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“The new factory is ready to go,” Rondelle adds.

“And what about my part?” Scotch asks warily.

“Your job?” I narrow my eyes. “The same as before. Keep an eye on my son.”

I don’t wait for a response, I am done with this meeting.

Marching from the room, I slam the door shut behind me, but I can already hear the whispers.

Know that they will be questioning me going forward.

I need to track down who this John Doe is and how exactly he was poisoned.

2

Rolling in the Dough

Cinnamon

Six Months After That

My fingers land aggressively on the keyboard as I update my resume.

“This is bullshit!” I snap out.

“Cin, chill out girl. You’re going to find another job,” Olive placates gently from behind me.

Spinning in my chair, I find my friend lying on my bed, her chin resting on her fists, her chocolate eyes glazed over. Our other friend Durian is sprawled out, snoring beside her. It is well past midnight, and I have been at this for over an hour.

“How can The Marbled Bison fire me? I was their sous chef! It’s not my fault,” I groan for the ninety-millionth time.

“Cin, you can’t expect them to keep you around. You’re just…” Olive’s bright wasabi hair is sticking out like a misshapen star, and I know there is at least a pound of gel keeping it in place.

Not everyone could be in a popular band and rolling in the dough.

Some of us had to roll the dough.

My attention flicks to the eggplant striped and tattered frog on the nightstand next to my bed. The one that I had sewn up just over six months ago. “Bad luck. Yeah, I got it.”

That frog had allowed me to escape a horrible family situation, but it had led me down a perilous path.

I had been tossed from foster home to foster home until, at the age of twelve, a distant great aunt came out of the woodwork to take me in.

Olive scrunches her eyes shut. “Why don’t you just go into the private chef business? You have the skills. And you don’t want to settle for a shit hole kitchen again. You were miserable last time you did.”

My memory flashes to the job at a marina-side restaurant a few years back. The one that promptly ended after I was blamed for the influx of rats.

Apparently trapping the cats outside and assisting in getting them adopted had caused a trickledown effect.

“Work for myself? No resume needed?” The idea sparks insanity in my sleep-addled brain. “You’re a fucking genius!”

Spinning back to my laptop, I minimize the resume as the passion grows in my gut.

“Fuck! Cin, what are you doing?” I hear Olive jump off the bed beside me. “You have to stop diving in without thought!”

The search engine pulls up exactly what I’m looking for.

“A knife for hire! That’s what I’ll do! I just need to set up a website. I’ll only need a few hundred bucks… Fuck, Knife for Hire dot com is already taken… I’ll figure it out.”