Caleb.
His name slid into my thoughts uninvited, but not unwelcome. Just there—like it had been waiting, like it had always been part of the mix.
I closed my eyes, pressing the tips of my fingers to the edge of the counter.
God, last night.
The way he’d looked at me. Like he wasn’t asking permission, but offering the illusion of it, anyway. Like I was prey—but revered, not hunted. Like he knew exactly what to do with a woman like me and wasn’t the least bit intimidated by what that required.
Most men flinched. Eventually. They got excited, sure. Enthralled, even. I’d been called intimidating more times than I could count, usually in bed or in arguments or right after I’d rejected some half-baked idea they thought would make the restaurant “trendier.”
But Caleb?
