My Darling Husband(59)

A man bun.

He turns to dump the ashtray into a can, and I get a closer look at his face. Deep marks, purple and red scars run across his cheeks and chin and forehead.

“It’s you. You’re the asshole who’s been following Jade around town. She told me about you.”

He grunts, and his expression doesn’t change. He just dumps the ashes into the trash can, bonks it against the side a couple of times and sets it back onto Maxim’s desk. No reaction. Not even a twitch.

Rage travels through my body like electricity, from my lips and tongue down my spine to the soles of my feet, then surges up and lurches me out of my chair.

“Sit down, Cam,” Maxim says, gesturing for me to drop back into my chair. “Nick doesn’t work for you anymore, he works for me. He keeps tabs on my investments. That’s what I pay him for.”

The words are like gasoline on the fire in my veins. Nick, the shady arsonist from the parking lot is also the creepy guy following Jade around town. My skin goes hot then icy, my right hand bunching into a tight fist. I am one second away from losing it when another realization hits.

“Oh my God. It’s you.” I turn, stare across the desk at Maxim. “You’re the one holding Jade and the kids at gunpoint.”

Maxim glances at Nick, just a subtle flick of his eyes, and I know what he’s doing. He’s calling for backup, those two big bouncers guarding the door are probably already on their way. I’m making more than enough noise.

“You’re upset,” Maxim says, his tone calm and controlled, “and I would be, too, in your shoes, which is why I’m going to pretend you didn’t say any of that.” He squints, pointing at me with his lit cigarette. “But from here on out you’d do well to watch your words, do you understand what I’m telling you? Most people don’t survive insults like the ones you just hurled.”

My shoulders slump. My lungs empty and the room goes slippery, tinged with smoke and the stink of my own sweat. That’s it. I’m done. Uncle.

“Just kill me, Maxim. Put a bullet in my head and me out of my misery.” Me for my family. It’s a rotten trade, but Maxim will see it as a noble one, and at least then this whole nightmare will be over. “Just please. Please don’t touch my family.”

A scuffling noise comes from behind me, two large bodies moving into the room, and I brace for what’s next—a tackle from behind, a blow to the skull or fist to the kidney—but Maxim stops them with a hand. “Sit down, kid.”

My legs give out, and I collapse onto the chair.

“Here.” Maxim pushes the cigarettes and lighter across the desk, and what the hell? I shake one from the pack and fire it up. “You and I have known each other a long time, Cam. We have history. And I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but whoever’s in your house right now is not one of my people. That’s not the way I do business. This has nothing to do with me. You have my word.”

For the first time since college, I suck a lungful of cigarette, and it’s like riding a bike. My skin goes tingly, my brain blissed out on nicotine. “Then who?”

Maxim shrugs. “I don’t know, but you could start by looking at who thinks you owe them seven hundred thousand and some change. The answer is in the number.”

I nod. “Yeah, but there’s more than one possibility, if you know what I mean.”

“You’ve burned some bridges, huh?” He leans back in his chair, shaking his head. “What did I tell you about loose ends, kid? You’ve got to tie them up, otherwise they come back later to bite you.”

Maxim doesn’t mean this literally. He means bury the bodies under three feet of concrete, which is how he wraps up his loose ends. And though I may occasionally use Maxim’s money to bridge the tight spots in my business, I don’t operate the way he does. I’m a chef with money problems, not a mobster.

But I also run a crew of oddballs and misfits, most of whom could stand to brush up on their anger management skills. Sometimes I’m the one stepping in to defuse the situation, other times I’m on the receiving end of the punches.

But at the end of the day, a restaurant is a business. I’m the one out here taking the risks, doing the backroom deals with guys like Maxim in order to stay afloat. I’ll choose my family over any one of those knuckleheads every time. There are going to be some burned bridges.

“As much as I’d love to deliberate which maniac is in my house right now, Maxim, I don’t have time. I have exactly—” I glance at my watch and the room goes upside down “—forty-eight minutes to get my ass home with a bag of cash. If you don’t loan me that money, I won’t... I can’t... I don’t think I can save them.”

He stares across the desk at me. Rock-hard. Giving me nothing. No pity, no sympathy and, most importantly, no olive branch. Not even a teeny tiny twig. Every last ounce of hope I was holding on to with both hands fades away like a cheap buzz.

I toss the cigarette in the ashtray and drop my head in my shaking hands, pressing down hard with my palms until my skull creaks. I wish I could go back and rewind this shitty, shitty day, and undo every one of my decisions. All of them.

No, I wish I could rewind all the way to 2008, to my first time sitting at this very desk, when Maxim told me I was foolish to open a restaurant in the middle of a recession, and I did it anyway. I wish I’d been content with being somebody else’s chef, to whipping up fancy steak dinners on somebody else’s balance sheet so I could take paid vacations and the occasional long weekend and not stare at the ceiling until deep in the night, wondering how the hell I was going to make payroll. I wouldn’t be Atlanta’s Steak King, but come tomorrow I would still have a family.