Page 62 of Cornered

They sat in silence for several minutes. “My apartment in Atlanta had no green space. I couldn’t afford one with a garden roof, and the grass nearby was used by every dog in the building.”

He turned toward her, his face wrinkled in disgust.

“Exactly. No sitting in that grass. Ever.”

“Wise decision.” He turned his attention back to the river, but he scooted his body a fraction closer to her.

His voice had always been one of her favorite things about him. He could make her feel safe just by saying her name. But now, it was his willingness to sit in silence that kept her talking. “It was probably the only wise decision I made while I was there.”

He stiffened but didn’t speak.

“Chef Albert had been one of my dream chefs. The person I would do anything to work with, to learn from, to have the opportunity to absorb his culinary genius. So when the offer came, I didn’t think about it. I said yes, found a cheap place to live, and hauled my stuff to Atlanta so fast that I was already on the job before most of my family knew anything about it.”

“Risky.”

“Stupid.” She pulled a few blades of grass and began to twist them together. “Three days in, and I knew I’d messed up.”

“Three days?”

“Okay. Fine. I knew on the first day. But it took me to the third to accept it.” When he didn’t prompt her, she realized he wasn’t going to push for more than she was willing to give. And she gave more. “Kitchens are notorious for being hotbeds of addiction. Alcohol and cocaine are so commonly abused that no one bats an eye. Some chefs don’t think they can maintain the pace if they don’t snort some cocaine before they start. Line cooks and the front of house staff will close up a kitchen, then go party until dawn. Sleep it off during the day, but then need something to help them make it through a shift that night. It’s a vicious cycle.”

She tossed her little grass circle to the side, grabbed another handful, and started over.

“Chef Albert was an addict. He could be kind. He could be cruel. I never knew which version of him would be there when I walked in. But I didn’t want to say anything. He was Chef Albert. I kept hoping that maybe I’d caught him at a bad time, and he’d string together a few weeks of sobriety.”

“He didn’t?”

“Nope. I started looking for other opportunities in the city. I didn’t want to move again so soon. But I knew I couldn’t hold out for much longer. My goal was to suck it up for six months. Then leave.”

DONOVAN TRIEDto remember what he knew of Cassie’s work history. She’d been in Atlanta for four months. Not six. And when she left, she returned to Gossamer Falls.

He hoped she would tell him the rest of it, but if she didn’t, he’d keep his mouth shut and wait.

Her grass weavings grew increasingly frenetic. “But then one of the servers started dealing. Or maybe he’d been dealing all along. Regardless, he started bringing the drugs to Chef Albert at the restaurant. I never knew if the problem was that he had a different supplier and he reacted differently to the drugs, or if the dealer intentionally laced the cocaine with something else. Or maybe the longer you do a drug, the more erratic your behavior gets. Who knows? What I did know was that Chef Albert’s behavior became unpredictable. He was frequently manic after a hit, but he’d always funneled that energy into his cooking. But he became more and more angry. And when he offered me some cocaine and I refused, he screamed at me for a solid ten minutes.”

Donovan clenched his hands together. It had taken him no time at all to discover that while Cassie could appreciate constructive criticism, she took it hard every time. She’d told him more than once that she didn’t have thick skin, but she made up for it by being too stubborn to quit.

“I went home that night and considered all my options. The owner of the restaurant was a good man. And didn’t have a clue what was happening in the kitchen. The quality of our food was going down. I’d caught multiple mistakes in the previous few weeks, and while I’d been able to fix a few of them, more than one dish had gone to a customer in a way that Chef Albert would have normally fired someone over.”

She gave a weak laugh. “I was terrified, but I decided I had no choice but to confront him. It was a tough decision. Like I said, drug use is an open secret in the industry. Has been for decades. I couldn’t tell him that I had an issue with his cocaine use. He would tell me to find another job. End of discussion. But I thought if I called him out on the quality of his work, maybe he would listen. I took photos of some of his dishes,made notes about customer complaints, and spent another week compiling my arguments.”

She stretched her legs out in front of her and folded her body almost in half, reaching for her feet. She turned her head to face him. “It was so stupid. I should have kept my mouth shut, taken the hit to my résumé, and moved on.”

Donovan couldn’t sit still anymore. He reached toward her and twirled her hair around his finger. “Standing up for what’s right, trying to make a difference for good—those are not stupid things.”

“No?” She looked so very young and so very lost when she spoke. “Tell that to the man who died that night. I’m pretty sure he would disagree.”

Donovan tried to keep the shock from showing on his face. He’d known it had been bad, but he hadn’t expected it to be that bad. All he wanted to do was to pull Cassie into his lap and hold her and make every bad thing that had happened go away. But since he couldn’t do any of that, he traced her jaw with his hand. “Oh, baby. No. I’m sorry.”

She sat up and crossed her legs. “I walked into the chef’s office and asked if we could talk. He said yes. I sat down and shared my concerns. I hoped he would listen. I was prepared for him to fire me. But when I told him I’d documented the food mistakes and customer complaints, something in him snapped.”

She closed her eyes and spoke quickly. “He pulled a gun from his desk. Told me to get out of his office. Long story short, he took me and every chef, line cook, and two of the cleaning staff hostage.”

Donovan bit back the words he wanted to say.

“One of the line cooks, Jaime, argued with him and he shot him.” Cassie’s tears fell and she made no attempt to stop them. “We all saw it. And there was nothing we could do.”

Donovan couldn’t sit there while she cried. He put an armaround her and pulled her closer. She sobbed into his chest. “It was my fault.”

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