13. Chapter 13 #3
“The Squad ,” Ollie scoffed playfully. “Me, Li-Li, Rain, and you. We’re all besties now.” He beamed through his trembling, and Jax wrote the final total down on his clipboard, assuming that Li-Li meant Liam.
“Ah.” His old self would’ve laughed, but why did he care what his old self used to do? He hadn’t been part of a friend group in a long time. Hopefully, he’d absorb more of Tristan’s calm so he didn’t scare them off like his old friends. “But isn’t it weird that I’m dating Rain’s stepdad?”
“You’ve already had brunch with him and Mason,” Ollie smirked, letting Jax know that there was no such thing as a private life. “Do you really think he cares? He’s just happy that Tristan’s happy.”
“Good.” Jax couldn’t help but smile like a lovesick idiot. “And thanks again for talking to Mae. I feel a lot better knowing that she’s getting help.”
“Oh, she definitely is.” Ollie’s eyes widened. “She’s working with my therapist and Katrin takes no prisoners.”
“I think she’ll like that.” Jax raised an eyebrow. “She’s more direct than I am.”
“Yeah, I saw her threaten Tristan.” Letting out a laugh, Ollie began to hop up and down to stay warm.
“Thank you for the offer, but I’m good for now.” Jax gestured toward the door. “If I’m in the weeds, then I’ll have you assemble The Squad, okay? Go warm up.”
“Okay!” Ollie kissed his cheek and then flew out of the walk-in. Comfortable in his jacket, gloves, and hat, Jax finished inventory, double-checking everything. He and Tristan had arrived early to make sure the day went according to plan, and now he felt cautiously ready.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry for long because once the rest of the staff showed up, the first few hours were a whirlwind, and The Pointe’s kitchen ran almost too perfectly under Jax’s hands. In a strange way, he felt exhilarated, high on adrenaline, and his suspicions started to ease.
Until his headset went missing.
He’d only taken it off for a minute to splash water on his face, but when he reached out to pick it up, it had vanished. Standing stock-still, he immediately played it up.
“Anyone seen my headset?” He called out, and the line cooks shrugged in pure innocence. Derrick wasn’t even there; he was probably out on a smoke break, gone just like the headset.
“Dunno Bossman, I can look when I’m done with this steak,” one of them replied, but Jax shook his head.
“No, it’s cool.” Leaving the kitchen, Jax immediately texted Tristan.
My headset is gone .
I’ll check the cameras, popped onto his screen a few seconds later.
Grabbing a spare headset, Jax went back to work, trying to concentrate while part of his brain rang like an alarm bell. Should he call it out? Blow this entire thing up? No, there might be accomplices, and Jax wanted to root out anyone who tried to destroy his dream.
Besides, he didn’t want to fuck this up by accusing a line cook and possibly having him quit. This needed to be addressed on Monday when Angelo was back.
Jax’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the screen.
The cameras didn’t pick up anything. There were a lot of people around the station blocking the view, including Derrick, and the headset just vanished.
Of course it did; the cameras were obvious. Even though Jax hadn’t noticed them, it was easy to tell where they were pointed.
“Shit,” Jax muttered under his breath as he oversauced the plate. Wiping the edge, he focused, his anger rising. He was running the kitchen tonight, and if one more thing vanished under his watch, he would-
“Hi.” Tristan filled his vision, and Jax’s shoulders instantly dropped.
“Hey,” rushed out of him in a breath.
“You found your headset?” Tristan trailed Jax as he moved through the kitchen, checking stations and plates.
“No, this is a spare,” Jax tapped it. “Mine’s gone.”
“Everything else going okay?” Tristan glanced toward the line cooks, but Derrick was still missing.
“For now,” Jax replied, quickly saucing a few more plates and giving them a nod. Squinting, he noticed a glimmer by his shoe, almost under the station. “Are you kidding? Is that my headset?”
He pulled it out with his foot, and Tristan bent down, picking it up and handing it to Jax.
“If I didn’t have a history of things disappearing, I’d think this was just an accident. But I know someone did this deliberately.” Jax stared down at the headset, trying to control his anger as the beast within roared for the first time in a while.
“We really should talk to Owen and Angelo about this. I don’t want things to escalate any further.” Tristan insisted, concern in his eyes, and Jax couldn’t help but agree .
“Okay,” he sighed. “We’ll have a meeting about it on Monday when I see Angelo again.” A flicker in his brain told him that he’d taken too long and the kitchen needed him. “I have to get back to work.”
“At least the night is almost over, and then you get that massage.” Tristan gave Jax a quick peck on the cheek before returning to the main room, and Jax flicked his gaze over to find that Derrick had returned from his eternal smoke break and was now texting.
Pretending to be unbothered, Jax kept an eye on him for the rest of the night.
While there wasn’t any hatred coming from Derrick, his existence made Jax’s skin crawl, as if he were dangerous, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how or why.
The missing headset turned out to be the only hiccup of the night, and Jax began to breathe more easily as dessert finished.
He’d been lucky, because all of the parties had gone smoothly, and by the time he’d made sure the kitchen was in perfect order for morning deliveries and the prep shift, he and Tristan were the last ones out of the building.
“Two days left,” Tristan announced as they walked to his car, although Jax was practically dragging himself across the parking lot. He’d never looked forward to a shower more in his life.
“Yeah. I hope there’s no hiccups tomorrow,” he grumbled.
But he shouldn’t have wasted his energy hoping, because he was instantly stressed from the moment he opened his eyes the next morning.
Texts from Winter had him shaking Tristan awake, and Jax could feel the stress settling in his back, wasting Tristan’s excellent massage as they both scurried to The Pointe.
“I know we closed the walk-in,” Jax insisted to Winter as he watched the morning team take out boxes of room-temperature meat and fish that could no longer be served.
“I was there. It was closed. We were the last to leave the kitchen and we secured everything.” Tristan stepped forward, and Jax appreciated the defense, but he still wanted to throw up.
Apparently, the morning crew had arrived to find the walk-in open, which had turned a lot of their inventory into garbage. And that had happened on Jax’s watch.
“I believe you.” Winter started to fiddle with the door, but a prep cook called them away, and Jax ended up staring at the walk-in again, frozen in disbelief. This was bad, really bad.
“What about the cameras?” He looked around, his shoulders sinking as he realized that this side of the kitchen had a lot of blind spots.
“Do you think Derrick hid in there?” Tristan peered inside, his eyes widening at the half-empty shelves.
“No, he must’ve waited until we left, then snuck back in, and opened the door.
” Moving to the back of the kitchen, he checked the positions of the cameras.
“And we were so focused on covering the stations that we left a lot of this area open. If he came in through the weird door by the pantry that no one ever uses, he could’ve gotten to the walk-in without being seen. Shit .”
Jax wanted to punch the wall again; he thought he’d prepared for any outcome, but he’d had the rug pulled out from under him. It made him look like he couldn’t handle being head chef, which was exactly the point.
But why was this happening to him? Derrick wasn’t the first person to hate Jax, and he wouldn’t be the last, but no one had ever tried to ruin him before. And whatever this one-sided grudge was, it now extended outwards, affecting not just him, but also the clients and The Pointe as a whole.
Which was exactly why Derrick had done it, because it would make Jax the center of the blame.
But Jax wasn’t down yet.
“Wouldn’t he need a key and the alarm code to get in?” Tristan frowned, stroking his beard in thought.
“About thirty people have a key to this place, so he probably got his hands on one. And the alarm code was in the group chat last week.” Jax still had trouble processing this.
His anger and disbelief had him on the edge, and he was using all his energy to keep the beast within at bay.
Tristan’s proximity helped, and so did the voice of the first chef he’d ever worked with, which told him to keep the kitchen running at all costs.
He could do that. He could stuff it all down and get it together, figure out how to run this place, but the only thing he couldn’t do was deal with Derrick.
Even though Jax had no hard evidence, his gut was enough.
And after this sabotage? He was going to fly off the handle the second he saw Derrick’s face .
“Then we have to tell Owen and Marci everything today,” Tristan stated, still frowning.
“But we don’t have any proof! What am I going to say? That someone snuck in to open the walk-in because they hate me? It sounds like a straight-up lie. This is all my fault, no matter who’s doing it.” Jax put both hands in his hair and tugged hard.
“Jax…” Tristan gently circled his wrists, lowering Jax’s hands. “Before we say anything, let me check the footage again. I’ll see if we can catch him walking up to the building.”
But before he could leave, Owen and Marci entered the kitchen, alarm on their faces, and Jax began to sweat.
“Three people called me. They said the walk-in door was open when the morning crew came in?” Marci’s words held no judgment, only curiosity, which helped Jax relax the tiniest bit.