Chapter 1 - The Cinders of Marigold
The night Marigold burned, I stood barefoot in the parking lot wearing a smoke-stained chef’s coat and counted everything I had lost: forty-seven thousand dollars in kitchen equipment, eleven thousand in wine inventory, and eight thousand for the secondhand walk-in refrigerator I had driven from Winnipeg through a January storm. Twelve years of my life disappeared behind orange flames while firefighters moved through the February darkness and water froze along the curb. The air smelled of wet ash, melted wiring, and the rosemary bread that had been cooling near the back ovens before someone poured accelerant across my kitchen floor. I already knew who had done it. Keith Alderman, the man I had loved and trusted, had drained our joint business account two days earlier, called afterward to apologize without explaining, and told me I was resilient enough to rebuild.
At nine the next morning, an insurance investigator walked through the ruins and confirmed traces of accelerant, leaving my claim frozen for four to six months while they debated whether I had helped burn my own restaurant for money. I had employees waiting for paychecks, rent on a destroyed building, and a loan my mother had co-signed. Then an unknown number texted: Ms. Marsh, I have information about the man who burned Marigold. My name is Voss. That text message pulled me out of the ashes and dragged me straight into a world of organized power, corporate shadows, and lethal secrets from which I would never look back.
