Jax's knuckles were white around the tire iron. Every instinct he had honed in the back alleys and bloody warehouses of his former life was screaming. This man, Kazimir, was dangerous. He was more than dangerous. He was wrong.
"Get out of my restaurant," Jax said, his voice flat and cold.
Kazimir simply chuckled, a low, melodic sound that didn't belong in the dusty silence. He began to circle a nearby table, running a manicured finger over the cheap wood veneer. "This isn't a restaurant, Jax. Not anymore. It's a tombstone for a dream."
Jax tensed, ready to move. "I'm not going to tell you again."
"You have the heart of a chef," Kazimir continued, ignoring the threat completely. He stopped and met Jax's gaze across the room. His eyes were dark, ancient, and seemed to see right through him. "You understand flavor. You feel it. But you have the hands of a butcher. You built a magnificent stage, but you have no star performer."
Every word was a perfectly aimed dart, striking at the core of Jax's failure. This stranger knew things he couldn't possibly know. He spoke of Jax's deepest insecurities as if he were reading them from a book.
"What do you want?" Jax demanded, his grip tightening on the tire iron.
"I want to offer you a partnership," Kazimir said, his demeanor disarmingly casual. He strolled back to the bar, keeping a safe but confident distance. He moved with an unnatural grace, a predator at ease in any environment. "I want to be your brush."
Jax stared at him, suspicion warring with a sliver of desperate curiosity. "I'm not following."
"It's simple," Kazimir explained, leaning against the bar. "I can give you the technique you lack. I can give you the mastery you crave. I can make you the greatest chef this city has ever seen. Critics will write poetry about your risotto. Food bloggers will weep when they taste your osso buco. This restaurant won't just survive, Jax. It will become a legend."
The words hung in the air, a tempting, impossible fantasy. For a heartbeat, Jax allowed himself to imagine it. The dining room full. A line out the door. Elara by his side, her face beaming with pride. The image was so powerful, so beautiful, it hurt.
He shook his head, reality crashing back down. "Nobody can do that. You're selling snake oil."
"My product is far more effective," Kazimir said with a thin smile. "And far more expensive."
There it was. The other shoe. Jax's eyes narrowed. "What's the catch?"
"There's always a catch," Kazimir said, his smile widening. "My price is... specific. This world, Jax, is full of rotten ingredients. People who have squandered their lives on cruelty, greed, and evil. Their souls have a certain... piquancy. A unique flavor profile you won't find anywhere else."
A cold dread trickled down Jax's spine. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about balance," Kazimir said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "A transaction. You hunt these corrupted souls for me. One a month. That's all I ask. You deliver them, and in return, your hands will create magic. A small price to pay for your dream, wouldn't you say?"
Jax stared, dumbfounded. Then he laughed. It was a harsh, bitter, ugly sound. "You're insane. You really walked in here thinking I'd kill people for a better bolognese recipe?" He straightened up, planting both hands on the bar. The tire iron was still in his right hand, hidden from view. "Get out. Now. Before I throw you out."
Kazimir raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "Fair enough. A man like you, a practical man, needs a demonstration. Proof of concept, as it were."
He glanced down at the empty whiskey glass Jax had slammed on the bar. He didn't move. He didn't speak a word. He just looked at it.
Slowly, impossibly, the glass began to fill.
A golden, amber liquid materialized from thin air, swirling inside the glass until it was full. It shimmered in the dim light, and a scent wafted across the bar that made Jax's mouth water. It wasn't the harsh smell of the cheap whiskey he'd been drinking. This was rich and complex, with notes of oak, caramel, and something else… something ancient and impossibly alluring.
Jax's blood ran cold. His mind reeled, trying to process what he was seeing. It was a trick. A hallucination. He was drunk and grieving his dead dream. It had to be.
But the smell was real. The sight was real.
"Just a taste," Kazimir whispered, his voice seeming to come from right beside Jax's ear, though he hadn't moved an inch. "A small taste of what's possible when you work with the right ingredients."
Jax stared at the glass, his knuckles bloodless. He had seen things in his old life. Horrible, violent, brutal things. But they all obeyed the laws of physics. They all made a bloody, terrible kind of sense. This… this defied everything.
He finally looked up from the glass, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was going to say something, yell, threaten, demand an explanation.
But the end of the bar was empty. Kazimir was gone.
Jax stood frozen for a long minute, his eyes darting around the empty, silent restaurant. There was no sound of the door opening or closing. The man had vanished as silently and as suddenly as he had appeared.
The only evidence he had ever been there was the impossible glass of whiskey sitting on the bar. And something else. Lying next to the glass was a single business card. It was made of a material that felt like cool, smooth stone, and it was the color of a starless midnight sky. There was no name, no number. Just an intricate, silver symbol etched into its surface, a design that seemed to twist and writhe if he looked at it for too long.
Jax reached out a trembling hand and picked it up. A voice echoed in his memory, Kazimir's voice, smooth and confident. My terms are on the card. All you have to do is say yes.
He sank onto a barstool, his legs suddenly weak. He stared at the card in one hand and the impossible whiskey in the other. His mind flashed back to the morning. To the look on Elara's face as he'd handed her that last paycheck. The disappointment. He remembered her words, filled with a hope he didn't deserve. Don't give up on the dream.
Was this giving up? Or was it the only way to fight back?
He looked around his failed restaurant. The empty tables. The cold kitchen. The mountain of debt. He thought about going back to the Moretti family, back to a life of fear and blood. He thought about ending up broke and alone on the street.
Then he looked at the card again. One soul a month. The wicked. The city was crawling with them. He knew them. He used to work for them. What was one less predator in the world? Was that so high a price to pay?
He thought of Elara again, of her smile. He thought of this restaurant, alive and buzzing with happy customers. The dream wasn't dead. It was on life support, and this insane, impossible man was offering to pull the plug or be the miracle cure.
He made his choice.
He held the card tight in his fist, the sharp edges digging into his palm. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the scent of the supernatural whiskey filling his lungs.
"Yes," he whispered into the empty room.
The card in his hand flared with a brief, cold light, then crumbled into fine, black dust that sifted through his fingers.