The One Who Waited novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Lockup

Skye posted an emergency episode at six the next morning.

It was called "The Woman Who Took My Job."

She cried for fifty-one minutes.

She never said my name. She said "a certain pastry chef" and "a woman who married a felon for money" and "a West Village dessert menu you might want to think twice about."

By noon the restaurant had four hundred new one-star reviews.

found a hair in the cake. the baker is a gold digger. would give zero stars if I could.

None of them had ever eaten there.

On Wednesday the owner called me in before lineup.

He didn't take me to his office.

He did it at the pass, in front of the whole kitchen, the same spot where Derek had stood.

"Merry, I'm sorry. I can't have a scandal on the dessert menu. Reservations are down a third. My investors are calling me."

"I've worked here eight years."

"And you've been great. You'll get two weeks."

My head chef slammed a pan down on the flat-top.

"This is garbage, and you know it."

"It's business," the owner said.

I had heard that sentence a lot lately.

I untied my apron and folded it on the pass.

"The chocolate olive-oil cake comes off the menu tonight," I said.

"It's our bestseller."

"It's my grandmother's recipe. It leaves with me."

I rolled up my knives.

Every cook on the line stopped working and stood at their station while I walked out, and the dishwasher started a slow clap that nobody joined, and then everybody did.

Tamara called while I was standing on Hudson Street with my knife roll under my arm.

"Bad news first," she said. "The lockup's real. Derek got the bankers to make it twelve months for founders. And somebody cut your access to the company files this morning."

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