Twenty
TWENTY
Mia
IT FELT REALLY STRANGE to be back at the restaurant, trying to hammer things into shape for some nebulous future grand reopening. The building still smelled like pest control chemicals; no amount of cleaning and scrubbing seemed to be able to get rid of it completely.
Nat sniffed the air in the dining room, frowning. “Really? I can barely smell it now.”
Shaniqua Jones looked over her shoulder, pausing in her self-appointed task of wiping down what I’d come to think of as the ‘roach wall’ for the third or fourth time. “Spoken like a beta. No offense, but sometimes I have no clue how you people function without a working nose.”
Nat only raised an eyebrow at her. “If it means I don’t have to smell organophosphates below a certain concentration, I’m actually fine with it,” he said. “Too bad our alpha and omega customers won’t feel the same.”
“I mean... it’s better than it was earlier, I guess?” I offered, aiming for optimism and falling somewhat short.
“Thank goodness for that,” Nat said.
The lingering smell was only one item on a seemingly endless list to be dealt with. There were the new menus to be printed, now that I’d collaborated with Shani on the changes. In addition to my Byron-flavored pizza rounds, coconut-lime drunken porgy, and cinnamon-bergamot chocolate lava cake, my sous-chef had contributed a smothered oxtail recipe served over dirty rice, along with a shrimp and andouille gumbo that was to die for.
We’d done inventory in the kitchen, where depressingly little could be safely salvaged after a major pest control operation and an extended closure. We couldn’t really restock until we had a firm reopening date, but I’d at least started making lists for our various suppliers.
And then there was the staffing situation.
“Take a break, you two,” Nat suggested. “You’ve been at this for hours.”
Shani and I flopped down at one of the tables without argument. Nat joined us.
“I want both your opinions on the prospect of bringing in new hires,” he said. “There are some ethical considerations here, and I’m not entirely sure how to approach them.”
In addition to losing Joe—not that his absence could really be considered a loss after what he’d done—we’d also lost our line cook Toby and another waiter, Paul. Honestly, I was surprised we hadn’t had more people abandoning ship, but the others had reacted to the news about Joe’s betrayal and SSG’s possible involvement with anger rather than fear.
Restaurants tended to harbor behind-the-scenes drama... but they could also become as close-knit as family. It was heart-warming and sobering in equal measure to see how passionate our core group of employees had become about the Elderflower Inn. We were asking them, in so many words, to risk an unknown level of potential danger by staying on, with a bunch of criminals apparently hell-bent on shutting us down by any means necessary.
But now we had to fill the shoes of those who’d either been fired, in Joe’s case, or decided to leave, in Toby and Paul’s.
Shani looked thoughtful. “There’s another point to consider before you start advertising the open positions.”
I nodded in agreement. “Completely aside from the ethics of bringing new people into a restaurant that’s got a giant target painted on its back, as soon as we publicly post the openings, there’s nothing to stop SSG from trying to plant more moles. We can’t guarantee that checking applicants for suspicious wrist tattoos would be enough to stop them.”
“Believe me,” Nat said, “the thought has occurred to me.”
Shani tapped her fingernails on the tabletop in a thoughtful rhythm. “Hmm. I might have a solution for that part. Give me a few days to organize it?”
I looked at her in surprise. “What kind of a solution?”
She shot me a grim smile. “Let’s just say I’ve got a really big extended pack. Some of them are probably between jobs. And none of them like bullies.”
Nat sat back in his chair and gave a satisfied nod. “If you can get us some new workers that are guaranteed not to be SSG plants, we owe you a raise. If everyone employed in the restaurant is vetted, that would at least eliminate the kind of internal sabotage we were dealing with before.”
Shani gave a wry snort. “If it means no more overhead storage racks randomly falling on my head, then I’m doubly motivated to find you some people.”
“Overhead racks... or greased stairwells. Or roach attacks,” I added. “Seriously, if you can fill those positions, that would be amazing .”
“I’m on it,” she said. “In fact, if we’re about done here for the day, I’ll go home and start calling some folks.”
“Yes, it’s getting late,” Nat said. “Thank you, Shaniqua—for everything.”
She scoffed, although she couldn’t quite hide her pleased expression. “Nonsense. I only managed to land this sweet Michelin-star gig a few weeks ago. You think I won’t fight to keep it?”
“You’ve earned it several times over,” I told her. “And one way or another, we’re going to kick some Bella Vita ass.”
“Preach, sister,” Shani agreed.
I waited until she’d headed out before turning my attention back to Nat. “Can we actually afford to give her a raise?”
“That’s going to depend rather heavily on how well the relaunch goes,” he replied, letting out a sigh.
“Do I want to know how the media interviews went?” I asked, bracing for disappointment.
Nat’s lips thinned. “ Town and Home passed on the story. Too gossipy for their exalted local rag, apparently. The Metro Lifestyle reporter is going to float it to her editor, but it sounds like if they take it, it’ll end up being a couple of inches somewhere in the middle of the magazine rather than a front-page headline.”
“Damn it,” I muttered.
“For what it’s worth, the Town and Home guy offered to send the story to a contact of his who works for one of the big national tabloids,” Nat went on.
“Oh, god. Not the ‘ Aliens Ate My Sasquatch Baby’ one, I hope,” I said, wincing.
“No, not quite that tabloid-y,” he replied. “Honestly, I don’t hold out much hope—but if they did decide to pick it up, it would end up in front of a much larger audience.”
“I guess so,” I said, hearing the skeptical tone creeping into my voice. “Still, maybe we should start the social media campaign without having a news article come out first. We need to do something .”
“Maybe,” he said. “I think we should hold off until after the interview with the U.S. Attorney’s office, though. It might look unprofessional otherwise.”
I sighed, deflating. “Yes, probably. Okay, like you said, it’s getting late. I should probably head out. Can you lock up?”
“Sure.” He wasn’t looking at me as I rose, having suddenly found something terribly interesting about the table’s polished surface. “Um, there’s something else...”
I paused, one hand resting on the back of the chair. “What is it?”
He glanced up. “Oh, nothing really. It’s not important. I just ran into one of your alphas at the gym yesterday.”
“Really?” I asked, startled. “Which one?”
“Emiel,” Nat said. “Apparently, we’re both members there. We just didn’t go at the same times of day. He, um, invited me to grab a coffee afterward.”
I stared at him. “He... what? Hang on, are you sure it was Emiel?”
He gave me a look. “Unless he has an identical twin who gets his jollies from impersonating him, then yes, I’m sure it was Emiel.” He hesitated, looking away again. “He’s worried about you. About us fighting back against this gang, I mean.”
I opened my mouth. Paused. Closed it.
Tried again. “And he invited you for coffee to tell you this?”
Nat shrugged helplessly. “I got the impression he thought I have some influence with you? I told him that wasn’t really the case. It’s your choice whether to pursue this fight with the Bella Vita people, not mine.”
I was having a surprisingly hard time getting this new revelation to compute. Shaking off the unlikely mental picture of Emiel inviting a virtual stranger for coffee, I focused on the last part.
“It’s our choice. Not my choice,” I protested. “This restaurant belongs to both of us. Have you changed your mind? Do you think this is the wrong decision?”
He shook his head without hesitation. “No. I told you before, I agree that fighting back is pretty much our only way to survive at this point, other than declaring bankruptcy and slinking away into the shadows of the restaurant industry with our tails between our legs.”
“But?” I prompted.
He blew out a frustrated breath. “But... I also have no real idea of what we may be getting ourselves—and our employees—into. This may come as a shock, but I don’t actually have any real-world experience with street gangs and the large-scale laundering of illicit drug money.”
Not for the first time, I felt a shiver of dread at what the future might hold crawling up my spine. I squared my shoulders and put a brave face on it.
“That’s all right,” I told him. “It just so happens, I know some people who do.”
There was a light on and the sound of someone moving around in the basement when I got home, so I went downstairs to find Emiel cleaning litterboxes while Princess supervised.
“Hey,” I greeted. “Have you been schmoozing my husband, using overpriced coffee as a bribe?”
He eyed me, straightening with a plastic scoop held in one massive hand. “Don’t think so. He was the one who ended up paying.”
Huh. So apparently Nat hadn’t been hallucinating, then. Until Emiel’s admission, I hadn’t completely discounted the evil twin theory.
I sat on the bottom step. “He said you were worried about me reopening the restaurant. You know, you can come to me directly with stuff like that.”
“I am,” he said. “And I could. But that wasn’t why I talked to him. Not really, I mean.”
I frowned in confusion. “It wasn’t?”
He shrugged. “I like the guy. Saw him at the gym and figured I might as well get to know him a bit better.”
The struggle not to say, ‘ Okay, who are you and what have you done with Emiel? ’ was surprisingly difficult.
“You... like my estranged beta husband?” I said instead. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but... why?” I realized how that sounded, and hastened to add, “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a generally good guy except for the crappy marriage stuff. It’s just... you barely know him.”
He fiddled with the scoop, his eyes straying to Princess. “He came here to make sure you were all right. Y’know, when you went into heat.”
I still wasn’t getting it. “Yes, he’s got a bit of a white knight complex. A lot of beta guys do.”
Now his soulful brown gaze met mine. “You shouldn’t blow it off like that. He was worried you might be in trouble, and he came to check. No one did that for me when I was young and needed help. No one did it for Luca, either.”
The sudden jolt in my chest felt like getting kicked by a mule. It was a good thing I was already sitting on the step, because I wasn’t sure my legs would have held me as understanding dawned.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Oh,” I managed hoarsely.
He tried on a flicker of a smile, but it slid away almost instantly.
“Yeah,” he said. “So, anyway, I like him. I know he was shitty to you in the marriage, but you still work with him, right? And you haven’t divorced him yet. Does it bother you that I talked to him?”
I tried to sort out my feelings in the wake of the metaphysical mule-kick. Emiel, who was so incredibly hurt and closed off, had reached out to someone who might have been his savior when he was young. Someone who was, as I’d just said myself, a generally good person. I turned the idea of Nat and Emiel becoming friends over and over in my mind, like a shiny puzzle piece.
“No,” I said eventually. “It doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I think that’s kind of amazing.”