Taste of the Dark - A Mafia Romance

ELIANA

a·muse-bouche: /əˌmo͞ozˈbo͞oSH/: noun

1: a small item of food served as an appetizer or teaser before a meal.

2: an unexpected little taste that leaves you hungry for much, much more.

If I'm gonna have the worst day of my life, I would've appreciated at least a little heads-up. The universe should have the decency to warn you when bad shit is coming, you know? It wouldn't be hard. A little heads-up text from the cosmos. Maybe a fortune cookie that says, Buckle up, buttercup, because tomorrow's going to kick you right in the hoo-ha.

But no. Nothing.

Instead, I wake up at 5:45 A.M. to an alarm whose noise I hate with every fiber of my being. I swing my legs out of bed with my usual Monday morning enthusiasm (which is to say, none whatsoever) and promptly trip over my laptop charger. It sends me careening face-first into my dresser with a very unladylike grunt.

Things go downhill from there.

It's a gray day, wet and bitter and unforgiving the way only Chicago in February can be. A UPS truck splashes me with a cold puddle of street juice. My coffee shop is out of caramel syrup for my latte. I stub my toe on the staircase leading into my optometrist's office, and then when I get into my appointment, Dr. Haggerty tells me something I never, ever wanted to hear.

In ninety days or so, you're going to be blind.

Oh, yeah.

That.

That actually happened.

It's comical, isn't it? It's ludicrous-the adjective, not the rapper. It's straight-up outrageous for someone to be able to look you in the eyes and say that.

You have ninety days left to enjoy sunsets and pretty flowers and goofy Western movies.

You have ninety days left to memorize the faces of your loved ones and the happy smile of a stranger's baby on the L.

You have ninety days to gaze at everything you've ever cherished, before it all gets taken away from you by a genetic disease that you cannot stop and everything goes black forever.

But he did say that. Dr. Haggerty looked me right in my eyes, in the eyes that have been failing me little by little for a very long time and are soon to be failing me a whole lot more in a very short time, and he said, I'm sorry, Eliana, but there's nothing I can do.

I suggest you make the most of the time you have left.

Impossible.

Preposterous.

But real.

The rest of the day goes by in a surreal daze. I'm like a robot. An emotionless, unfeeling robot. So when Kyle, my least favorite coworker, sends a cryptically worded mass email implying that it's my fault that some requested documents were late, why should I care? When the elevator is down for maintenance and I have to walk up seventeen flights of stairs after my lunch break, why should I be bothered? When Kyle's industrial-political backstabbing means that I have to stay late to compile a report that he should've compiled weeks ago, why would it matter to me?

I didn't care.

I wasn't bothered.

It.

Does.

Not.

Matter.

Hell, I don't even have the energy to translate Screw you, Kyle into corporate-ese. As 5 P.M. strikes, I just sigh and watch everyone else file out of the office while I stay chained to my desk.

Now, with the sun long gone beneath the surface of Lake Michigan, I sit alone in the twentieth-floor offices of Hale Hospitality, bathed in the cold glow of my computer monitor.

My eyeballs hurt. That normally wouldn't feel like a five-alarm fire-after all, I've been nostrils-deep in a spreadsheet all day-but with this morning's bombshell, every single floater and blink is a disaster in the making. I can't help but panic.

Is this it? Is this when the lights go out?

I grit my teeth and send the report to the printer at the far end of the floor. Then, while I wait for it to print, I minimize the spreadsheet and open up a new tab.

Leber congenital amaurosis-that's what Dr. Haggerty called it. "It's extraordinarily rare for it to manifest this late," he said. "You're actually quite the medical anomaly."

Great. Just what every twenty-seven-year-old wants to hear. Hey, at least I am special.

The office is tomb-quiet. Everyone else, all those happy normies, have gone home to their normal lives with their normal problems and their normally functioning retinas.

Twenty floors below me, downtown Chicago goes about its Thursday night business. But up here, it is just me, the hum of the HVAC system, and the weight of my impending doom.

I push back from my desk. Kyle's stupid report can wait. Googling the gruesome particularities of my future can wait. It can all wait, can't it? In the grand scheme of things, does any of this matter?

Standing up, I close my eyes.

The darkness is immediate and absolute. My heart rate kicks up a notch, but I force myself to keep them shut. If this is going to be my reality in T-minus ninety days, I might as well start practicing now.

Baby steps first. I know this office like the back of my hand-or at least, I think I do. Three steps forward ought to put me at the edge of my cubicle. I shuffle forward, hands extended like a zombie in a B-movie, and immediately bang my hip on the corner of my desk.

"Okay, correction: two steps forward, not three."

The sound of my scared, nasally voice makes me cringe. I am talking to myself in an empty office while playing blind woman's bluff.

If this isn't rock bottom, it's at least basement-adjacent.

I try again. This time, I successfully navigate out of my cubicle and into the main hallway. My bruised hip is very grateful.

Ten steps to the break room. I count them out, running my fingers along the wall for guidance. The texture changes from painted drywall to the smooth surface of the glass partition⁠-

"Shit!"

I accidentally kick a waiting bench outside a VP's office, in the exact same spot I stubbed my toe at Dr. Haggerty's this morning. The pain makes me want to quit. It'd be so nice to just assume the fetal position on the ground and cry 'til the cows come home.

But I do not quit, or cry, or tuck my head between my legs like a frightened little baby.

I keep going.

Because that's what Eliana Hunter does. She keeps going-when her dad abandons the family, when she has to work three jobs to put herself through community college, when everyone says she'll never make it past reception at a cutthroat company like Hale Hospitality with a cutthroat boss like Bastian Hale.

And she keeps going now...

... even if she can't see where she's headed.

The break room is easier. I know where the coffee maker is by smell alone (mostly because nobody ever cleans it properly). I successfully avoid both the refrigerator and the microwave that someone has definitely used to reheat fish again, despite my endless guerrilla campaign of passive-aggressive sticky notes.

Emboldened by my success, I decide to venture further. The executive wing is just down the hall. It's usually off-limits after hours unless you are working directly with one of the C-suite.

But what are they going to do, fire me?

Well, that's certainly an option. God knows Mr. Hale has fired enough people for far more minor infractions. There's practically a trail of tears permanently inked into the carpet leading out from his office.

I glide my fingers along the wall, counting doorways. Conference Room A, Conference Room B, the supply closet where I once caught two sales associates in a decidedly non-professional embrace, and then⁠-

The wall ends. I know this space. It is the informal lounge area outside Mr. Hale's office, complete with gleaming leather couches and a view of the lake that I have never properly appreciated until right this moment when I can't actually see it.

Bastian Hale. The head honcho himself. He's six-foot-something of blond-and-blue perfection wrapped in Tom Ford suits and an ego with its own gravitational field. To be fair, it's sort of earned-the man built a hospitality empire from nothing before his fortieth birthday.

The first problem is that he knows he's a genius.

The other problem is that he never, ever lets anyone forget it.

He goes through assistants like tissue paper and, if the rumors are true, he goes through romantic partners even faster. Given the way half the women on staff look at him, the rumors are probably understating things.

Not that I look at him. Much. Okay, I'm human and possess functioning eyeballs-for the next ninety days, anyway-so yes, I have noticed that he is unfairly attractive in that way that makes you angry at genetics for being so unequally distributed. He's taller than seems necessary and smells better than the job requires.

But I have also noticed he is an absolute nightmare to work for. The project manager position I currently occupy only became available in the first place because he gave the last girl a mental breakdown when she used the wrong shade of cream in a menu layout.

Fortunately, his office is vacant right now. It is past nine, and even Bastian Hale has to go home sometime. Probably to his Gold Coast penthouse with its wraparound views of Lake Michigan and whichever VS supermodel is gracing his bedsheets this week.

Assuming he has bedsheets, that is. I wouldn't be surprised if he sleeps in a coffin like Dracula.

I move forward, gaining confidence little by little, step by step. Maybe it is stupid, but I feel almost giddy. Like I'm getting away with something. I'm reclaiming some tiny piece of control in a day that has stripped me of almost everything.

I pick up speed. My hands swing freely now instead of clutching at walls. I can do this. I can adapt. I can overcome all things through spite and stubbornness who strengthens me. I am strong, I am powerful, I am woman, hear me⁠-!

What.

My palms make contact with something warm. Something solid. Something that is definitely not a wall or a piece of furniture or any inanimate object that should reasonably be in an office at 9 P.M. on a Thursday.

It is skin. Warm, bare skin stretched over what feels like an absolutely ridiculous amount of muscle. The kind of torso that suggests its owner either has a serious gym addiction or was crafted by Michelangelo during a particularly inspired phase.

For one horrible, endless second, I keep my hands there. My brain short-circuits as it tries to process what is happening.

Then, slowly, with the kind of dawning horror usually reserved for people who've just realized they've replied-all to the entire company with something deeply inappropriate, I open my eyes.

It is, in fact, the worst-case scenario.

Bastian Hale stands there, topless, a white dress shirt dangling from one hand. He's looking at me with that trademark blend of scorn and weariness that he does so well. It's a look that says, You do not even deserve my attention, much less my wrath.

Unfortunately for me, he wears that look well.

I blame the chin. It's just shaped too perfectly. No one outside of Henry Cavill should have a chin that artistically cleft, that masculine, that blunt.

Although, as I gawk up at Bastian and wonder just how bad the fallout is going to be from this disaster, I'm starting to wonder if maybe the brows are also at fault here. They slice above his blue eyes, two cliffs overlooking two icy mountain lakes, set on either side of the ever-so-slightly crooked ridge of his nose. His mouth is a stern slash, twisted up, ten percent smirk and ninety percent scowl.

Aw, screw it; I can't decide. The whole face is guilty of letting him get away with saying so much toxic crap. Crap like:

"Ms. Hunter." His voice is a baritone rumble. "Care to explain what you're doing?"

My hands are still on his chest. Why are my hands still on his chest? Why can't I move? Why is he shirtless? Why is my brain choosing this exact moment to notice that he has a small scar just below his left collarbone, and a tattoo on his left pec, and a light dusting of hair leading from his chest, down the valley of his abs, and then teasing me as it descends lower and lower, into⁠-

"I-" I yank my hands back so fast I nearly lose my balance. "I wasn't- This isn't- Why are you shirtless?"

God, I hate how my voice sounds to my own ears. So squeaky and shrill. Somewhere down the block, a dog just got very concerned for me.

One of Bastian's eyebrows floats up. "Generally, that's what happens when one changes clothes."

"It's nine at night!"

"How remarkably observant of you. And here I thought you had your eyes closed." He tilts his head. "Which brings us to the more interesting question: Why were you wandering around my office in the dark, looking for victims to grope?"

I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.

What am I supposed to say? Hey, boss, funny story: I'm going blind in three months, so I thought I'd practice navigating the office and accidentally felt you up instead? Sort of a "task failed successfully" situation.

"I was... testing something."

"Were the results satisfactory?"

There is something in his tone that makes heat crawl up my neck. Which is ridiculous, obviously. This is Bastian Hale. He dates women with billboards of their faces and sexually explicit pop songs on the radio. He is genetically incapable of innuendo with anyone below the executive level. I am not a potential sex partner in his eyes-I am a worm, a speck of dirt.

"I'd call it a work-in-progress." I start to turn. "I should go. It's been a long day."

"Hm." He doesn't move out of my way. "And your solution to this long day was to wander around in the dark?"

"It's been a long, complicated day."

"I run a multi-billion-dollar hospitality empire, Hunter. I eat complicated for breakfast. Usually with a side of impossible and a light garnish of inadvisable."

Despite everything-the diagnosis, the darkness, the fact that I just had my hands all over my boss's chesticles-I feel my lips twitch into something like a smile. "That's a lot of adjectives for breakfast."

"I'm a hungry man." He is still standing too close, close enough that I can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. "Try me."

I look up at him. At Bastian Hale, the talent, the terror, the bane of my existence and the name signed on the bottom of my paychecks.

And for just a second, I consider telling him.

Because God knows I've been bearing so much for so long. Dad left when I was too young to even memorize his face, and Mom has always been basically a child in a grown woman's body, so I raised her far more than she ever raised me. And life is hard enough on people who get lots of lucky breaks, but I've never gotten one of those, not once, not ever-I've gotten food stamps and bruised shins and syrup-less lattes, and I've worked until my eyes ached and my fingernails cracked for nothing but pitiful pennies, but I did it because I had to, because someone has to, because it's a brutal world and the only way to make it through is to put your head down and work, and work, and work. And for once, just once, it would be nice to look someone in the eye and tell them that I could use a bit of kindness today, because it's been a long life and kindness has been in short supply since the start of it.

But I don't. I don't say any of that. Why would I? What would it get me-especially from this man?

Bastian Hale doesn't do vulnerability. He does efficiency and excellence and probably some other e-words that I can't think of right now because my brain is still processing the whole shirtless thing. But vulnerability?

No. Not once. Not ever.

As if to prove me wrong, though, Bastian's face softens just a fraction. "Go home, Hunter. Whatever's going on, it'll still be there in the morning."

That is the problem, though: It won't be. Not quite. Every morning, there'll be a little less. A little less light, a little less color, a little less of everything I've taken for granted.

And then in ninety days, there won't be anything.

2

ELIANA

mis·fire: /ˈmisˌfī(ə)r/: noun

1: when a dish doesn't cook as intended.

2: when a perfectly nice gesture gets torched to bits by a pompous, self-important bosshole.

I give up on sleep around 3 A.M., which is probably for the best, since my brain has decided to run a highlight reel of last night's mortification on loop.

But that brain, being the saucy little minx that it sometimes likes to be, has scripted a very different ending for the encounter.

In real life, the whole debacle couldn't have lasted more than five minutes, tops. Deep in the throes of this REM cycle, though, five minutes becomes five centuries. Every detail gets magnified.

It's not just Bastian Hale's chest I'm seeing anymore. It's every blonde hair on said chest, enhanced into ultra-crystal-clear 4K HD. Every curve of every muscle is there like brushstrokes on a painting when you're close enough for your nose to almost graze the canvas.

It's not just "tattoo." It's the spread wings of an eagle, inked into skin that's tan and warm and smells like soap and wintergreen.

And it's not just "Care to explain what you're doing?" Now, because I'm sick, because my thoughts are sick and my fantasies are sick (and probably also because I haven't experienced sexual contact since the last presidential administration), it's Bastian's voice purring something very, very different:

I thought you'd never ask.

It goes completely off the rails from there. Instead of his fingers gently encircling my wrist and peeling me off of him, those fingers now nudge my hands down, down, down. Past the soft thickets of chest hair, past the rivulets of six, count 'em, six defined abs, toward where the V points directly to the buckle of his belt.

Then he keeps going.

I force myself awake there, because Bastian's inked, scarred, calloused hands tempting my very innocent, very demure, very well-lotioned hands into performing heinous sexual acts in the middle of the workplace is a bridge too far.

Also, getting my fantastical rocks off-with my boss, no less-is not high on my priority list.

I have bigger things to worry about. My eyes are trying to quiet quit on me, which is frankly very rude. I ought to focus on that, not on the thick blue vein in my boss's bicep or the glint in his eye when he looked at me and smirked.

Come 4 A.M., I am showered, dressed, and staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to memorize the exact shade of green in my irises. Turns out they have little flecks of hazel in them. Who knew?

By the time 5 A.M. rolls around, I'm standing outside Grain & Gather, the bougie bakery three blocks from the office that charges twelve dollars for a croissant. That's a crime, but the real felony is that it's worth every penny.

The owner, Fletcher, is just flipping the sign to Open. "Eliana!" His face lights up when he sees me. "You're early, even for you."

"That's how you get the worm, right?"

I grin for a second before my sick, depraved brain starts thinking of other "worms" it would like to get and I have to shake my head to dispel the unwelcome horny thoughts.

"Anyway, I couldn't sleep." I take a deep inhale, soaking up the aromas of fresh bread and butter and a cinnamon-y sweetness that makes my stomach growl. Just like that, I'm grinning again. "Okay, that smells insanely delicious. I need... three of everything."

He laughs. "You sure about that? That's a lot of carbs for a little lady."

"First of all, how dare you disrespect my ability to inhale sugar? Secondly, it's not for me. Well, not all for me. I'm feeding the test kitchen crew."

Fletcher's eyebrows go up. The test kitchen at Hale Hospitality is legendary-fifteen of the most talented chefs in Chicago, plus a small army of sous chefs, stagiaires, dishwashers, prep staff, and more, all working around the clock to develop bold new concepts for Bastian's ever-expanding culinary empire. They're the best of the best.

They are also, currently, miserable. Bastian has been in rare form all week, rejecting dish after dish, sending entire menus back to the drawing board with scathing comments. He's taken to just scrawling NGE across the top in huge, red letters. That stands for Not Good Enough. It's honestly kind of impressive how concisely he manages to be a giant asshole.

"That's kind of you," Fletcher says with a whistle as he reaches for boxes to start loading me up with kilograms of sugary goodness. "What's the occasion?"

I watch him work, his hands quick and practiced as he selects pastries. Chicago dawn catches the glaze on a row of kouign-amann. The dusty cocoa on fresh bomboloni. The perfect spiral of a morning bun.

It's borderline pornographic for a sweet treat addict like me.

"Well, the boss is grinding everyone into useless little nubs since we're getting close to the Project Olympus launch. He's a sadist, I think. I just do what I can to lighten the load for my fellow sufferers."

That is partly true-with the completion of Project Olympus finally on the near horizon, Bastian has been more monstrous than usual.

The other part is something that was percolating in my head as I tossed and turned in the wee hours of the night.

I have ninety days left-well, ninety minus one-and that's just not a lot of time. I want to taste everything, see everything, experience everything while I still can. And if I can do that while also bringing a small taste of joy to a group of stressed-out chefs?

Well, that's killing two birds with one scone.

Two hundred dollars later, I struggle through the revolving doors of the Hale building, juggling a trio of pastry boxes and a tray of coffees. The security guard, Kyle (not incompetent-spreadsheet Kyle, different Kyle), jumps up to help.

"Ms. Hunter, let me⁠-"

"I've got it," I say, then immediately prove myself wrong by nearly dropping the coffee tray. "Okay, maybe just the coffee."

He takes the tray with a grin. "Test kitchen?"

"How'd you know?"

"Only reason anyone brings this much sugar before 6 A.M. Plus, Chef Rubio texted me that Mr. Hale made three people cry yesterday."

"Three? I heard two."