A Quiet Kind of Dominance novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pass
Audrey audits a screaming chef's books, says one quiet sentence, and the whole kitchen stops.
The first thing I heard at Dombrowski's was a pan hitting a wall.
The second thing was a man's voice, loud enough to rattle the glasses on the bar.
"I said ninety seconds, not ninety minutes! Are you deaf or just stupid?"
I stood in the back doorway of the restaurant with my laptop bag on my shoulder and waited.
Nobody noticed me.
The kitchen was long and steel and very hot, with six cooks in white and one man in black shouting at all of them.
He was stocky and broad through the chest, with dark-blond hair tied in a knot on top of his head.
Both forearms were scarred with old burns.
I had seen him on television.
On television he was funny.
In person, at three in the afternoon with no cameras, he was just loud.
"Get it off my pass," he said to a young cook. "Get it out of my sight. Do it again."
The cook was maybe twenty-two.
His hands were shaking on the cutting board.
"Chef, yes, Chef," he said.
"Don't yes me. Do it."
The man in black grabbed a knife off the board.
He held it by the blade, pointing the handle at nothing, and leaned in over the boy's shoulder.
I put my bag down on a steel table.
I walked across the kitchen at an ordinary pace, past the fryer, past the line, until I stood about three feet from him.
I did not raise my voice.
I never do.
"Mr. Dombrowski," I said. "Please put the knife down."
He turned.
His eyes were very blue, and they were wild.
For one second I thought he might shout at me too.
Then he looked at my face, and something went across his own, quick and strange.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Audrey Wetherell. Abernathy and Wetherell. We have a three o'clock."
"I'm in the middle of something."
"I can see that. Put the knife down, please."
The kitchen had gone completely quiet.
A fan turned somewhere.
A pot started to boil over, and no one moved to touch it.
Hank Dombrowski looked at the knife in his hand.
Then he set it on the board, flat, with the handle toward the cook.
"Thank you," I said.
My hand went out on its own and closed over his wrist, where the pulse beat hard under the scar.
I held it for two seconds, lightly.
His skin was burning hot.
"You can take your hand off the pot now," I said to the young cook, without looking away. "It's boiling over."
The cook jumped and grabbed it.
I let go of Hank's wrist.
He did not look at the pot, or the line, or any of his people.
He kept looking at me.
"Everybody take ten," he said. His voice had dropped about an octave. "Go. Out the back."
They went, fast, with glances at me over their shoulders.
A woman with a black buzz cut and a bandanna was the last out.
She gave me a slow look and a small nod.
Then the kitchen was empty except for the two of us.
He wiped his hands on his apron.
"You're the new accountant," he said.
"I'm the accountant who read your last three sales tax filings and found a nine thousand dollar error. Yes."
"My bookkeeper quit."
"I heard why."
"I may have shouted."
"I heard that too."
He almost smiled.
It made him look younger, and very tired.
"Come to the office," he said. "I'll show you the receipts. They're in a shoebox."
"A shoebox."
"A big shoebox."
I followed him through a swinging door into a closet with a desk, a laptop, and three boxes of paper.
I sat in the only chair.
He stood.
For an hour, I went through the shoeboxes with a pencil, and he answered every question I asked.
He was quick and sharp.
He did not shout once.
At four, I closed the last box and slid my engagement letter across the desk.
"Flat fee," I said. "Three thousand two hundred a month. It covers the books, the filings, and the audit risk. It covers nothing else."
"Nothing else," he repeated.
"My fee has nothing to do with anything but numbers."
I said it plainly, because I always say it plainly.
He signed it without reading, and I made him go back and read it.
He did, slowly, with his lips moving.
I packed my bag.
At the swinging door he said my name.
"Ms. Wetherell."
"Yes."
He stood there with both hands flat on the steel table behind him, as if he needed it to stay up.
His voice was low and rough, and not at all the voice of the man on television.
"What you said in there. Put the knife down, please."
"Yes?"
"Say it again."
I looked at him.
Behind the shout and the burns and the cameras, something raw showed in his face.
I recognized it.
I had been waiting for it all my life.
I did not answer.
I only held the door.
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