“Hey—hold up,” Jenna said.

Quiet voice.
But not soft.
There was iron in it — the kind that forms only when someone’s been swallowing the truth for far too long.

She stood under the sickly yellow glow of the soda machine light, half-lit, half-swallowed by the shadows. It made her look like she’d stepped out of a frame from a documentary no one dared finish.

She wiped her palms on her apron and nodded toward the back hall.

“Too many cameras out here. Too many people listening who pretend they aren’t. Back there—we’re safer.”

He didn’t jump. Didn’t twitch.
Just a small tilt of his head, like he was marking her tone, saving it for later.

“If this is about your table—”

“This is NOT about your damn table,” she interrupted. “It’s about what’s rotting under the surface of this place. And about what you came here for — even if you won’t say it out loud.”

No sugar.
No apology.
Just raw honesty, stripped down to the bone.

He followed her down the hallway. Slow, unhurried. The walk of a man who’s been burned before, who’s learned to give people time to reconsider before they dive into something that can’t be undone.

The smell hit him next—wet mop, old grease, and something else… something metallic, sour… like guilt clinging to the walls.

“Talk,” he said.

She turned, eyes sharp and glassy under that miserable light.

“Bryce is dirty,” she said bluntly. “He’s been laundering money through this place for months. Maybe years. And whenever someone starts noticing things? They get written up, then fired for some ‘policy violation’ he made up five minutes before.”

She paused.
Her throat worked.
Her jaw tightened.

“And the meat? The ribeye you ordered?”
A short, bitter laugh.
“You wouldn’t feed it to a stray dog if you saw how he’s storing it.”

He didn’t react — at least not externally. But something flickered in his eyes, the kind of flicker that meant he’d heard this song before, in a different key.

“That all?” he asked quietly.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.

She pulled something from her apron pocket — a small, dented key, the kind that belonged to rooms nobody was supposed to remember existed.

“This unlocks the storage room next to the freezer. He uses it for whatever he doesn’t want corporate to see. I don’t know everything inside… but it’s bad. Bad enough that he keeps that room off every report.”

He held out his hand.
She placed the key in it — but didn’t let go.

Not immediately.

Her fingers lingered like she was testing his resolve, measuring the weight of the man in front of her.

“Why trust me?” he asked.

She exhaled through her nose, a harsh, emotional sound she tried to hide.

“When I was a kid, my dad took me to your first location in Tulsa. He used to say, ‘A Whitmore grill means you’re safe, honey. People like him don’t cut corners.’”

Her voice cracked — just a hairline fracture, but it was there.

“I need that to be true again. Because nothing here is safe. Not the food. Not the people. Not the truth.”

He finally closed his fingers around the key — slowly, like sealing a decision he didn’t plan to reverse.

“Jenna,” he said, voice low. “If I open that door and find what you’re hinting at… this won’t just be a conversation with Bryce. It’ll be a storm. And storms don’t stop where you expect.”

She nodded once.

“I know. That’s why I told you.”

The corridor felt tighter as he walked away — walls closing in, air thickening. He noticed every detail:
the freezer door with the deep scratches near the bottom,
the greasy sheen on the tiles,
and Bryce — watching from behind the bar like a man who’d just felt a shift in the air he couldn’t explain.

The storage door waited at the end of the hall — old, swollen from humidity, like it had secrets trapped behind it, pushing outwards.

He slid the key in.

Turned.

The lock clicked like a reluctant confession.

The smell hit instantly.
Not rotten food.
Not cleaning chemical.

Something worse — the sour, sharp scent of hidden paperwork, spilled alcohol, and something distinctly illegal.

He flipped the switch.

And the room lit up with truths no one was supposed to see.

Boxes.
Binders.
Invoices with altered timestamps.
Pay stubs that didn’t match.
Product logs that were obviously forged.
Unreported shipments.
Receipts from companies that didn’t exist.

And in the middle of it all—Bryce’s signature. Everywhere.

He cursed.
Quietly. Slowly.
The kind of curse that carried the weight of betrayal, not rage.

He stepped inside and touched the nearest binder like a man examining a corpse.

“Alright, Bryce,” he murmured, calm as a loaded gun.
“You’re finished.”

Outside the door, Jenna stood perfectly still — hands trembling, but face steady.

She knew this wasn’t just trouble.

This was the start of something that would shake the whole damn place down to its studs.