“I had no idea who he was when I took the job,” Elodie insisted.
“Shhhh, it’s okay.” Mustang hated the defensive tone in her voice. He wasn’t judging her, but he needed to know who the hell she’d worked for if he was going to help her.
“Paul Columbus.” She tensed as if waiting for his censure.
“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?” Mustang asked, wracking his brain to try to think of who the man was and why Elodie was so terrified of him.
She sighed, as if relieved. “You really don’t know him?”
“No. Never heard the name before,” Mustang said.
She relaxed against him, and for the first time, Mustang realized just how much she’d tensed up while telling her story. “He’s apparently the head of a mob family in New York.”
“The mob?” Mustang asked in surprise. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I had no idea, obviously. I suppose I should’ve known something was up, considering how high the salary was.”
“No,” Mustang said immediately. “There are lots and lots of millionaires in this country who aren’t famous and whose names aren’t plastered all over the media. Especially in New York.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So what happened?”
“I was working in the kitchen as usual, and Paul came in. He didn’t enter the kitchen often, and I had my own apartment and entrance to the kitchen, so I rarely saw the rest of the Columbus family or anyone who worked for him, outside those who ran errands for me and helped serve the food. He…he put a small bottle down on the counter and told me to add the contents to one of the bowls of soup that would be served to his guests. He was staring at me with eyes so hard and cold, I seriously felt the temperature in the room go down twenty degrees. I asked him what it was, and without hesitation, he said it was arsenic.
“I was shocked. I told him I wouldn’t do that, that it would be murder. He lunged toward me so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to evade him. He backed me against the counter, leaned in—I can still remember how bad his breath was—and told me that I worked for him. That he owned me.
“Somehow, I found the courage to speak. I told him the soup for the night was a beef bouillon, and that his guest would surely taste it. I suggested that maybe it would be better to disguise it in a bisque, because it was thicker and chunkier, and I’d be happy to make that another night if I had some advance notice.”
“Shit! How’d he take that?” Mustang asked, realizing she’d gone tense again.
“He wasn’t happy,” Elodie said. “I swear I thought he was going to kill me right then and there for defying him. I realized later, after doing some research, that arsenic is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. It’s really a perfect poison. He had to know I was talking out of my ass…but for some reason, he didn’t call me on it. Maybe he really knew nothing about the poison either.
“Anyway, I was already trying to think of what the hell I was going to do the next time he demanded I put poison in someone’s food when he turned and grabbed one of my knives. He shoved my head against the counter and held the knife to the back of my neck as he said, ‘If you say no to me again, it’ll be the last thing you ever say.’ Then he slammed the knife down hard, chopping off a hunk of my hair, before standing up and leaving as if he hadn’t a care in the world.”
“Holy fuck,” Mustang swore.
“Yeah. Scared the shit out of me. My hands shook throughout the rest of dinner prep. None of the other assistants in the kitchen said anything, and I think it was because they didn’t want to seem to be siding with me over Paul. I also think they’d all probably been threatened in the past too, or at least had firsthand knowledge of how dangerous Paul was.”
“What’d you do?”
“I finished dinner. Poured the arsenic he hadn’t taken with him down the drain, went back to my apartment, packed a small bag, and left. I couldn’t stay, not after being asked to participate in the first-degree murder of someone, and not after he’d told me I had to do everything he demanded or he’d kill me.”
“Damn, I knew you were strong, but I had no idea,” Mustang said.
Elodie ignored his statement. “He wasn’t happy. I didn’t know where to go, so I stayed in New York for a while, trying to figure out what to do next. But one day when I was on the subway, I thought I was being followed. I immediately got off at the next stop, but so did the guy following me. It took me twenty minutes to lose him, and I thought I’d end up with a bullet in my head every one of those twenty minutes. I was scared to go to the bank and pull out more money, because I didn’t know if he was watching my account. I had some money with me. I always keep an emergency stash of cash just in case, thank God.
“I immediately left New York and went to Pittsburgh. But when I went in for an interview at a restaurant, I was told there’d been a mistake and I was no longer being considered. When I pressed for a reason, the owner told me she had no desire to make an enemy of the Columbus family. He’d spread the word that if anyone hired me, he’d make sure their restaurant failed every inspection and would have to shut down.”
Mustang had been so relaxed after their morning romp, but now he felt as if he needed to take another two-hour run to excise the pissed-off energy he had inside him. “What did you do?”
“I panicked,” Elodie admitted. “I used most of my money to take a bus all the way to Los Angeles. I figured that was as far from New York as I could get, but my name was too unique and Paul’s reach was too long. I noticed a guy following me again while I was trying to find another job. I also got an email from someone I knew back in Chicago, breaking the news that our friend—the one who’d recommended me for the job with the Columbus family—had been murdered. Drive-by shooting. I just knew it was a message for me. So I cut all ties to anyone I’d known before. Terminated my email and social media accounts. Smashed my cell phone, and lucked out and found a guy who could get me some fake IDs.”
“Thus, Rachel was born,” Mustang said.
“Yeah. And the job on the Asaka Express seemed to fall into my lap. It was perfect. I’d be out of the country, with a new name, doing what I loved. But yeah, I guess karma has it out for me because then the ship got hijacked.”
“And you met me,” Mustang said.
She nodded. “True.”
“So karma can’t hate you too much.”
“Well, unfortunately there were tons of reporters waiting for the ship when we docked in Port Sudan. I tried to keep my head down, but we had to pose for a group picture after we filed off the ship. I declined all interviews and had to decide what to do next. I was offered a job on the Asaka Freedom, but being trapped on a ship in the middle of the ocean didn’t seem like the haven it had before. I had lost your number by then, but decided I might as well go to Hawaii, as I literally didn’t have anywhere else to go. I used the second fake identification I’d bought…this time with a name closer to my own, so at least I didn’t forget to answer to it.” Elodie tipped her head up to look at him. “And here I am.”
“And you’ve been here a month and a half?” Mustang asked.