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Then I decide not to press my luck and beat it.
I get out of there as fast as I can without running.
It’s only when I’m back in the van that I bother looking at the signed receipt.
There’s a name scrawled across the bottom in a garish slash.Dexter Rory.
“All right,” I say, rubbing my face. “Let’s find out how crappy a tipper you are, Dexter Rory.”
I skim down to the tip line and my eyes nearly exit my face.
My jaw drops.
Well, crap.
2
ONE SWEET DEAL (DEXTER)
There are few things more disgusting than watching Forrest Haute stuffing his face.
That viral video of a baby hippo in a zoo enclosure turning into a literal poop factory while kids scream through the glass.
The six-week-old forgotten Philly steak sub I rediscovered once in the back of my fridge.
The latest celebrity slop from Twitter or X or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days—does the world reallyneeda public debate on electric vehicles between a hotel heiress and a one-hit grunge rock wonder?
I don’t have a weak stomach. Hell, I could sit through any slasher flick with oceans of blood and not give two shits, but this devourer of worlds is making me sick.
It’s not the fact that his gut could make Santa jealous. The man must have three stomachs in one to put away his weight in cake, pastries, and endless cups of coffee heaped with the confectionary crack otherwise known as sugar.
No, it’s thewayhe eats—and it’s enough to put anyone off having dinner for a year.
He can’t be fully human. He’s able to unhinge his jaw a few extra inches to stuff half a caramel apple torte down his pie hole in one go. Maybe the lizard people are real after all.
At leastonething went right, though.
A real shocker after that bungling delivery girl took her sweet time piling this room with sweets I can barely stand smelling from ten feet away.
And apparently, my brothers were right on the money about Haute’s legendary sweet tooth. I wonder how he even stays conscious with the amount of sugar thickening his blood over the last twenty minutes.
Half of me expects him to stop, turn pale, and keel right over, but he just keeps going.
And going.
Honestly, if I look at him a minute longer, I’ll be the one puking, so I turn away and force my fingers to hold still on the table.
Nervous tapping won’t get me anywhere. I’ve made it this far, but it’s hardly a done deal.
I need to play my cards right. Or maybe just let him eat himself into a coma first.
Either way, I need this property.
Higher Ends International needs it.
All I need to do is bide my time, and watching Haute polish off the better part of an entire bakery’s daily output might get me somewhere.
I hold in a sigh, glancing out over the city again and the sunset glinting across the glassy high-rises. Somewhere out there, she’s sitting by the winding Missouri River, just waiting for the right renovation to make a lot of people very rich.
