Addicted (The Addicted Series, #1)(58)

I laughed and nodded. "Yeah, it means something to put me in TMZ without it being attached to the words police, scandal, or starlet. You get his name?"

"Yeah, he dropped off a card. You want it?"

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Sure, why not? Gotta look at least somewhat respectable half the time."

Randy got the card, and handed it over to me. "So is everything cool now? You came in ready to tear the f*cking doors out of their hinges."

I thought about it, and the word Krystal flashed in my mind again. "Yeah, it's cool. Everything is Krystal clear."





Chapter 2


Krystal




My hand ached, and my fingers were almost numb after chopping and slicing vegetables for seven hours, but I kept at it. I'd been busting my ass for too long to screw up this close to breaking onto the line, regardless of if Mom was marrying Johnathan or not.

"Aksoy!" the sous chef, a German man named Horst, called over. "I'm checking your station!"

"Yes Chef!" I yelled back. In a professional kitchen, it's really the only acceptable answer. Is your food ready? Yes, Chef! Are you listening to me? Yes, Chef! Did you really just put peanut butter in the beef Wellington like a brain dead zombie? Yes, Chef!

Once, when my best friend Kimberly asked me what it was like working in a professional kitchen like the one at Alinea, my reply left her wondering if I was crazy. "Go watch Full Metal Jacket," I told her as we toweled the sweat off of ourselves. It had been the end of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class, which I may add is a great way to get rid of stress. "Watch the first half from the beginning until they go to Vietnam. Replace Marines with chefs, and rifles with cooking knives. That's kind of my life" I said laughing, but was dead serious.

I could understand why Kim thought I was crazy. I mean, my father, Danyal Aksoy, had been one of the first Middle Eastern chefs to try and make it big in the United States. When he married my mother, Sandra Hepburn, they'd both found their soul mates. Between her business skills, backed by her family's old money, and Dad's culinary skills, they took his single little kebab shack in the east side of St. Louis and built it into one of the largest food companies catering to the Jewish and Muslim populations in North America. While Dad himself wasn't a practicing Muslim, and I'm pretty much a non-service attending agnostic, he had grown up knowing nothing but halal foods. He built off of that, and by the time the cancer took him when I was fourteen, he'd become a multi-millionaire by his own hand. After his death, Mom continued to build the company for a few years before selling it, and putting a large chunk of the proceeds into a trust fund for me. Last I checked, my yearly interest alone on the fund would be enough to let me live an upper middle class life without ever doing a damn thing.

But I knew, even before Dad died, what I wanted to do. He'd been taking me into the kitchen with him ever since I could walk, and some of my favorite memories of him were the two of us hanging out in the kitchen as he taught me the secrets of his spice mixtures, or how he got the consistency just right on his beans. "Someday Krystal," he would tell me, "you're going to have to cook for yourself. There's a whole world of food out there to discover. Enjoy it."

I did, and knew what I was getting into. After graduating from Kendall College with a degree in the culinary arts, I'd immediately gone out to all of the top restaurants I could in the St. Louis and Chicago areas, determined to find a position and work my way up. In that respect, I guess being young and rich helped, because I could afford to start off slicing vegetables for three hundred bucks a week. I'd worked my ass off for the past three years, dealing with the dictatorial executive chefs and the cut throat sous chefs, just waiting for my chance to get on the line.

My big break was within my grasp, as I heard the sous chef start making his way towards me from the other end of the kitchen. The head chef, Shannon, who besides having an ego the size of Chicago was actually pretty nice, had gotten a call from the producers of Iron Chef America. She was scheduled to take on one of the Iron Chefs in two months in a special holiday episode, and she wanted to put together her "battle crew."

However, Alinea couldn't close because of filming a TV show, so instead of just taking the top chefs who had worked with her for the longest, she had tasked Horst with selecting a crew that would listen to her directions best and produce for her with minimal guidance. Apparently Horst had a friend who was a sous chef for a contestant who had lost on Iron Chef, and said that it was the most important thing to do.

So that gave me my opportunity. With four of the kitchen crew gone, I had the chance to either take a place in the line, or if I were lucky, to maybe be the most junior member of Shannon's team for Iron Chef. I wasn't sure which I wanted more, honestly. I mean, three days of working the line directly under Horst would give him a clear view of my skills. On the other hand, if I could produce for Shannon in that one hour of television taping, it could be even better. If Shannon lost however, I might be out of a job. She had that kind of ego.

"Show your work, Aksoy."

I stepped aside, and let Horst look at my efforts. He hemmed and hawed as he looked with a hawk eye over my cuts. Finally, he stepped back and nodded. "Good work. I'm going to tell Chef Shannon that I think you would be a good member of her battle team."

"Thank you Chef," I said, doing my best not to completely flip out and start doing cartwheels in the kitchen. "I'll work hard."