He smacks the sill and whoops, a full-bellied laughter that drowns out the birds overhead, the cars on the street, the dog still going berserk next door.

“Dude. Dude. Are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?” He pauses to catch his breath, a long stretch of silence to enjoy the hell out of my expression. He laughs some more, all jolly hilarity. “Oh my God. This is too damn good.”

“Shut up.”

“For real, man. And though I appreciate you coming all the way here to tell me the joyous news in person, what kind of idiot do you think I am? An arsonist would have to be really incompetent to give his former boss a six-month warning. I mean, come on. You and I both know I’m not that stupid.”

“It was four and a half. March 24.”

“Aww, you remembered our anniversary.”

I roll my eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I’m out of here.” I turn and march for the gate.

“Wait. Where you going? Who are you going to accuse next—Drew?”

The name slams me in the back, and I stop, my soles sinking into the grass. Drew is a fellow chef, a former employee who I lured to the Lasky brand with the promise of him running his own restaurant. One of the three chefs I fired in an ugly dispute last year because his food wasn’t good enough to fill the tables.

“Drew signed a contract, dickhead. Same as you.”

A contract that multiple attorneys on both sides agreed was legit. No hidden clauses, nothing sneaky or underhanded buried in legalese. The terms were spelled out in bulletproof, easy-to-understand black and white. I even cut Drew some slack, gave him some extra time to fine tune the menu to appeal to the Perimeter Mall crowd, but I couldn’t keep bailing him out when sales were already slipping. A couple more months and we’d be laying off waitstaff, slashing food quality, defaulting on bills. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it, but it was Drew or the restaurant, that’s essentially what it came down to.

So yeah. Drew might have lost his job, but I’m the one who almost lost his shirt. The one who had to pump in a buttload of my own cash and energy to fix Drew’s mistakes, who had to work harder and longer to patch up the holes his bad management blew in the place.

But George is not wrong. It’s not like Drew wouldn’t be more than happy to strike a match to the Bolling Way shop, too. And so would—

“What about Fred and Kelly? Have you been to see them yet? Because they hate your guts as much as Drew and I do.”