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CHAPTERONE
Lia
“Grasshoppers?”
An alarm sounded in my head as Damien, the new owner of Suzette’s, a fine-dining restaurant tucked away in Boston’s cozy North End, dropped a box on my spotless prep table. As head chef,Ishould have been the one ordering the ingredients for the menu, not Damien.
At least that was the way things had been when Suzette had been alive. Now I was shouldered with dealing with her sleaze of a son who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Suzette’s was one of the hottest restaurants in Boston, thanks to my inventive, themed surprise menus, and Damien had taken his new role as an opportunity to strut his authority around the restaurant. Every night, like cock of the walk, he’d stroll through the dining room and publicly find fault with something, often reducing one of the servers to tears. We’d all been on edge for months now, and I knew that several of the staff were actively looking for other jobs.
It was hard enough to grieve the loss of Suzette, a kind woman who had shared my dream of building a restaurant that was both cozy and innovative, without having to also navigate a new boss who never bothered to learn anything about the service industry. Even worse? I woke up each night, drenched in sweat, panic gripping me that the one goal I’d devoted my entire life to was slipping from my grasp.
“Yeah, it’s all the rage,” Damien said, picking up my custom chef’s knife. The knife had been a gift from Suzette when Boston Magazinehad run a feature article labeling me as the hot up-and-coming chef in Boston’s elite culinary scene, and it had been designed to perfectly balance in my palm. I cared for that knife like it was my baby, and seeing Damien’s greasy fingers on it made my lip curl in disgust. The bright side? He likely had no clue how sharp it was, so there was hope he’d maim himself shortly and I’d be left to get on with my menu for the night.
“Damien…be careful…” I trailed off as he slit the tape at the top of the box, narrowly missing the tip of his finger, and I took a deep breath in an effort to control my temper. He needed to get out of my kitchen,now, and take his insects with him.
“I ordered these specially from Brazil. Overnighted them. They’re incredibly expensive, so you’ll need to make them a Chef’s Special. I hear they’re salty, like potato chips,” Damien said, pausing to wipe the back of the hand holding the knife against his perpetually sweaty forehead. My heart skipped a beat as the tip of my knife just missed his eyes, because while I did enjoy a good maiming, even I would turn squeamish if he popped his eyeball out.
What happened next was like when a sports team wins a big championship, and the celebratory cannons explode confetti across the arena—except replace confetti with grasshoppers.
Livegrasshoppers.
While typically I have good reflexes—an important trait in any kitchen—my brain quite simply could not process the catastrophe I was witnessing. Hundreds, no,thousands, of grasshoppers pinged around the kitchen, bounced off walls, and landed on any available surface.
“They were supposed to bedried, not alive,” Damien shrieked, waving his hands in the air, and I narrowly dodged the knife he threw when a grasshopper landed in his open mouth. My breath caught as the knife clattered to the floor while Damien gagged on the grasshopper.
“Youidiot! You almost killed me.” I was also shrieking at this point, but not from fear. Oh no, the last few weeks of buried rage surfaced, as though someone had dropped a match on spilled gasoline, and now I let the inferno engulf me. Crouching, I snatched my knife off the floor and returned it to its case, before slamming the lid closed on the grasshopper box. Not like there were all that many insects still in the box. It was hard to put a bomb back together after it detonated, wasn’t it?
“Idiot? You can’t talk to me like that. Don’t forget who signs your paychecks, doll,” Damien had the gall to say to me with a grasshopper perched on his head.
“Look at what you’ve done,” I seethed, holding my hands out to protect my face from grasshoppers that bounced around the room like someone had tossed a bucket of superballs into the kitchen. “Everything has gone to shit since Suzette died. You keep coming in here and screwing things up. You’re ruining a good thing, Damien, and I for one, am not interested in sticking around to watch you destroy Suzette’s legacy. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your poor mother would be devastated at what you’re turning her dream into.”
“My mother didn’t know what was cool. This place is old and boring. At least I’m here to make it fresh.” Damien smashed his hand onto the prep table, squashing a few grasshoppers, as I gaped at him in surprise.
“This?Thisis your idea of fresh?” I swept my arms out and ducked as several grasshoppers flew past. Technically speaking, he wasn’t wrong. When the food was still moving, it was about as fresh as it could be. “It’s stupid is what it is. And I’m not sticking around to clean up your mess.”
I made to move past him, taking my knife with me, and he shouldered his way into the hallway to block me.
“If you leave, you’re fired, Lia.”
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” I needed to get out of this insectarium immediately. There weren’t enough showers I could take to rid me of the creepy-crawly feeling of grasshoppers in my hair. My pulse kicked up when Damien leaned close, his breath heavy with stale cigar.
“You think you can make a name for yourself without me? I’ll blackball you in this town faster than you turn men off with your ginger hair and bad attitude.”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t think straight, not between the rage that twisted my gut into knots and the sizeable number of insects that were currently doing their best to vacate the kitchen through any means possible.
“Screw it. I never liked this restaurant anyway.” Damien crossed his arms over his chest and huffed out a breath. “I think I’ll make it a club. Lots of young, hot women in here dancing each night. Yeah, it’s gonna be slick as hell.”
I gaped at him, honestly at a loss for words, as I thought about the beautiful restaurant that I’d devoted years of my life to.
“Ihateyou. You’re gross, and it makes me sick what you’re doing to this place,” I said, not caring if I burned any bridges. I didn’t want to work with someone like Damien anyway. He was as dishonorable as the day was long, and I’d rather start my own gig than take orders from a sleaze like him.
“Maybe, but I don’t care what you think, doll.” Damien winked at me. My lip curled in disgust. Being called “doll” was a pet peeve of mine. “Gingers aren’t my type anyway. I like them rail-thin with the big titties.”
He was slime. Repulsive slime, and I…I had to go. Right now. Before I did something stupid like burn the restaurant down so I didn’t have to watch him ruin it. At this point, that might be the best option anyway what with the grasshoppers taking up residence.
“Eat shit, Damien. I quit.” I went to move past him, and Damien put his arms out, stopping me in my tracks.
“It’s Saturday night. We’ve got a packed house.” Damien didn’t budge.
