CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Aiden
Wakingup at four in the morning to three missed calls from the police was never going to be a good thing. Especially not when they left cryptic messages about an issue with the building my kitchen was in.
For fuck’s sake! Could the universe not give me five fucking minutes of peace?
I threw my clothes on at double speed and hurried out the door without bothering to stop for coffee or breakfast, muttering darkly under my breath as I headed for my car. I spent the whole of the ten-minute drive hoping it was nothing more than a tripped security alarm or a break-in, but as soon as I pulled into the car park and saw two police cars, a fire engine, and a van from the local water company, I knew I was fucking toast.
“What happened?” I asked as I headed towards the small crowd by the door—mostly building security, emergency services, and a couple of people from the other businesses on my floor. There was a foul stench in the air, and I recoiled, my heart sinking even further as I started to piece things together.
“Not really sure,” Monika, one of the owners of the fetish wear company, said. She was wearing a hoodie and joggers and still managed to look more put together than I did ninety percent of the time. “Smells like sewage, but sewage pipes don’t burst.”
“I was told something about flooding,” added Paul, who ran one of the e-commerce businesses. Something to do with computer parts. “Apparently one of the pipes burst?”
“I heard a water main,” said someone else. I didn’t know their name, but I thought they worked at the other bakery.
“Fuck!” I groaned. “Seriously?”
“Apparently.”
“Either way, I’m pretty sure our units have had three feet of water running through them,” Paul said with a sigh as he ran his hand across his shaved head. “How the fuck did this happen?”
“We’re at the bottom of a slope,” I said hollowly, trying to process what Paul had said. “And if the water got to the rolling doors… or through the external ones.”
“Maybe that’s where the sewage smell is from? If the sewage pipes also got flooded,” Monika added. She looked more annoyed than despairing, and I could understand why. Our livelihoods were at stake and there was fuck all we could do except stand here. We didn’t even know what was really going on.
Cold sweat slid down my spine, fear spiking in my chest as I stared at the mess in front of me, powerless to do anything.
Most of the time, I was a pretty chilled guy. Not much bothered me. But being out of control like this, having no say in what happened to my business and no idea when or if I’d be able to get back to work was making my stomach turn. I had orders to fill, contract obligations, loan payments to make, and the thinnest margins between surviving and going under.
If I couldn’t fulfil orders, I’d have to issue refunds and lock down the website. My coffee shops might find other suppliers. And I wouldn’t be able to do shit.
Yeah, I had insurance but who knew how long it would take for them to pay out? I didn’t even know what I was going to have to replace. If the whole place had been flooded, that could mean everything had to go and I couldn’t afford to replace stuff out of pocket. We might not be able to get back in for weeks either!
I wanted to rage, scream, and cry, but I refused to break down in the middle of a fucking car park.
Turning away from the group, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and bit my lip as I debated who to call first. Usually, I hated bothering people. I was a closed-off bastard and I hated relying on others. But I also knew if it was one of them, I’d be fucking pissed if they didn’t call me.
It was nearly five now, still too early for most people to be up. But I had to try.
The first person I rang was Bacon, who lived the closest. I’d known him since we were teenagers, when he’d come to my defence after some shitheads at school had tried to bully me for being trans. Bacon had handed out a split lip, two black eyes, and a bloodied nose to the perpetrators and argued loudly with all the teachers that he was acting in defence of and upholding the school’s anti-bullying policy.
He’d been suspended for a week, but I’d turned up at his flat with some chips from the chip shop and that’d cemented our friendship.
While it was early, there was a chance he’d be awake because he spent like, two bloody hours in the gym every morning before he went to open the pub. Bacon’s pub was not a cosy or classy one. It was the sort of place most people would avoid unless it was their local or they’d been going there for years. Which was a shame because it was surprisingly accepting and they did abanging pub quiz on a Wednesday. And their chips were proper lush too.
“Eggs?” Bacon’s voice was full of sleep and I winced. Clearly, it wasn’t a gym day. “What’s wrong?”
“My kitchen’s flooded. Looks like a pipe or water main burst,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “They won’t tell us what’s going on, but everyone thinks we’ve had three feet of water through our units. Might have even flooded the sewage pipes. I think everything’s gone.”
“What the fuck? You’re fucking kidding me? Jesus Christ, Eggs.”
“Yeah. It’s… fucking wank.” I chuckled hollowly. Saying it all out loud made it so much more real. This wasn’t simply another nightmare I’d wake up from and tell myself that was what I got for drinking coffee before bed.
“Want me to come down there?”
“If you don’t mind? But if you’re still in bed… Sorry, I thought it was a gym day.”
