Chapter 2 - THE RESTAURANT HE PLANNED TO STEAL
Lucas read the business filing three times.
Beatrice stopped pretending the lunch bill mattered.
“What is this?” she asked.
Lucas snapped, “Stay out of it.”
That told me everything.
He knew.
Of course he knew.
I folded my arms.
“When were you planning to tell me about Lumina Coastal?”
“It’s nothing.”
“A company with my restaurant’s name is nothing?”
“It’s a concept.”
“Using my brand.”
“We’re married.”
There it was again.
His favorite magic spell.
Marriage.
As though a wedding ring converted theft into partnership.
I looked at Gavin.
“Close the private room.”
He shut the doors.
Beatrice’s friends were still inside, but several had already begun whispering to one another.
I didn’t mind.
Beatrice had brought an audience.
Now she had one.
Lucas lowered his voice.
“You’re making a scene in front of customers.”
“No. Your mother did that when she invited thirty-eight people to steal lunch.”
Beatrice gasped.
“Steal?”
“You announced you were paying.”
“I assumed family privileges.”
“Privileges stop where fraud begins.”
Lucas stepped closer.
“Enough.”
I looked at him.
For years, that tone had worked.
It meant the argument was over because Lucas had decided it was.
Not today.
“What money did you use to fund Lumina Coastal?”
His jaw tightened.
“Investors.”
“Names.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
Gavin actually laughed.
He covered it with a cough.
Lucas glared at him.
I opened the next page.
“Then let me help. The first deposit into Lumina Coastal was $75,000.”
Silence.
“The second was $60,000.”
Beatrice slowly sat down.
“The third was $51,400.”
I tapped the statements.
“Exactly $186,400.”
Lucas’s face drained.
His mistress had not merely received gifts.
The stolen money had capitalized a competing company.
One of Beatrice’s friends whispered, “Oh my God.”
Lucas snapped, “Everybody get out.”
Nobody moved.
I smiled.
“My restaurant.”
Then I looked at the women.
“If you’d like dessert coffee before leaving, it’s on the house.”
Beatrice stared at me in disbelief.
“You’ll feed them but charge me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they were guests.”
I looked at her.
“You were the person pretending to host them.”
Her humiliation landed harder than the invoice.
One by one, the women began leaving.
A few quietly apologized to me.
Two hugged Beatrice awkwardly.
Most avoided her eyes.
Within ten minutes, only four people remained.
Me.
Lucas.
Beatrice.
Gavin.
Lucas leaned over the table.
“You had no right to investigate my accounts.”
“I investigated mine.”
“You’re acting paranoid.”
“Interesting choice of word.”
His eyes flickered.
I noticed.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
He straightened.
“You calm down.”
I almost smiled.
“And?”
“We go home.”
“No.”
“We discuss this privately.”
“We are.”
“I mean without employees.”
Gavin looked offended.
I said, “Gavin found half the suspicious comps.”
Lucas’s face changed again.
Another thing he hadn’t known.
Gavin quietly said, “I also found the deleted vendor profiles.”
Lucas froze.
I turned.
“What deleted vendor profiles?”
Gavin hesitated.
He had not told me that part.
“Three companies. All created within the last year.”
“Names?”
He read them from his phone.
Pacific Linen Consultants.
Westmere Hospitality Solutions.
Benton Food Logistics.
I knew none of them.
Gavin continued.
“They invoiced Lumina for around four hundred thousand dollars.”
Lucas interrupted.
“That’s normal vendor turnover.”
“No,” Gavin said.
“Because none of them ever delivered anything.”
The room became silent.
I looked at Lucas.
“The $186,400 wasn’t all of it.”
Gavin shook his head.
“No.”
Then he showed me the vendor ownership records he had pulled that morning.
Pacific Linen traced to Sophia Bennett.
Westmere traced to a registered agent used by Beatrice.
And Benton Food Logistics belonged to someone I did not expect.
My husband’s younger brother, Nathan.
May you like
Lucas’s affair was only one piece.
His family had been billing my restaurant through fake vendors for more than a year.
