“A united front?” I repeated. I cocked my head to the side and then slowly turned and faced him. “Why would I want to be united with you?”
I turned and left him with those words ringing in his ears. I wanted him to think hard about the fact that he’d tried to throw me under the bus, and the very next day, asked me for help.
And I wanted him to know something else: that I hadn’t forgotten this was a contest.
If he could play dirty, so could I.
And if he wanted to take a stand against Grey when his job was already on the line, then I wasn’t going to risk myself alongside him.
I was happy to just watch – and be there to accept the role when Grey cleared Rafael out of my way.
Rafael
When Grey arrived at The Crow that afternoon, he must not have known what was going to hit him.
We’d carried on with our duties as we waited for him to show; it wasn’t unusual for him to not show up until it was almost time to eat, just as it was also not unusual for him to be here before any of us. He was unpredictable. I had a feeling that the only thing that truly dictated Grey Monaghan’s schedule was whether or not he’d gotten laid the night before.
It had already reached time for family dinner by the time he showed. He was lucky that I’d made enough portions for him to take part; but when he came to take his place at the head of the table as though nothing had happened yesterday, he found his plate empty and a lot of angry stares pointed in his direction.
He stopped and did a double-take, glancing over all of us with his hands on the back of his chair, ready to pull it out. Then he grimaced and shook his head, running a heavily-ringed hand back through his hair. “Go on, then,” he said. “Out with it.”
I stood up. “Grey, you made a mistake. Luca did not deserve to be fired last night.”
Grey scoffed dismissively and waved a hand in his direction. “Oh, come –”
“No, he’s right,” Beau said, standing up eagerly to join him. “I was watching the service and plating all evening, and I was the one putting out the plates for Chef Drake. I know that none ofthem were dirty. The two stains matched one another in color and consistency, so I believe strongly that the customer made the marks themselves in order to get the meal for free.”
Grey narrowed his eyes and glared back at me. “Is this a coup?”
“We’re taking a stand,” I said. “Luca is the youngest and newest member of our team, and he deserves to have someone stand up for him. Especially given that he’s not here to speak for himself.”
Ainslie’s chair scraped back across the wooden floors as he shot to his feet all of a sudden. I caught Drake on the verge of rolling his eyes at the dramatic motion and glared at him.
“I stand with him, too,” Ainslie announced. “We can’t let you do something like this and get away with it.”
“Get away with it?” Grey repeated incredulously. “Who do you think you are, you…”
He was interrupted by the sound of two more chairs scraping back. Kit and Nikolai had exchanged a look and then stood simultaneously.
“Sir,” Nikolai said respectfully. “I also have doubts that the plates were dirty when I placed them in front of the customer.”
“We checked the cameras,” Kit added. “You can’t see the plates properly on that table with the angle, but I trust both Nik and Beau. If they say the plates were clean, they were clean.”
There was only one person who hadn’t spoken. One person who stood out like a sore thumb, now, still in his seat. His very presence grated on my nerves at the best of times, but seeing him now breaking the pattern of us all standing around the table made him even more detestable.
Grey’s gaze shot right over to him – to Drake.
“And you?” he asked.
There was a long moment. Drake looked at his own hand on the table, as if tapping lightly on the wood was far more important than having this conversation. He looked up; not at Grey, at first, but – strangely – at me.
I tried to glare at him hard enough to convince him to do the right thing.
He looked up at Grey. “I don’t know if the plates were dirty or not,” he said. “I trust your judgment as owner and manager of this place. If you say he’s fired, he’s fired.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I muttered under my breath, but Beau and Nikolai were already rounding on him, shouting that he was being unfair.
“Well, I’m afraid I have to say that only one of you is making any sense,” Grey said, throwing his hands up in the air as if it was all just a terrible shame that he had no control over. “Drake is right, and you’d all better listen to him. I’m the boss. What I say goes. You don’t get to question the executive decisions that I make.”
