“Stop fucking around. If you did what Flavio and I think you did, then you’re going to jail. Arson’s a crime, and you better believe I’ll be sitting in the front row at your trial. I’ll be the one cheering when they cart you away.”
I try not to think about what suspected arson will mean, but it’s impossible. It means the insurance money will get tied up in subpoenas and courtroom drama. It means attorney fees I can’t afford to pay. It means long waits that end in jail time. My heart fires up, and my insides churn. I can’t afford any of this.
George’s frown digs in. “Mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Oh come on. The fire. At the Bolling Way shop. The same shop you swore to burn to the ground.”
“There was a fire? For real?” His brow clears, and his lips spread into a smile. “How bad?”
“Why else would I come all the way up here?” I lift both hands, let them slap to my sides. “Bad.”
“How bad?”
I stare up at my former sous-chef, a crick tightening on the right side of my neck, the heat bleeding from my body in a single, bracing instant. When I drove here, I was operating on instinct and rage, but George was never that good of an actor.
The wind sends an icy blast up my back. “It’s torched, man. A total loss.”
He smacks the sill and whoops, a full-bellied laughter that drowns out the birds overhead, the cars on the street, the dog still going berserk next door.
“Dude. Dude. Are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?” He pauses to catch his breath, a long stretch of silence to enjoy the hell out of my expression. He laughs some more, all jolly hilarity. “Oh my God. This is too damn good.”
“Shut up.”
“For real, man. And though I appreciate you coming all the way here to tell me the joyous news in person, what kind of idiot do you think I am? An arsonist would have to be really incompetent to give his former boss a six-month warning. I mean, come on. You and I both know I’m not that stupid.”
“It was four and a half. March 24.”
“Aww, you remembered our anniversary.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I’m out of here.” I turn and march for the gate.
“Wait. Where you going? Who are you going to accuse next—Drew?”
The name slams me in the back, and I stop, my soles sinking into the grass. Drew is a fellow chef, a former employee who I lured to the Lasky brand with the promise of him running his own restaurant. One of the three chefs I fired in an ugly dispute last year because his food wasn’t good enough to fill the tables.
“Drew signed a contract, dickhead. Same as you.”
A contract that multiple attorneys on both sides agreed was legit. No hidden clauses, nothing sneaky or underhanded buried in legalese. The terms were spelled out in bulletproof, easy-to-understand black and white. I even cut Drew some slack, gave him some extra time to fine tune the menu to appeal to the Perimeter Mall crowd, but I couldn’t keep bailing him out when sales were already slipping. A couple more months and we’d be laying off waitstaff, slashing food quality, defaulting on bills. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it, but it was Drew or the restaurant, that’s essentially what it came down to.
So yeah. Drew might have lost his job, but I’m the one who almost lost his shirt. The one who had to pump in a buttload of my own cash and energy to fix Drew’s mistakes, who had to work harder and longer to patch up the holes his bad management blew in the place.
But George is not wrong. It’s not like Drew wouldn’t be more than happy to strike a match to the Bolling Way shop, too. And so would—
“What about Fred and Kelly? Have you been to see them yet? Because they hate your guts as much as Drew and I do.”
Fred and Kelly. Once upon a time, chefs at the West Side and Inman Park shops, until sales at those restaurants started sliding, too. Just because you’re a chef doesn’t mean you should be running your own shop. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.
“And what was the name of that line cook up at the Forum? The one you fired when his wife was about to get deported because he was spending too much time on the phone with his lawyer. Simon or Christian or something. Oh, and remember that mixologist you brought down from New York City to revamp the cocktail menu, only to send him packing as soon as he was done? Last I heard, he was slinging gin and tonics at the Dunwoody Country Club up the road. Any one of them would love to see Bolling Way blow up in smoke. Any one of them would have a reason to want revenge.”