Chapter Fourteen #2
“Neck stiff?” he asked innocently.
Kian looked over at him, inherently suspicious. “Must have slept on it wrong.”
Almost everyone was at the table, absorbed in the soup and the salad and Michel’s excellent meat, paired with the good bread. “Or,” Mark suggested slyly, “maybe you were too busy sucking Aquino’s cock to worry about how bad your neck would feel in the morning.”
You could hear a pin drop at the table. Almost everyone at it had been present, two months previous, when Kian had cut himself on the Japanese mandolin.
They’d all witnessed Bastian losing his mind, the hottest gossip in ages.
Even Kian had heard about it, because while he’d certainly not witnessed it, being passed the fuck out, the story had spread like wildfire.
They’d seen Bastian pick Kian up bridal style and reject outright anyone else who attempted to help.
They’d known Bastian had waited with Kian at the emergency room, and had driven him home afterwards, to the point of being late for a service.
Something that had never actually happened before that particular day.
As Kian met each set of eyes at the table, he realized that they all knew. They knew and they’d all been talking about it, not only among themselves, but to Mark. Mark who would take this potentially salacious bit of gossip and turn it inside out, until it was the worst version of itself.
He’d make Kian look like a cock-sucking sycophant, who’d do whatever it took to get ahead. And Bastian? Bastian would be his normal asshole self, willing to take advantage of a much younger employee whom he was currently mentoring—to the point of demanding sexual favors for career favors.
Kian felt sick to his stomach. It wasn’t like some of these people didn’t respect him, but they’d clearly begun to form some other kind of opinion of him, and it wasn’t good.
He stood up slowly. “Excuse me?”
Mark leaned back, indulgent and smug. “You heard me. Are you really going to deny it?”
It sounded so sordid when Kian thought about it, which was exactly why he’d wanted to keep it a secret.
Nobody knew that they’d resisted doing a single thing about their feelings for over two years.
Nobody knew that Bastian was a better person than they’d ever imagined.
Nobody knew Kian would have rather quit than take this job because he was sleeping with the boss.
But none of that mattered, because it sure as hell didn’t look like any of that.
“You are.” Mark laughed incredulously. Kian clenched his fists and tried to remind himself what a nightmare it would be if he punched his own sous.
“You’re really going to stand there and try to pretend that the vaunted and much-worshipped pecking order at Terroir can’t be undone as easily as Aquino undoes his pants at night? ”
It was beyond stupid to engage. Even though it was a Saturday night, and they were going to be packed to the rafters with guests tonight, what he should do was fire Mark’s traitorous ass and call Bastian in to help, screw closing his deal with Nathan Hess.
Unexpectedly, Kian felt so betrayed, and not only by the staff he’d been working with so many months—years, even, for some of them.
No, the main betrayal was Bastian’s. He’d saddled Kian with this dick and then manipulated the situation so Kian didn’t feel like going to him for assistance was even an option.
It was fucking unfair and even though Kian had claimed it would never happen, he felt a surge of something that felt a lot like hatred.
Which was why he did the opposite of what he knew he should do.
“It’s not like that,” he said, and instantly knew it was wrong. He’d not only confirmed Mark’s version of the story, despite saying otherwise, and he’d gone on the defensive.
Mark, clearly sensing blood, pounced. “So you’re saying it is happening. You’re sleeping with Aquino.”
There was nowhere to go, except right through the shit, and try not to slide off the edge in the process.
“I can’t believe it,” Michel said, and he didn’t sound happy. Michel, who was someone Kian would have loved to have as his sous. But it would never happen now because there was a look of sheer disbelief on his face now—as if Kian had just betrayed everything he’d ever believed in.
“It’s not like that,” Kian repeated stubbornly, despite knowing that there was no way he could win from this position. He’d already admitted defeat.
“Oh, what’s it like?” Mark asked creamily. “Do you really love each other?”
Kian looked around the table and knew nobody would believe him if he claimed that was true. They’d already made up their minds, and they weren’t siding with him.
Somehow, he’d become the villain of the entire shitshow, which made no fucking sense to him at all. But if he was going to get labeled that way, he might as well go whole hog.
Kian had never punched anyone before, but with the adrenaline surging through his veins, it turned out it wasn’t all that hard.
His hand didn’t even really hurt, he thought as he gazed at his scraped knuckles, at the speckles of blood, because of course once he’d hit Mark, he hadn’t wanted to stop.
The blood, and him collapsing onto the floor were finally enough for him to pull back, panting.
He stared down at the floor, at Mark’s bloody, obnoxious face, and wished he could keep going until he was just a red smear on the floor. A burst tomato, strewn across the concrete.
Michel grabbed his arm and held him back, even though he’d already stopped. Mark was both taller and looked stronger, but that hadn’t mattered. Probably because the last thing he’d ever expected Kian to do was punch him in the nose.
“Holy shit,” Michel whispered, and for a blissful second, Kian thought he only sounded so shocked because he too had been surprised that Kian could punch the daylights out of Mark.
But that wasn’t why. Kian looked up and Bastian was standing at the pass-through, stunned expression on his face. Then his eyes hardened, and in his place was a man Kian didn’t recognize.
That wasn’t exactly true, though. He was familiar, like a blast from the past. This was the Bastian Kian had met that very first day, who hadn’t given a shit. Who hadn’t been in love with Kian. Who wanted to remind him who was boss, who was really in charge.
Fucking hell.
Bastian had been through a lot of bad, weird, and confusing situations in his twenty-plus years in the culinary industry. He had never once, not in all that time, ever come face-to-face with one and found himself speechless.
He was speechless now, rooted to the spot he’d stopped short at a minute before, when he’d listened to Kian give Mark all the ammunition he’d ever need, and then lose every single fucking ounce of control.
It wasn’t like he didn’t also want to punch Mark in the face, but he couldn’t exactly do it after he was already on the floor, bleeding.
“My office now,” he finally said, and didn’t miss the swift, guilty look Kian shot in his direction. Or the wounded expression Mark pasted on after being helped to his feet, with a rag to staunch the blood currently gushing out of his nose.
Bastian stomped over to his office, yanking the door open and pulling down the blinds so forcefully the bottom edges all crashed to the floor.
Was this what Kian had been holding back from him? That Mark had been trying to convince the rest of the staff to join his mutiny? That he was heckling him during his shift?
Bastian had told him to suck it up, to deal with Mark not liking him, but this was something entirely different, and he hoped, feeling a surge of guilt himself, that Kian would have known to come to him about it.
But he hadn’t, and now the Terroir kitchen had been witness to more than just broken plates.
Kian and then Mark slunk into his office, as Bastian stood at the doorway.
He looked out at the rest of the crew, who were understandably gaping at this turn of events. “Finish your meal and get prepped for service,” Bastian snapped. “And stop fucking staring.”
He closed the door behind him and didn’t even bother sitting down in his chair. He stood, facing his chef de cuisine and his sous chef—the two members of the kitchen staff who should have been working out problems with the rest of the employees, not letting their petty fight poison his restaurant.
“What the fuck,” he finally spit out. “What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you two?”
Kian opened his mouth, like he wanted to explain, but then he shut it again, inexplicably. Considering his position at Terroir, it was his responsibility to explain what had happened—never mind that it had been his fist that had met Mark’s face.
But instead of opening up, instead of offering any apologies or reasoning why he’d suddenly lost his fucking mind, he said nothing.
Bastian watched as Mark eyed Kian, trying to figure out if he was going to say anything, and when he didn’t, he jumped in.
“Chef, it was just some harmless gossip that some people took a lot more seriously,” Mark said, innocence dripping from his voice. Bastian guessed that he was referring to Kian, and maybe if he didn’t know Kian as well as he did, believing him would have been easier.
The thing he didn’t understand was Kian’s continued silence.
“Kian?” Bastian finally asked and felt another surge of frustrated anger that he’d had to ask.
Didn’t the man have any sense of self-preservation?
One of the two of them would have to go, and despite the blood currently smearing his knuckles, Bastian was almost certain that it shouldn’t be Kian.
But if he didn’t fucking speak up and defend himself with his side of the story, how could Bastian keep him?
It felt like a betrayal, like suddenly Kian didn’t care enough to bother fighting.
Don’t you dare put me in this fucking spot, he thought. I can’t beg you. I won’t.
Kian shrugged, and Bastian might have believed he didn’t care at all, except the devastation in his eyes.