“I’m not extorting your daughter,” I say simply. “I’m offering her a job.”
“You hold the debt,” she says.
“I’m also a man who eats three times a day,” I say. “Two things can be true.”
Bianca’s mouth tightens like she wants to smile at that and knows better. “What does ‘full-time’ mean in your house?”
“Breakfast at nine,” I say. “Lunch if I’m there. Dinner at seven unless I tell you otherwise. Grocery in the morning, prep, cook. I’ve got a man who cleans; you don’t do dishes. If I host, you build the menu. If I don’t, you feed me. Transport’s on me. “Driver picks you up, takes you home. I don’t want you on a bus at midnight.” I pause for a beat. “You don’t cook for my enemies.”
Francesca snorts. “How would she know?”
“I’ll tell her,” I say. “You won’t have to guess.”
Bianca sits back. “You going to tell me what not to cook, too?”
“You create a weekly menu, and I approve it.”
Francesca looks like she swallowed a nail. “She’s not leaving me to do this alone.”
“She isn’t,” Bianca says, and finally looks at her mother, softening the words with tone. “You have Carmen. You have Elio. You have Tomas and Zia. You’ve been doing this. I’ll be here on Sundays. I’ll check the books. I’ll call vendors. I can do that from anywhere. I can… try this.”
I don’t let myself show anything at “try.” I don’t push. I look down at the table and then back at her, give her the quiet I would want if I were asked to choose between two lives.
She folds her hands again. “What do you get out of this besides dinner?”
“Besides dinner?” I say. “Predictability. Less time in restaurants I don’t trust. Fewer meetings like this. I get a kitchen I can control. I get to move this off my books faster.”
“You could hire any chef in the city,” she says.
“I could,” I say. “I’m asking you.”
Bianca watches me a beat like she’s weighing all the angles.
“Conditions?” Bianca asks. “Besides not cooking for your enemies.”
“You don’t talk about who you feed at my house,” I say. “You don’t bring strangers into my kitchen. If you need a second set of hands for an event, you ask me, not your cousin or friend. You don’t post any pictures of my home.” I tilt my head. “You don’t steal my knives.”
She looks legitimately offended. “I would never, and I have my own anyway.”
Francesca bristles. “She doesn’t make decisions with a gun to her—”
“There’s no gun,” I say. “There’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a ledger.” I stand, because sitting will turn this into a negotiation I don’t want. “Let’s make it a test, then.”
Bianca’s eyes narrow. “A test.”
“Tonight,” I say. “I’ll come in. I expect a meal, your hands on every part of it. Not you babysitting someone else’s pan. Your menu. Your call. I sit. I eat. If it’s what I think it will be, the deal’s on. If it isn’t, we forget this and go back to weekly payments.”
Bianca lifts a hand. “No games.”
“No games,” I say. “You’re a chef. Chefs cook. I’m giving you the only measure that counts in this business—plate to mouth.”
Bianca stands too, almost on instinct, like she won’t let me be the only one. “You want a tasting menu,” she says, not a question.
“I want dinner,” I say. “For me. Two courses, three, whatever you decide. One pasta, because I want to see your hand on it. And one surprise. Something I wouldn’t expect.”
Her mouth does a small, tight thing that isn’t a smile but isn’t not. “You always give homework?”
“Only when I like the student.”
