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Nat’s interview had ended up taking all afternoon. Not because it was far away—the U.S. courthouse was downtown, barely two miles from the restaurant. And not because the meeting itself was long—it had barely been more than half an hour.
He’d just ended up sitting around for three hours first, while an overworked and understaffed office tried to plow their way through too many appointments in too short a time.
In the end, he’d called me to give me a report over the phone, rather than coming back to the restaurant afterward. The aide he’d talked to hadn’t been rude or dismissive at all, but there had been a definite vibe of ‘sure, we’ll put this report on top of ourextremely tall stack of other reports, and maybe get around to addressing it sometime next year if you’re lucky.’
I couldn’t say I was shocked, although I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.
“It was worth a try,” I told him. “In the meantime, Shani found you a corporate spy and a social media whiz kid.”
“Yes, I got some very interesting texts while I was waiting around. Including some about the Bella Vita that were arguably awkward to receive while sitting inside a U.S. District Attorney’s office.” His tone was wry, even over the cell connection.
“I told them you’d come in tomorrow morning and go over the hiring paperwork with them. If there’s nothing else that needs to be done, I’m going to call it a day.”
“It’s a day,” he agreed—the kind of small, stupid joke that had flowed back and forth between us so easily during the early days of our marriage.
I tried to stifle my smile, before deciding there wasn’t a good reason to do so. “Oh, one more thing. Emiel didn’t just want to play helicopter alpha about the gang stuff the other day. He genuinely wants to be your friend. And trust me, you could do worse on that front.”
There was a pause.
“I saw him at the gym again this morning. We chatted a bit. Interesting guy.”
My inner twelve-year-old cheered, even as the rest of my brain stalled out for a moment over Emielchatting.
“Gym bros forever,” I managed. “I dig it. Good night, Nat.”
“Good night, Mia,” he said.
I disconnected the call, feeling a bit of warmth kindling in my chest, despite the setback with the U.S. Attorney’s office. We had two trustworthy new employees with some useful side skills, and Emiel was making himself a friend.
All in all, I’d take it.
I locked up the restaurant and headed to my car, one hand on the can of pepper spray in my pocket. No boogeymen jumped out of the shadows; no suspicious headlights followed me when I pulled into traffic. My levels of paranoia waxed and waned these days, but the drive back to Ladue was uneventful, just like always.
It wasn’t even a late night. We’d entered a sort of limbo period, where pretty much everything that needed to be done at the restaurant was already done, except for bringing in fresh food. That would have to wait until the last minute—we couldn’t afford to have stuff sitting around on a shelf inside a closed restaurant, slowly going bad.
The smell of organophosphates was almost completely undetectable now, after days of rigorous cleaning and airing. Once it was competing with the smell of delicious food being cooked, it would be completely undetectable.
The remaining hurdles to our reopening were all external, and we were scratching them off the list one by one.
I arrived at the house during a reasonable supper hour, to find a pizza delivery driver pulling out as I was ready to pull in. The others’ vehicles were all present except for Luca’s, and the smell of pizza greeted me as I stepped inside.
The three alphas were gathered in the kitchen with an impressive array of boxes. They all looked up as I entered.
“Hi, Mia,” Zalen greeted. “We weren’t sure when you’d be back, so I declared pizza night. I tried to get one with fennel as a topping, but apparently that’s only for ritzy joints.”
“Ha. Ha,” Byron said flatly.
“Clearly they aren’t a discerning establishment,” I told him. “Still, pepperoni and mushrooms have their place.”
“Their place is in my stomach,” Emiel said. “More eating. Less talking.”
We opened boxes and grabbed huge slices.
“Where’s Luca?” I asked around a mouthful of stretchy cheese. “Big grant due tomorrow or something?”
Emiel grunted. “He’s stopping by that counseling place in Frontenac to fill out paperwork and get on the waiting list. Said not to wait on him.”
“There probably wasn’t much danger of that,” I said, with only faint stirrings of guilt as I went in for a second piece of pizza. I was relieved Luca was following through with his decision to join Emiel in getting some professional help.