Charlie was almost certain that the new kid with the funny name was stealing fuel from the underground tanks outside. Why? He had no idea, but he was determined to find out. He had no actual proof but the kid's arrival had coincided with a distinct drop in available supply. He had raised the issue with Otto, but felt his concerns had not been taken seriously enough and had simply been brushed to one side.
And who names a kid Frankches for heaven's sakes? It was a mouthful to keep uttering in the kitchen. "Frankches! Thinner, thinner, the dough she must be thinner! Less water, more kneading." Charlie would admit that he was a tough guy to work for, a perfectionist, but having a cocky teen in the kitchen was no picnic! Then again the kid was bright! A quick learner. The Russo name had required no introduction and Charlie could already see that young Frankches was in all ways living up to his family's credentials. Within days of entering his kitchen, the youngster's hands were weaving magic through the dough. Danny and Otto were constantly heaping praise on the boy, which would have been alright had it not meant that, more often than not, Charlie found himself, sitting on the sidelines, hanging around for scraps of attention, and feeling less and less comfortable in his own kitchen. For the first time, the longevity of his position as head chef felt less than secure, and he was not at all happy about it.
He was also less than impressed that Otto had dumped the kid on him in the first place, saying he needed to groom him for "The Apprentice" contest. This was surely a huge conflict of interest! How could he groom a wonderkid entrant for a contest that he would be judging himself? It had made no sense, but then little of what Otto was asking him to do these days did!
What with having to double up on the pizza order to the Oil Baron the previous week, and in so doing, being asked to use his new secret crust recipe which was still awaiting approval by Danny, it all seemed rather bizarre. Otto had said that a blind tasting by the eminent Baron would be just the thing to get genuine feedback on the progress being made to perfect the pizza recipe, but Charlie wasn't convinced. Something didn't quite stack up and he was intent on getting to the bottom of it.
Otto glanced furtively down both ends of the corridor before entering his private office in the administrative sector of the Baron's residence. Turning the key in the lock, he gazed at the wrapped parcel in his hands that he had retrieved from the safety of his lockbox, where it had laid hidden for the past week. He could not believe his luck. This was the first time that he had heard from his sister-in-law since his brother's funeral but what an excellent surprise it had been when she had contacted him out of the blue with news of the family tablet and her aspirations for his nephew to pursue the family business and to become the next famous 'Chef Russo'. He'd suspected she had known of its whereabouts all along, but to have pressed any further at the Wake might have raised more than a few suspicions of his intentions, so he had left the matter, instead biding his time until the right opportunity presented itself.
He turned the parcel over contemplatively in his hands and then, unable to resist the temptation any longer, pulled the strings loose that bound the leather coverings. There it was, exactly as he had recalled. Their grandfather's infamous top-secret pizza dough recipe. Before his death, Thomas Russo had commissioned a number of independent stonemasons to inscribe the recipe on the face of the marble tablet for perpetuity's sake. Each mason was given just a small piece of the encrypted recipe to carve out so that the recipe could not be stolen by any one of them individually. The result was a complete capture of the most infamous, most secret, best pizza crust recipe remaining in the world.
The pizza crust itself was nothing short of magnificent. It was light and had crunch and chew, but not like a biscuit. It wasn't too thick or too thin. It was just a sheer delight to eat, even without toppings! Otto recalled how his granddad would break off pieces for him and his brother to eat whilst he baked his orders back in the old days. They would savour them as he told them tales of times gone by.
The tablet had been passed down through the generations from his grandfather to his own father and then from his father to his brother, the most recent and famous Chef Russo. Otto himself has never been one for baking. Eating yes! Baking, no! When his father had entrusted the tablet to his brother, together with private lessons on how to make the most perfect of pizza crusts, the cypher had been passed to him, Otto, as part of the long family tradition to keep tablet and cypher forever separated so that nobody outside of the family could learn its secrets. Otto salivated. It would surely not be long now before he would once again taste the Russo magic. He sat back in his chair and smiled. He only had one problem now: with Wes still unconscious, their only trustworthy double agent was currently out of commission. How was he going to get the tablet to the Predas without Danny finding out, and could his nephew be convinced to jump ship when the time was right?
Note: This post is my entry to 
Photo credit: Image by Daniel Naor from Pixabay
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