The soup smelled amazing.
Rich.
Spiced.
Warm.
Homey.
I took the first spoonful.
For one glorious, stupid, trusting second, I believed in goodness.
Then the taste hit.
Goddess.
No.
Not Goddess.
Whatever ancient demon had crawled out of Sicilian soil and decided men needed humbling.
The soup was wrong.
Not spoiled.
Not badly made.
That would have been easier.
Bad cooking was chaos. This was not chaos. This was engineering.
The smell was heaven.
The taste was punishment.
She’d done a deadly masterpiece.
Sweetness appeared first, innocent enough to make me relax, and then something bitter slid underneath it like a knife in a silk glove. Heat followed, but not the normal hot pepper kind. This heat unfolded in layers, each worse than the last, crawling over my tongue, climbi
