Chapter 2: The Photograph on the Table
The bowl went up at 11:42 p.m.
Tessa watched the elevator doors close and felt her hands trembling for the first time all night.
Fletcher stood beside her.
Neither of them spoke.
Four minutes passed.
Then Ronan's head of security, a man named Briggs who never smiled and never explained anything, stepped back into the kitchen.
Every head turned.
"He wants to see her."
Fletcher went pale.
"The waitress?"
"The cook."
Tessa removed her apron slowly.
Her heart was hitting her ribs so hard she was certain the room could hear it.
She rode the elevator alone.
The third floor was silent.
One guard stood outside the suite door.
He didn't look at her.
He simply opened it.
Ronan Callahan was seated at the far end of a long table.
The bowl in front of him was empty.
His hands were flat on the tablecloth.
His eyes were red.
He didn't speak for a long moment.
Then, quietly: "Where did you learn that recipe?"
"My teacher.
A woman named Eda Boudreaux."
Something moved across his face.
Fast.
Gone before she could name it.
"Say that name again."
Tessa did.
Ronan stood up slowly.
He reached into his jacket and placed a photograph on the table between them.
An old photograph.
Two people.
A kitchen Tessa had never seen.
But one of the faces she recognized immediately.
It was Eda.
Standing next to a woman Tessa had never seen before.
"That woman beside her," Ronan said, his voice barely above a whisper, "was my mother.
Taken three weeks before she d*ed."
The room felt like it dropped ten degrees.
"They knew each other?" Tessa asked.
Ronan's jaw tightened.
May you like
"They didn't just know each other." He looked at her with something between grief and fury.
"Eda Boudreaux was the last person to see my mother alive."
