Chapter 7 - The Chef's Revenge
The air in the basement kitchen was thick with the smell of gasoline and copper.
Nathan Calder laughed as he finished splashing the thermite gel across the main steel gas manifold behind the stone ovens.
"Once this place blows, Moretti's men will take the blame," Nathan told Dr. Reed, who was holding a road flare, his hands shaking violently. "Vincent dies in the explosion. The capos will have no choice but to name me Don. We clean up the city, take our fifty million from Moretti, and retire to the Bahamas."
"Are you sure the gas line will ignite instantly?" Dr. Reed asked nervously, adjusting his glasses. "If it hesitates—"
"It won't hesitate," a voice echoed from the dark pantry hallway.
Nathan and Dr. Reed whirled around.
Stepping through the smoke was Lena.
She looked like a nightmare apparition—her large frame clad in a dark apron, wearing a black silicone respirator with twin filters, holding a heavy copper pressure sprayer with a brass nozzle aimed directly at their faces.
Nathan blinked, then burst into a cruel, mocking laugh.
"The fat baker?" Nathan sneered, reaching for the pistol tucked into his waistband. "You survived the bunker just to die in the kitchen, girl?"
"This isn't just a kitchen, Nathan," Lena's voice sounded deep and muffled through the respirator mask. "It's my kitchen."
Before Nathan could raise his gun, Lena squeezed the trigger of the copper sprayer.
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
A high-pressure cloud of vaporized glacial acetic acid mixed with concentrated habanero pepper powder erupted from the nozzle in a twenty-foot blinding mist.
The chemical fog hit Nathan and Dr. Reed square in their faces.
"AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!" Nathan shrieked, dropping his gun instantly as the ultra-concentrated acid burned through his eyes, nostrils, and skin like liquid fire. He fell to his knees, clawing frantically at his face, weeping blood and mucus as his lungs seized up from the toxic pepper fumes.
Dr. Reed let out a choked, wet scream, dropping the road flare onto the wet tile floor before collapsing beside Nathan, retching hysterically, completely incapacitated by the sheer chemical shock.
Lena didn't pause.
She stepped forward, kicked Nathan's fallen pistol far across the room under the heavy iron butcher table, and stomped out the lit road flare beneath her thick rubber kitchen clog.
She picked up a heavy copper sauté pan from the hanging rack above her head.
Nathan, blind, screaming, and choking on his own tears, tried to crawl toward the door. "HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! I'M BLIND!"
Lena stood over him.
"That's for my kitchen," she said.
CLANG!
She brought the heavy copper pan down with all her strength against the side of Nathan's head.
Nathan's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed flat onto his face, knocked out cold.
Dr. Reed was curling into a fetal position on the floor, weeping uncontrollably, begging for mercy through his chemical burns.
The heavy wooden doors of the kitchen kicked open.
Vincent, covered in soot, blood, and rain, rushed into the room with his pistol drawn, Geno right behind him.
Vincent stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked at his cousin Nathan lying unconscious in a pool of chemical mist. He looked at Dr. Reed weeping on the floor. He looked at the thermite gel on the gas lines, and the extinguished road flare.
Then he looked at Lena.
She stood in the center of the kitchen, wearing her respirator mask, holding a dented copper pan in her hand like a goddess of war.
Slowly, Lena pulled the respirator off her face, letting it hang around her neck. She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and looked at Vincent.
"Dinner is canceled," Lena said, her voice shaking slightly. "The guests were rude."
Vincent stared at her for three long seconds.
May you like
Then, a rich, deep, booming laugh burst from his chest—a laugh of pure triumph, love, and absolute wonder.
He tossed his gun to Geno, sprinted across the room, and pulled Lena into his arms, lifting her off her feet, swinging her around the kitchen as if she weighed no more than a feather.
