Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t that Kian didn’t theoretically agree with Bastian’s suggestion that he give Mark a try at sous. He’d made good points, and Kian was not only willing to approach his new position in charge of the kitchen at Terroir with logic, he wanted to.
Bastian finally telling him he loved him too certainly didn’t hurt either.
When Kian walked into the Terroir kitchen the next day, flipping on lights as he went, he was determined to fulfill Bastian’s belief in his potential.
It started like so many days at Terroir, with Kian receiving shipments, logging them in, and making sure that the huge walk-in fridges were ruthlessly organized and that any item that was even slightly questionable had been disposed of.
Mark came in on time, which was really ten minutes early, and that filled Kian with additional optimism. He’d been notorious for barely ever making it to class on time, and Kian had hoped that Michael Mina had broken that particular bad habit.
“Johnson,” Kian acknowledged his arrival as he walked in from the locker room. “Do you want to go over prep assignments?”
Mark nodded, but his face contorted into a frustrated little grimace.
Kian told himself that this was normal, prep was hell, and frankly they had a very green kitchen assistant who also happened to be a drama queen.
Mark would have picked that up right away, and also probably knew Kian was going to ask him to watch Derek closely—just as Bastian had asked Kian to do.
It was exactly the kind of expression Xander might have made, but of course, he wouldn’t have ever done it to Bastian’s face, he would have waited until he was gone first.
Mark, Kian acknowledged, was still a little stupid, but a little stupid was better than a lot stupid. He could work with that.
“Derek, you need to watch him. I want to see a perfect dice. I know he’s capable of it, he just gets lazy and sloppy, and that isn’t how we do things here,” Kian said as they hauled out crates of vegetables out of the walk-in.
“I’m surprised Aquino permitted it,” Mark said. Kian told himself firmly to ignore the little twisty jab in his words.
“Chef Aquino,” Kian said, emphasizing his title, “isn’t the villain he’s painted to be. He’s tough, he has exacting standards, but he’s willing to work with people to meet them. But Derek knows he’s on borrowed time, so if he gets sloppy, you let me know and I’ll deal with it.”
Glancing at Kian up and then down again, Mark chuckled under his breath. And yes, Kian was a decidedly less intimidating figure than Bastian was, but that didn’t matter. Kian had learned from the best. He could eviscerate anyone without lifting a finger.
“All of this?” Mark asked as Kian hauled the last of the eggplants out. “That’s a lot of work.”
“Terroir is a larger restaurant than Michael Mina,” Kian said shortly. “You’d better get on it.”
All in all, not the greatest start to their working career together, Kian considered as he grabbed his own veggies to start the daily soup special, but it also hadn’t been the worst. Mark was suspicious and a little intractable, but Kian still believed he could win his respect.
He had always been a good chef, but from Bastian’s mentorship, he could run this restaurant exactly as it needed to be run.
He didn’t intend to have quite as firm of a hand as Bastian had—he believed that he could get results without any of the yelling or the worst of the insults. But the way Kian got there mattered far less than the end result. He knew that was all Bastian cared about.
As Kian’s knife flew through the carrots he was prepping for the soup, it was a habit to watch out of the corner of his eye for Bastian—forgetting that Bastian was meeting with Nathan Hess today, and wouldn’t be in until much later. If at all, Bastian had added absently.
Kian wasn’t dumb enough to take his tone at face value.
This was, undeniably, a test. A test Kian intended to ace.
Even without Mark, Kian knew he was still at a disadvantage.
Bastian might have promoted him, but a part of Kian knew he wasn’t really ready, and that meant he needed to work twice as hard to prove himself.
He took an hour and took his time on the soup, believing that the prep was underway by Mark.
Kian had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate being checked on every ten minutes anyway.
None of the work he was doing was particularly difficult, except maybe dealing with Derek, and Kian had left a detailed list of what needed done.
He also had a pretty solid idea of how long it should take to complete the list he’d compiled, so he was surprised—and not in a good way—when he detoured through the prep station to find that after an hour, Mark and Derek had barely made a dent in the crates of vegetables spread out over the counter.
If he looked at the list, he would guess they’d barely completed a quarter of the prep, when they should really be more than halfway done.
And even worse, instead of working with purpose and speed, they were taking their sweet-ass time and gossiping like two old ladies.
“He came in with this whole chain of bruises down his neck. And I know there’s no boyfriend,” Derek said, completely fulfilling Kian’s worst impression of him. “So who gave them to him? I’d like to know.”
“You don’t think it was Aquino, do you?” Mark said, and there was that sly tone that Kian remembered so well from their culinary academy days.
“Excuse me,” Kian said in the firmest Bastian impression he could manage.
Mark didn’t look the tiniest bit embarrassed at being caught gossiping about Kian or the illustrious head chef of Terroir. Derek, however, did Kian the favor of at least blushing at his sudden appearance.
“Why is this not all done, already?” Kian asked. “You should be a lot further along by now. We have a lot to do. There’re stocks to get ready. Sauces to start. And you guys are still fucking prepping.”
“Derek here was just giving me the big scoop,” Mark said, and glanced right at Kian’s neck.
Thankfully in the last week, the bruises Bastian had kissed into his skin had already faded considerably.
This morning he’d looked in the mirror and been a little disappointed to see them slowly disappear, but now he was undeniably glad.
Mark could not find out that Bastian had been the one to leave them.
Kian wasn’t sure what he’d do with the knowledge, but it wouldn’t be good; Kian knew that much.
“Derek’s job,” Kian emphasized, “is to help you with the prep work of the day, not gossip.” He didn’t reiterate what Mark’s job was because Mark fucking knew what his job was.
He was just pushing Kian, seeing what he could get away with, and he had to know, Kian needed him to believe, that Kian was going to push back.
But the way to earn Mark’s respect wasn’t to call him out in front of Derek. It was to show Mark that Kian was in charge, and that he wasn’t going to tolerate any bullshit on shift.
“Just to make sure that’s very clear,” Kian continued, “Derek, I’d like you to go help Jorge in the dish room. I’ll finish assisting Mark with prep.”
Of course, Kian had other things to do, but with his presence to stifle any further laziness, he knew they could finish blowing through the rest of the list.
“Yeah,” Mark said indulgently, after Derek had already departed, “maybe you could slice my eggplants for me. On the Japanese mandolin, right?”
Kian gritted his teeth. So he’d heard that story too, had he?
“Correct, and I’d be happy to,” was all Kian said. Maybe if he didn’t engage Mark, then eventually he’d lose interest in pursuing whatever story he’d concocted in his head.
Of course, it just so happened to be a true story, but Mark couldn’t ever figure that out.
Kian whipped through the eggplants, being careful and also not putting the gloves on, because he didn’t want to give Mark any more reasons to believe the story he’d heard was the truth. His finger had long since healed, leaving only a thin, nearly invisible scar.
The rest of the chefs piled in for the service, and Kian directed them as necessary—but they’d all been at Terroir long enough that they knew exactly what to do, and how to do it.
And Kian, to his own surprise, realized that he’d been telling them what to do a lot longer than his official promotion.
Maybe, Kian thought as they sat down to family dinner, Bastian was right.
Maybe he did in fact deserve this position.
But no matter how many times he told himself that, he still felt over his head.
He wished he could’ve confided in Bastian and talked it through with him—wasn’t that what you did with a partner?
—but the thought of admitting any weakness to Bastian was terrifying.
He was relentless and inexorable. Weakness was denied until it didn’t exist. Mistakes happened once and only once.
Kian had become very good at sticking to Bastian’s personal rules, but he’d never been this far out of his depth before.
Kian put himself on the pass-through, adding garnish and inspecting each plate as they left the kitchen, and assigned Mark to one of the three sauté stations on the enormous stove.
Sauté was easily the most grueling station, other than the grill, but Wyatt’s replacement was so good that Kian wasn’t going to tempt fate by testing Mark there.
As he started calling out orders for starters, Kian watched Mark at his station. He was just learning the recipes, so it was not surprising that his movements weren’t as confident or as innate. Or as quick, Kian thought as the starters went out, and more entrée orders poured in.