I yank my eyes away from their disappointed faces, focusing instead on the markings on a far wall. Two giant sooty wings that swoop up and into the blackened ceiling. The pastry prep station. The stainless steel worktops that once stood there have been shoved to the side, a heap of metal and ash. I flip on the flashlight on my phone and move deeper into the darkness. My footsteps are loud in the hushed space, the broken glass and debris crunching under my shoes.

Flavio doesn’t ask what I’m looking at, because he sees it, too.

Ground zero. The source of the blaze.

I take in the ruined chunk of wall, the melted remains of what was once an outlet. Whatever was plugged in there has been burned and melted away. An electrical fire, and in the worst possible place.

“What happened to the alarm?” I say, and I can hear the break in my voice, feel the slow swirl of dread prickling my neck.

The system I paid an obscene amount for, one the salesman guaranteed would protect this place from not just theft but also sudden temperature spikes. And a multiple-alarm fire like this one—the kind that blows out the glass partition between the kitchen and the dining area and pumps a column of black smoke high enough into the early morning sky that some lady walking her dog five blocks away was alarmed enough to call 9-1-1—would come with one hell of a temperature spike.

“How come it didn’t go off?”

Flavio steps up next to me, sniffing. “I asked the alarm company the same question. They said they’re looking into things and will call me back as soon as they know more. Between you and me, it sounded like they were scrambling.”

“Well, keep on them. Get in your car and drive up there for answers if you have to. Threaten to sue their pants off if they don’t hurry the hell up. We don’t need anything holding up that insurance money.”

Flavio shoves his hands in the pockets of his tan fleece, watching me in that quiet way of his. The best thing about Flavio is that he never loses his cool. The worst thing about Flavio is that he never loses his cool.

“Okay, so worst-case scenario,” I say. “How long to get this place back up and running—four months? Five?”

“Probably more like seven or eight.”

I do the math in my head. The average weekly revenue times thirty-two weeks, and—

“That’s more than four million dollars!”

“Four point three, but yeah. I get it. It’s a lot.”