Jean-Pierre checks his phone, looking impatient, then looks back at me. "I'm flying back to New York tonight. I need ananswer before I leave. Think about what you really want, Alex. You're a talented chef. You could build something incredible with that money. My daughter will move on eventually—she's young, she's resilient. She'll go back to New York, take over the restaurant, live the life she was meant for. And you'll have what you want. Everyone wins." He pauses, then his eyes grow harder. "Answer me, Alex! Do we have a deal or not? Two and a half million. Right now. Yes or no."
And then something clicks. It hits me so suddenly my entire body goes still, the noise of the rain fading into background static.An idea.
Because the thing is, Jean-Pierre is used to people doing exactly what he expects. He's used to being able to control situations through money and power and carefully applied pressure. He thinks he knows me. He thinks I'm ambitious and practical and ultimately buyable.
But I would give up every restaurant dream I've ever had before I'd give up Isabelle. And he doesn't know that I'm not practical when it comes to her.
I'm completely, recklessly, irrevocably committed.
"Alright," I hear myself say. "I'll take the deal."
Jean-Pierre's face splits into a triumphant smile and he extends his hand for me to shake. I look at it for a long moment before reaching out, and his grip is firm and satisfied when we clasp hands.
"Smart man," he says. "I'll have my lawyers draw up the paperwork tonight. The money will be in your account by tomorrow evening. All I need is your word that you'll stay away from Isabelle. That you'll end it cleanly and never contact her again."
I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and he releases my hand.
He stands, adjusting his coat. "I'm glad we could come to an understanding, Alex. You're getting what you want, I'm getting what I want, and Isabelle will thank me for this eventually. Andby the way, don’t fucking bother going back to Napa tomorrow."
He walks away, back toward the restaurant door, and I sit there in the rain watching him go, the weight of what I just did settling over me like a stone. And as he disappears from view, a slight smile begins spreading across my face.
CHAPTER 29
Isabelle
The vineyards blur past the window in shades of bronze and amber, autumn turning Napa Valley into something out of a postcard. Margot's driving us back from SFO, about twenty minutes from Solstice now, after our whirlwind trip to New York that accomplished exactly nothing except confirming I don't want to cook Michelin food for the rest of my life.
I should be thinking about prep for tomorrow. The pop-up is back on after the break, and there's inventory to check,mise en placeto organize, the service to mentally walk through. The team will have handled most of it, but I need to review everything, make sure we're ready, get my head back in the game.
Instead I'm sitting here trying to decide what the hell I'm supposed to believe about Alex.
My father called me right before our flight back to California, his voice tight with satisfaction as he told me that Alex had taken his offer. Two and a half million dollars to walk away from me, and Alex apparently took it. Shook my father's hand,agreed to the terms, signed preliminary paperwork, the whole thing.
"You see now what he really wanted," my father had said, his voice dripping with vindication. "I'm sorry you had to learn this way, but better now than later. He was always after the connections, the opportunity. This just made it explicit. At least now you can move forward without him."
I'd told him to go fuck himself and hung up, which felt good for approximately thirty seconds before the doubt started creeping in.
"The whole thing is just crazy," Margot says for probably the third time since we left SFO, and I can't blame her for the repetition because I've been cycling through the same five thoughts on loop too.
"I know." I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching vineyards roll past. "I can't stop running it through my head. What my father said versus what Alex texted."
Margot was with me when I got the call, sitting beside me in the gate area at JFK, watching my face go from confused to shocked to absolutely furious in the span of about ninety seconds. She gave me a discreet fist pump of encouragement when I told my father to go fuck himself, which I'm pretty sure scandalized the family sitting two rows over, but I didn't care.
My fatheractuallythought I would see some light after learning about this arrangement, that I'd come crawling back to New York with my tail between my legs, grateful he'd protected me from the chef who was obviously only after my connections and his money.
As if him paying someone off to leave me wasn't a thousand times more insulting than anything he'd accused Alex of doing.
"And Alex didn't say anything else?" Margot asks again, glancing over at me before returning her eyes to the winding road. "After those texts, I mean?"
I shake my head, pulling my phone out to look at the messages again even though I've already read them approximately two hundred times.
Alex:I know you're going to hear something that sounds bad. Your father made me an offer and I took it. But it's not what you think. I need to explain in person. I love you. This changes nothing between us.
Alex:Trust me. Please.
Short, cryptic, completely maddening. I didn't have it in me to respond because what am I supposed to say?Hey, so my father says you took millions of dollars to dump me, cool cool cool, totally normal day?
I'm confused and full of doubt, and Alex was supposed to be my safe place, the one solid thing in all this mess. He was the person I could trust when everything else felt unstable, and now even that's been pulled out from under me.