“Yeah, we do,” I said. I clenched a fist at my side, trying to will myself to stay strong. This was important. If Grey could fire Luca for no reason, he could fire any of us for no reason. Worse, Luca – or anyone else who was treated the same way – could come back and sue the restaurant for unfair dismissal, leaving us all eventually out of a job. “We are stakeholders here. This is our livelihood, and we pour far more hours, blood, sweat, and tears into it than most workers do in other jobs. If the kitchen isn’t working properly, you don’t have a business.”
“Is that a threat?” Grey asked, raising his chin at me with a dangerous glint in his eyes.
I took a breath. I had to pray and believe that my team was still with me. That I was still their Head Chef in their minds, and not Drake.
“Let me say this,” I said. “If you do not hire Luca back – or at least, offer him the job, since he might not want it anymore – then we’re all going to go on strike.”
Grey snorted a laugh of surprise but then looked at me again. His smile faltered when he realized that I was serious.
“You’re willing to do that over adishwasher?” he asked.
Ainslie drew himself up as much as he could. “Iwas a dishwasher not that long ago,” he said.
“I think you have your answer,” I said. Around the table, everyone – with one notable exception – nodded grimly in confirmation.
Grey sighed. That hand went back through his hair again. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll think about it. I need to go over any evidence we have and look into this customer, see if he has any prior history of pulling scams on restaurants. I’ll take a look at everything and consider Luca’s case again.”
It wasn’t exactly much. “Are you really going to do it, or are you just putting us off from striking for a few days in the hope that we’ll forget about it?”
Grey snorted. “I’m really going to do it,” he said. He gestured at the table. “Now, can we please eat this delicious spaghetti? The smell is incredibly distracting.”
I wasn’t convinced – but it would have to do.
Everyone was looking at me, so I repeated Grey’s gesture towards the food and moved to sit. Everyone followed my example. I looked up and found myself meeting Drake’s eyes across the table. He was looking at me with a kind of bored insolence as if he was done with my act – but he, out of anyone, should have known it wasn’t an act.
I would fight for the people around me. I would protect them. Even if that meant rooting out unwelcome influences from amongst us.
Not that my rooting had worked, given that he was still here.
We all ate mostly in silence. There was a quiet animosity now amongst us, and everyone sitting there knew where the lines had been drawn. Drake had shown us categorically: he was not one of us.
It was all of us versus him and Grey.
Maybe he thought that would get him the job. But what he didn’t realize, maybe would never realize, was that it was losing him the team.
My anger built and built every time I looked up from my plate and saw him there. Eating my food. Causing dissent amongst my team. Coming intomykitchen and thinking he could disrupt everything and take over like I was nothing.
I stabbed my fork into the last bit of spaghetti on my plate, swirled, and shoved it in my mouth.
This time, when I looked up, he met my glare – and he almost seemed taken aback by how intense it was.
Did he really think that his actions would have no consequences?
The others peeled off back into the kitchen as soon as they were done eating, no one wanting to hang around in this awkward atmosphere for longer than was necessary. Grey himself disappeared into the office, and I grabbed both my own plate and the serving dishes from the center of the table to start clearing away.
Drake grabbed for the serving dish at the same time.
“I can clear it myself,” I hissed at him. “I don’t need your help.”
He gritted his teeth. “You’re not even going to attempt to work together?”
“I work together with my team,” I said. “You’re not one of them. You’re just the one fucking the boss.”
The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was going to say them. They sounded shocking even to my own ears: laced with hate and, underneath it all, an obvious undercurrent of jealousy that made me cringe. I hadn’t meant it to come out that way. I hadn’t meant to say it at all. And now Kit and Nikolai, who knew me well enough to know that I didn’t curse, didn’t talk like that, were staring at me with wide eyes.
“Fuck,” Drake muttered under his breath. “That’s what you think?”
“That’s what I know,” I said, picking up the serving dish and wrenching it away from his grasp, then marching into the kitchen.
