Chapter 2 - The Fire SaleWithin forty-eight hours, the illusion of Carter’s Bistro dissolved completely.
Victor tried to open the restaurant for the Friday evening dinner rush, hoping to project an aura of business-as-usual. He posted a frantic video on the restaurant's official Facebook page, claiming that the courtroom allegations were a "malicious smear campaign by a disgruntled ex-spouse."
The public response was swift and merciless.
Instead of regular diners walking through the arched mahogany doors, protesters gathered on the sidewalk by 5:00 PM. Former kitchen staff—cooks and dishwashers Victor had fired over the years for demanding fair wages or health insurance—showed up with homemade signs reading: WE WERE THE MULES TOO and AUDIT CARTER NOW.
By 6:30 PM, health inspectors, state labor board investigators, and IRS auditors walked through the front doors with clipboards and badges. They didn't come as customers; they came with a federal search warrant.
I sat in my apartment—my new apartment, a modest, sunlit place on the edge of town that I had rented using my own savings account, which I had secretly built up over the last two years by selling custom catering recipes online under a pseudonym. I watched the live stream of the raid on my laptop.
Federal agents were carting boxes of financial records, hard drives from the POS systems, and ledger books out of the back office. Victor stood in the corner of his once-proud dining room, red-faced and screaming at an auditor, until a federal marshal gently placed a hand on his shoulder and told him to step away from the premises.
My phone chimed. It was an unknown number, but I recognized the frantic, breathless voice the second I answered.
"Evelyn. Please. Please pick up," Victor sobbed, his voice cracking violently. "Everything is locked. The bank accounts—they’ve frozen corporate and personal assets. I can't even pay my legal defense retainer. The suppliers are canceling deliveries. Please... we can settle this. Out of court. Just sign an affidavit saying it was all a miscommunication with the accountant. Please, Evie."
I stared at the screen of my phone, watching the man who had dismissed me as a beast of burden crumble into absolute ruin.
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"You called me a pack mule, Victor," I said, my voice steady and cold. "Pack mules don't stop walking just because the rider falls off. But we certainly don't carry them anymore either."
I hung up and blocked his number.
