My Billionaire Boss Dared Me to Say No, So I Locked the Door novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Pierogi

On paper, or recorded.

Bartek turned the lawyer's last words over all Sunday afternoon while he chopped onions in the kitchen on Karlov Avenue.

"You're murdering that onion," Zosia said from the stove.

"It's an onion."

"It's an onion with a family. Look at you." She pointed a wooden spoon at him. "You've been somewhere else since Tuesday. Your whole face is somewhere else."

"It's work," Bartek said.

"Work does not make a person walk like that."

"Like what?"

"Like he sat on a very nice chair a very long time." She turned back to the pot. "I'm not asking. I'm only observing. You've got the face of a man who got what he wanted and hates it."

Bartek kept chopping.

The flat was a two-bedroom over a bakery, with a radiator that knocked and a couch that had survived three tenants.

The orange wallpaper dated from 1987, and the landlord swore it was period.

On the refrigerator, under a magnet shaped like a pierogi, hung the latest letter from the collections agency, folded in thirds.

Zosia had stopped mentioning it a year ago.

She had also, Bartek knew, stopped asking where the rent came from, and had never once let him pay the full half.

"Why are there two hundred pierogi?" Bartek asked.

"Four hundred. Half for the freezer." She bent and tasted the filling. "A person cooks when she's worried."

"About what?"

"About you, you idiot."

Bartek's phone buzzed on the counter.

He did not have to look at it.

On Thursday night, flat on his back in the playroom, Bartek had mentioned the Sunday pierogi, and had regretted it ever since.

Twenty minutes ago the phone had buzzed with: Six o'clock. Do not warn her.

He had written back: You said nobody knows.

The answer had come at once: Nobody will.

At six exactly the buzzer rang.

"I'll get it," Zosia said, wiping her hands on her apron.

"No, wait, I'll."

But she had already pressed the button, and her voice was bright and suspicious.

"Yes?"

"Good evening. I am Bartek's colleague. We work together."

The pause in the hallway was a thing Bartek would remember for the rest of his life.

"Come up," Zosia said. "Third floor. Mind the stairs."

Ingmar Ekeberg filled the doorway of the apartment.

He wore a camel overcoat and a gray scarf.

He held a bottle of bison-grass vodka in one hand and a box from a bakery in the other.

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