Kindle edition on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The lease came through on Desiree Baptiste’s phone at 4:12 in the afternoon, three hours before service, and her own signature was on the last page.

Des has three restaurants in Houston, a fourth opening in nine days and a private equity term sheet on her desk that will make her rich. The building on the lease is a strip centre outside Shreveport she has never seen. It has been open two years. It does four hundred covers on a Saturday, it has passed every health inspection the state of Louisiana has thrown at it, and the smothered okra on its chalkboard is a dish she has never written down.

Nobody is stealing from it. Somebody has been spending millions to keep it real, because a restaurant that has been open continuously is not a crime, it is evidence. And the closing date on Des’s term sheet is the date it was all built to hit. Her brother handled the filings for three years. She signed whatever he put in front of her, on a Tuesday, at four o’clock, without reading a word, and every single thing that is about to happen to her is written on those pages in her own hand.