by Beth Bolden
Derek had been doing better the last few weeks, and Kian took the risk to assign him some of the more complicated prep, working on the Japanese mandolin.
He looked very skeptical as Kian carefully explained how it worked, and what needed to be done with the crates of eggplants piled on the counter. “Isn’t that what you cut yourself on?” he asked, eyeing the shining blade dubiously.
“I wasn’t wearing the gloves. You’re going to wear the gloves.”
“Like a pussy,” Mark inserted.
It was the most questionable thing that he’d said in days, long enough that Kian had almost begun to believe that the days of snarky, rude comments were over, and that he’d finally given up on questioning Kian’s authority.
That had apparently been too good to hope for.
“Not like a pussy,” Kian said between gritted teeth. “Like a smart, intelligent person who would like to keep all their fingers.”
“I heard Aquino carried you to the ER,” Mark said slyly.
Derek had the nerve to look guilty. So Mark hadn’t been behaving after all—he’d just been going behind Kian’s back to extract every bit of gossip that he could out of the rest of the staff.
He understood why the kitchen staff gossiped; their jobs were hard, if not actually impossible at points, and gossip helped alleviate some of that unrelenting pressure. And, it had been the moment of a lifetime to watch their notoriously hardheaded head chef lose his mind over an injury.
“I don’t remember that, actually,” Kian said.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, “because you fainted, like a pussy.”
It was hard, but not impossible, to keep his voice level and calm. “I’m confused here, Mark. Who’s the pussy here? First it’s Derek, for using the gloves. But then it’s me, for not using the gloves and cutting myself so badly I passed out.”
Mark’s glare was belligerent. It was clearly going to be one of those days, like somehow Mark had been in the bathroom this morning with him and Bastian and had heard Bastian wouldn’t be around to witness his shitty behavior.
It was unbelievably annoying, but Kian refused to let him see how it was getting to him.
If he did, Mark would never let it go, and Kian would be forced to either fire him, or report him to Bastian—both of which meant that Bastian would find out that Kian hadn’t been able to handle the problem himself.
Kian wasn’t ready to accept that yet, but it felt like today, Mark wanted to keep pushing him.
“Put the gloves on,” Kian directed to Derek. “Try the first eggplant, I want to make sure the settings are perfect.”
Derek did as directed, while Kian continued to feel the heat of Mark’s glare.
“There, that’s good. Just keep your movement steady and you should be fine,” Kian said.
“Is that what Bastian tells you?” Mark asked snidely.
The problem with Mark was that he wasn’t dumb at all. He was annoyingly intelligent; usually smart enough to make sure that anything he said that was really offensive had another potential meaning.
Kian ignored him and continued to focus on Derek.
The other problem was that Mark seemed to have a knack for knowing just the moment when he’d pushed Kian too far and he always retreated. He had to know that if he pushed too hard and too far, Kian would just snap and fire him on the spot, no matter the consequences.
But he always made sure Kian wouldn’t.
He did this time too, retreating after that last, infuriating comment back to his own station, and his own tasks.
After making sure Derek was all set, Kian stalked off, taking a five-minute breather in Bastian’s office and then venturing out to start the soup.
But maybe he was actually the dumb one, because he’d expected that Mark would mostly leave it alone, at the most do something questionable during service, like forget every fucking ticket Kian called out to him.
And that definitely would have been shitty enough, but Kian would have dealt with it. Maybe he might have broken another plate, even though he still felt a sickening knot of guilt from the last one.
If Mark continued to fuck up the sauté station, all he’d do was make himself look incompetent and lazy. Somehow, he must have figured that out, because he didn’t throttle it back and he didn’t do anything during service.
Kian had made an extra batch of the curry carrot soup for family meal, which paired well with the big salad Derek threw together, and the flank steaks Michel grilled, slicing them thin, still nearly bloody in the middle.
It was a Saturday night, and the reservation list was completely booked, which meant it would be a difficult, stressful service. Too many tables, and not quite enough staff—not quite enough competent staff, Kian corrected—to deal with it.
He’d probably end up at sauté and leave Michelle to give a straightforward if rudimentary glance over the dishes before they went up to the dining room. She’d worked at Terroir for awhile, and he’d seen Bastian rely on her before, so Kian felt okay doing it.
Not great, just okay, but he couldn’t dig Mark out of his mess of tickets and monitor the dishes at the same time. And if Bastian didn’t like that, Kian thought with a sigh, trying to stretch out the kink in his neck as he sat down to dinner, then that was too goddamn bad, and he should have made sure Kian had the staff he needed to succeed.
He definitely wasn’t counting Mark as a plus in that particular column.
Speak of the devil. Mark sat down next to him, a deceptively innocent look on his face. Of course Kian knew better, but he also couldn’t physically force Mark to shut up. Well, he could, but that would be a Human Resources nightmare.
“Neck stiff?” he asked innocently.
Kian looked over at him, inherently suspicious. “Must have slept on it wrong.”
Almost everyone was at the table, absorbed in the soup and the salad and Michel’s excellent meat, paired with the good bread. “Or,” Mark suggested slyly, “maybe you were too busy sucking Aquino’s cock to worry about how bad your neck would feel in the morning.”
You could hear a pin drop at the table. Almost everyone at it had been present, two months previous, when Kian had cut himself on the Japanese mandolin. They’d all witnessed Bastian losing his mind, the hottest gossip in ages. Even Kian had heard about it, because while he’d certainly not witnessed it, being passed the fuck out, the story had spread like wildfire. They’d seen Bastian pick Kian up bridal style and reject outright anyone else who attempted to help. They’d known Bastian had waited with Kian at the emergency room, and had driven him home afterwards, to the point of being late for a service. Something that had never actually happened before that particular day.
As Kian met each set of eyes at the table, he realized that they all knew. They knew and they’d all been talking about it, not only among themselves, but to Mark. Mark who would take this potentially salacious bit of gossip and turn it inside out, until it was the worst version of itself.
He’d make Kian look like a cock-sucking sycophant, who’d do whatever it took to get ahead. And Bastian? Bastian would be his normal asshole self, willing to take advantage of a much younger employee whom he was currently mentoring—to the point of demanding sexual favors for career favors.
Kian felt sick to his stomach. It wasn’t like some of these people didn’t respect him, but they’d clearly begun to form some other kind of opinion of him, and it wasn’t good.
He stood up slowly. “Excuse me?”
Mark leaned back, indulgent and smug. “You heard me. Are you really going to deny it?”
It sounded so sordid when Kian thought about it, which was exactly why he’d wanted to keep it a secret. Nobody knew that they’d resisted doing a single thing about their feelings for over two years. Nobody knew that Bastian was a better person than they’d ever imagined. Nobody knew Kian would have rather quit than take this job because he was sleeping with the boss.
But none of that mattered, because it sure as hell didn’t look like
any of that.
“You are.” Mark laughed incredulously. Kian clenched his fists and tried to remind himself what a nightmare it would be if he punched his own sous. “You’re really going to stand there and try to pretend that the vaunted and much-worshipped pecking order at Terroir can’t be undone as easily as Aquino undoes his pants at night?”
It was beyond stupid to engage. Even though it was a Saturday night, and they were going to be packed to the rafters with guests tonight, what he should do was fire Mark’s traitorous ass and call Bastian in to help, screw closing his deal with Nathan Hess.
Unexpectedly, Kian felt so betrayed, and not only by the staff he’d been working with so many months—years, even, for some of them. No, the main betrayal was Bastian’s. He’d saddled Kian with this dick and then manipulated the situation so Kian didn’t feel like going to him for assistance was even an option. It was fucking unfair and even though Kian had claimed it would never happen, he felt a surge of something that felt a lot like hatred.
Which was why he did the opposite of what he knew he should do.
“It’s not like that,” he said, and instantly knew it was wrong. He’d not only confirmed Mark’s version of the story, despite saying otherwise, and he’d gone on the defensive.
Mark, clearly sensing blood, pounced. “So you’re saying it is happening. You’re sleeping with Aquino.”
There was nowhere to go, except right through the shit, and try not to slide off the edge in the process.
“I can’t believe it,” Michel said, and he didn’t sound happy. Michel, who was someone Kian would have loved to have as his sous. But it would never happen now because there was a look of sheer disbelief on his face now—as if Kian had just betrayed everything he’d ever believed in.
“It’s not like that,” Kian repeated stubbornly, despite knowing that there was no way he could win from this position. He’d already admitted defeat.
“Oh, what’s it like?” Mark asked creamily. “Do you really love each other?”
Kian looked around the table and knew nobody would believe him if he claimed that was true. They’d already made up their minds, and they weren’t siding with him.
Somehow, he’d become the villain of the entire shitshow, which made no fucking sense to him at all. But if he was going to get labeled that way, he might as well go whole hog.
Kian had never punched anyone before, but with the adrenaline surging through his veins, it turned out it wasn’t all that hard. His hand didn’t even really hurt, he thought as he gazed at his scraped knuckles, at the speckles of blood, because of course once he’d hit Mark, he hadn’t wanted to stop. The blood, and him collapsing onto the floor were finally enough for him to pull back, panting.
He stared down at the floor, at Mark’s bloody, obnoxious face, and wished he could keep going until he was just a red smear on the floor. A burst tomato, strewn across the concrete.
Michel grabbed his arm and held him back, even though he’d already stopped. Mark was both taller and looked stronger, but that hadn’t mattered. Probably because the last thing he’d ever expected Kian to do was punch him in the nose.
“Holy shit,” Michel whispered, and for a blissful second, Kian thought he only sounded so shocked because he too had been surprised that Kian could punch the daylights out of Mark.
But that wasn’t why. Kian looked up and Bastian was standing at the pass-through, stunned expression on his face. Then his eyes hardened, and in his place was a man Kian didn’t recognize.
That wasn’t exactly true, though. He was familiar, like a blast from the past. This was the Bastian Kian had met that very first day, who hadn’t given a shit. Who hadn’t been in love with Kian. Who wanted to remind him who was boss, who was really in charge.
Fucking hell.
* * *
Bastian had been through a lot of bad, weird, and confusing situations in his twenty-plus years in the culinary industry. He had never once, not in all that time, ever come face-to-face with one and found himself speechless.
He was speechless now, rooted to the spot he’d stopped short at a minute before, when he’d listened to Kian give Mark all the ammunition he’d ever need, and then lose every single fucking ounce of control.
It wasn’t like he didn’t also want to punch Mark in the face, but he couldn’t exactly do it after he was already on the floor, bleeding.
“My office now,” he finally said, and didn’t miss the swift, guilty look Kian shot in his direction. Or the wounded expression Mark pasted on after being helped to his feet, with a rag to staunch the blood currently gushing out of his nose.
Bastian stomped over to his office, yanking the door open and pulling down the blinds so forcefully the bottom edges all crashed to the floor.
Was this what Kian had been holding back from him? That Mark had been trying to convince the rest of the staff to join his mutiny? That he was heckling him during his shift?
Bastian had told him to suck it up, to deal with Mark not liking him, but this was something entirely different, and he hoped, feeling a surge of guilt himself, that Kian would have known to come to him about it.
But he hadn’t, and now the Terroir kitchen had been witness to more than just broken plates.
Kian and then Mark slunk into his office, as Bastian stood at the doorway.
He looked out at the rest of the crew, who were understandably gaping at this turn of events. “Finish your meal and get prepped for service,” Bastian snapped. “And stop fucking staring.”
He closed the door behind him and didn’t even bother sitting down in his chair. He stood, facing his chef de cuisine and his sous chef—the two members of the kitchen staff who should have been working out problems with the rest of the employees, not letting their petty fight poison his restaurant.
“What the fuck,” he finally spit out. “What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you two?”
Kian opened his mouth, like he wanted to explain, but then he shut it again, inexplicably. Considering his position at Terroir, it was his responsibility to explain what had happened—never mind that it had been his fist that had met Mark’s face.
But instead of opening up, instead of offering any apologies or reasoning why he’d suddenly lost his fucking mind, he said nothing.
Bastian watched as Mark eyed Kian, trying to figure out if he was going to say anything, and when he didn’t, he jumped in.
“Chef, it was just some harmless gossip that some people took a lot more seriously,” Mark said, innocence dripping from his voice. Bastian guessed that he was referring to Kian, and maybe if he didn’t know Kian as well as he did, believing him would have been easier.
The thing he didn’t understand was Kian’s continued silence.
“Kian?” Bastian finally asked and felt another surge of frustrated anger that he’d had to ask. Didn’t the man have any sense of self-preservation? One of the two of them would have to go, and despite the blood currently smearing his knuckles, Bastian was almost certain that it shouldn’t be Kian. But if he didn’t fucking speak up and defend himself with his side of the story, how could Bastian keep him?
It felt like a betrayal, like suddenly Kian didn’t care enough to bother fighting.
Don’t you dare put me in this fucking spot, he thought. I can’t beg you. I won’t.
Kian shrugged, and Bastian might have believed he didn’t care at all, except the devastation in his eyes.
Like he’d already been fired. Like Bastian had already given up on him. When Bastian had actually been fighting for him every step of the way, and the only one who’d given up was Kian.
“Mark,” he said, “go pack your things. You’re fired.”
Frowning, Mark didn’t move. Not very smart of him, because even though Kian was a good seventy pounds lighter and a few inches shorter, Kian had already taken him out tonight. And Kian had stopped after a handful of hits; Bastian wasn’t sure he could, not with the toxic brew of fury and aggravation boiling inside him. During the
best of times, he had a temper; this definitely wasn’t the best anything.
“Excuse me, sir,” Mark said, “I just don’t think that’s fair. I know you’re . . . involved, and I shouldn’t be dismissed just because you don’t want to fire who you’re sleeping with.”
It was becoming clearer just how this asshole had managed to get deep enough under Kian’s skin to drive him to bloody his nose. He was a dick, with somehow even less self-preservation than Kian. Bastian straightened his back and gave Mark the coldest glare in his entire arsenal.
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” was all he said, but Bastian had a feeling it would be more than enough to demolish any bravery this asshole had left.
Mark blanched, but still didn’t seem to get how badly he’d fucked up, because he asked, “What about a reference?”
It was impossible to miss the shock crossing over Kian’s face. Bastian didn’t even know if what he really felt was shock; shock felt too small, too insignificant.
“Let me make sure I understand you,” Bastian said, voice silky smooth with rage. “I hire you to come and be Kian’s sous, with the belief you will support him with the staff and in the operation of this top-tier restaurant. But instead of doing any of that, you’ve been lazy, slow, and too busy gossiping to do your job properly. Then, to top off your sniveling, pathetic little machinations, you think it’s a good idea to cause mutiny among the rest of the staff, with some nasty, completely untrue gossip that Kian was promoted because he’s good at sucking my dick. Did I get all that correct?”
Bastian couldn’t meet Kian’s eyes as Mark stared at him. It had been easy enough to put together, and for some goddamned unknown reason, Kian hadn’t come to him. One word of this and Bastian would have been happy to fire Mark himself, and even call Michael Mina to tell him what a snake his former employee was. Not even a snake, Bastian corrected, a worm. Maybe even a disease on a worm.
“That’s not . . .” Mark hesitated. “That’s not entirely how it was.”
