Chapter 26
Alex
I'm in the Solstice kitchen doing prep work, my hands moving on autopilot through the familiar motions of breaking down vegetables. Isabelle gets in tonight, her flight landing just two hours before service starts, which is cutting it close.
So I'm here making sure nothing goes wrong, that every station is set up perfectly, that we're ready to go the second she walks through the door.
The kitchen is humming, the kind of energy that happens before a big service.
Lucy is at the fish station, portioning halibut, and Tomas is working through a mountain of microgreens at garde manger.
The afternoon light streams through the kitchen windows, catching the stainless steel surfaces and making everything gleam.
I'm about to check on the sauce station when Lucy glances up at me. "Hey, your phone buzzed again."
I wipe my hands on my apron and make my way over to where I left my phone charging near the pass. The screen lights up and my stomach drops. Three missed calls from Isabelle and three texts, all variations of the same message: Call me as soon as possible. Urgent. Please.
Something happened. My mind immediately goes to the worst places—what if she got hurt, was in a car accident, what if something happened with her father and she's stranded in Seattle, what if she's sick or in trouble?
I'm reaching to dial her back when Jean-Pierre's name flashes across my screen, an incoming call.
He must be calling about Isabelle. Something must have happened to her. My heart kicks into overdrive. I push through the kitchen door into the garden, answering as I go, fear tightening my chest at the thought that the most important person in the world to me might be hurt.
"Sir, is everything alright?" I say immediately, not bothering with pleasantries, my voice tight with worry. "Is Isabelle okay? Did something happen?"
"You're done," he says, and his voice is ice-cold. I stop walking, confusion replacing the fear.
"Excuse me?" I say.
"I know you slept with my daughter," he bites out, and now the anger is bleeding through, sharp and vicious. "She told me this morning that you've been sleeping with her. And if you think you can ever open a restaurant in this country after what you've done, you're delusional."
I stand there in the garden, completely stunned. My mind is racing, trying to catch up to what's happening. She told him. Isabelle told him about us.
"Listen," I start. "I'm in love with her, and she—"
"Don't you dare," he cuts me off, his voice rising now.
"Don't you fucking dare try to tell me this is about love.
You saw an opportunity. A young, naive woman with a famous father and deep pockets, and you took it.
You think I don't know men like you? You think I haven't seen this play a thousand times?
You're a small-town chef with big dreams and no way to fund them. "
"That's not—"
"The deal is off," he continues, steamrolling over my attempt to speak.
"Seattle is gone. The investment, the property, all of it.
Consider our agreement terminated effective immediately.
But more than that, Alex, any plans you ever had for your own restaurant, anywhere in this country, are finished.
You think I don't have reach? You think I can't make sure every investor, every landlord, every supplier worth working with in this industry knows exactly what kind of man you are? What you did to my daughter?"
"I didn't do anything to her," I say, anger starting to burn through the shock.
"She's my daughter," he snarls. "And you took advantage of her. You manipulated her, isolated her from me, turned her against her own family for your own gain. Well, congratulations, Alex. You just destroyed your entire future for a month-long fling."
The call ends abruptly, leaving me standing alone in the garden, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to dead air.
I slowly lower the phone, staring at the screen like it might offer some explanation for what just happened.
The garden is beautiful around me with its perfectly manicured hedges, late-blooming roses, the vineyard stretching out in neat rows toward the golden hills in the distance.
The kind of place people save up for years to visit, to get married at, to celebrate the best moments of their lives.
And I'm standing here watching mine fall apart.
I lean against the cold stone wall of the building, trying to think, but my mind keeps circling back to the same thought: Seattle is gone. The restaurant I've been dreaming about for years, the one I could finally see clearly, the space I'd already started designing in my head—gone.
And not just Seattle. Jean-Pierre wasn't bluffing about his reach.
If he wants me blacklisted, I'm blacklisted.
One phone call to the right people and suddenly no one will touch me with a ten-foot pole.
I've spent a decade building my reputation, working my ass off to be taken seriously, to be known as someone who does good work, who treats people right, who earns the opportunities that come his way.
And Jean-Pierre can undo all of that in an afternoon.
I pull up Isabelle's contact, my finger hovering over the call button. What the hell happened in Seattle? What did she say to him? Why now?
I press dial and wait, but the call goes straight to voicemail without even ringing. She's on her flight right now and should have wifi, so I send her a quick text telling her I spoke with her father and to call me when she can.
I stay outside, sliding down the stone wall until I'm sitting on the ground, my back against the building, staring out at the vineyards. I think about calling Theo, but what would I even say?
I need to go back inside. Service starts in less than three hours and Isabelle will be here soon and we need to talk, need to figure out what the hell just happened and what comes next.
Isabelle's flight was delayed and service started an hour ago without her, but it's going surprisingly well. She’s built this pop-up into a well-oiled machine over the past month, everyone knowing their role, everyone moving in sync.
The night goes on, but all the while Jean-Pierre's words keep playing over and over in my head like a song I can't shake.
She bursts through the kitchen door looking frazzled and meets my eye while I'm working at the stove, her expression pure stress and apology. Martinez greets her and she flashes him a smile that looks more like a grimace, before making her way directly to me.
"Hey," she says, stopping close. "Can we talk?"
"Er," I glance at the pan in front of me, flipping the scallops that are seconds away from overcooking. "How about after service? I don't think I can step away right now and I know Sofia needs you."
Her eyes fill with tears that she's clearly trying to hold back. "Alex... I'm so sorry. Please don't be—"
"I'm not mad at you," I say firmly, looking up from the pan to meet her eyes so she knows I mean it. "We'll talk after. It'll be okay."
I give her my best reassuring smile and she looks at my eyes for a moment longer, searching for something, before sniffing and nodding, straightening her shoulders and pulling herself together.
"Got it. I'll go check in with Sofia." She hesitates for just a second, like she wants to say something else, then turns and heads over to her station.
I nod, turning back to the stove and plating the scallops with hands that are steadier than I feel. Unable to shake the heaviness that's settled in my chest, the knowledge that everything just changed and there's no going back.
I lean against the outside stone wall after service, nursing a beer and trying to process the day. I already cleaned up my station, and the last of the cooks are heading home, calling out goodbyes as they disappear into the parking lot.
Isabelle got stuck talking to a table who stayed late, some restaurant people from San Francisco who wanted to talk shop with her. Good connections for her, so I wait out here, staring out at the vineyard and the stars.
Footsteps crunch on the gravel path and I turn to see her walking toward me, looking exhausted and wrung out, with her hair down now, falling around her shoulders.
She silently comes to stand beside me, leaning back against the wall, and I hand over my beer without a word.
She takes it, drinking a long sip, and we both stare out into the vineyard, listening to the crickets chirping in the warm night air.
"Alex," she says finally. "I'm so sorry. We agreed not to tell him and then I just... I lost it. I ruined everything."
I shrug, trying to make it seem lighter than it feels. "Hey, I mean I wanted to tell him originally. It had to come out at some point."
She shakes her head beside me, still looking out at the dark shapes of the vines.
"No, if we had done it your way there might have been a much different outcome.
I pretty much did it in a way that guaranteed this disaster.
We got in a screaming match, and I threw it in his face like a weapon.
He... he wouldn't have reacted this way if we'd gone about it like you wanted to in the first place. "
I wince at that, unsure what to say back. "What was the screaming match about?"
She sighs heavily and hands me back the beer. "I told him I'm not doing the New York City restaurant. I quit all of it. Everything he had planned for me."
I actually choke on my beer, turning to stare at her. "What? What do you mean you quit?"
She looks at me with exhausted eyes. "Well, I walked in on a phone call he was having with his business partner..."
She tells me the entire thing and I feel the emotions cycling from shock to rage to disbelief as she talks. Jean-Pierre is something else, controlling in a way I can't imagine having experienced.
My father could be intense and had his own impossibly high standards. But we never doubted his love, we never felt like our dreams weren't our own. Isabelle's gone her whole life without that certainty.
"So you talked to him?” She looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes. "No Seattle, I take it."
I shake my head. "No Seattle for sure. He also threatened to blacklist me from ever opening a place and make sure no one in this industry will touch me. I don't know how possible that really is. But then again, his reach is extensive, so who knows."
She makes a choked sound, slumping back against the wall like all the fight has gone out of her. "Alex, I ruined your life. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done this. I just blew up and it all came spilling out and now you're paying the price for my inability to control my temper."
The words tumble out of her faster and faster and I reach over and pull her into my arms, wrapping her up tight against my chest. She sniffles against me and I kiss the top of her head.
"You shouldn't be comforting me," she says, muffled into my chest. "I should be comforting you. You just lost out on everything you've been working toward for years."
I shrug, resting my chin on top of her head. "Eh, I've been thinking about it all day. Seattle would have been great, but maybe it was all more ego and proving myself than I wanted to admit. I can figure something else out. And Jean-Pierre's threats might be partially true, but I'll find a way."
She looks up at me, looking so full of guilt and despair that I lean down and kiss her deeply, trying to pour every ounce of reassurance I have into it. I pull back after a moment, brushing away the tears that are sliding down her cheeks.
"I am sorry for what happened to you," I say quietly. "That he treated you like that. That he made you feel like you weren't enough when you're more than enough. You're extraordinary, Isabelle."
She lets out a choked sob-laugh. "I told you to stop comforting me."
"Tsk," I say, brushing her hair back from her face. "Not sure I can do that. See, I think I like you just way too much to let you beat yourself up over this."
She smiles through her tears and pulls me down for another kiss, and we hold each other in the darkness, the vineyard quiet around us except for the crickets and the distant sound of someone closing up the main building.