The Nasty Business of a Bodyguard by Elijah Douresseau (top 10 ebook reader txt) 📗

time partaking of the treat. That was probably the last word she would have used, if she could articulate her plight.

Everyone else knew the deal. Like it or hate it, you had to down the cake to play outside. Most were eating and toughing through the snack. Gracie swiped one finger down the side of her slice. It was more of a poke. She sampled, her face soured, and that was it.

Eventually, child after child completed their slice for playtime. Gracie started to feel the tug. She wanted to play, but she was well-aware of the rules that day.

That was when she got the warning. There was too much left on her plate. She had better finish, if she wanted to be sliding down slides or hanging from monkey bars.

She whined she did not like the cheesecake, but that was probably the worst decision she made. The teacher presiding over snack time that day doubled down on enforcing Gracie’s treat. It was not about playing anymore. On principle, food was placed out for the girl so she had to eat it. That was all there was to it.

Alvin loved food. In most cases, the teachers never had to tell him to eat his food, even the first time. He was not a big fan of seafood at that age, but whenever it was tuna casserole day for lunch, he made sure his plate was spotless. Save for a spot or two of tuna.

But those were the adults Alvin and his peers were in the care of. They did not take stonewalling lightly.

What about tears? Gracie tried them – with some whimpering.

Four kids left. Alvin would have been gone three kids ago, even while savoring his bites. But he was curious how the developing bout was going to proceed. The new girl, versus a strong-willed, grandma-looking teacher and a slice of blueberry cheesecake.

Gracie was strong-willed herself. Or not smart. She tried getting up, weakly announcing she could not eat the cake, and made her way to the door.

Nope.

The teacher marched over with quick and full footfalls, and sat Gracie back in her seat. That’s when the full-on crying started. The teacher scooted Gracie’s chair in squarely under the table. Kind of hard to pull the escape stunt again. Then the instructor pulled the girl’s cheesecake back in front of her. The crying intensified.

Alvin realized something about the dessert snack he had developed a fondness for in the next moments. Two things. Truths about cheesecake he would carry through his growing life and into his career. One: the integrity of cheesecake was not meant to last in a room temperature environment. It could surely be served in one. But like cereal, you could not quite take your time getting through a bowl, unless you wanted soggy mush for breakfast.

Gracie’s helping of blueberry cheesecake was not looking impressive in that instance. It had deflated some, and Alvin thought that was difficult for it to do. He understood food enough at that age to know hot food deflated or shrank more as it cooled. Not food that started out cold.

The other truth, the horrible one, was that cheesecake was a dreadfully difficult thing to eat if you were crying. Alvin was not too grateful to Gracie for demonstrating.

For all of her struggling, the teacher was growing more frustrated and indignant. She resorted to sitting down next to Gracie to feed her bites of melty, warm cheesecake. The girl understood then that she was not going anywhere until that slice of cheesecake had been eaten. She probably did not care about going outside anymore. She just wanted the nightmare to end. It was torturous.

Every bite was sloppier than the last. Every subsequent intake made Gracie convulse in a more frenzied crying fit. But she managed, with all her might to choke down the spoonfuls. After the fifth bite, she gaged and threatened to bring the food back to the surface, but when the teacher promised she was going to eat the upchuck and worse – that she would be spanked something unholy, the food stayed down.

As if Alvin was certain the scene before him could not be more traumatic, Gracie’s tears and snot started to make contact with her food. An unsightly white mash, the kind that would take form inside the mouth was outside of it, in lumpy splotches. Gracie’s very uneven makeup. The saddest clown in the world.

Then it was over. The teacher got the poor girl to down half the cheesecake before she made Gracie go to the restroom to wash her hands and wipe her face off.

Little Alvin was sickened. Appetite turned off. He did not know when he would gain it back. The image of a miserable, messy girl eating cheesecake was burned into his retinas.

And he was only a third of the way through his helping.

Chapter 6

“Welcome, Alvin.”

“What do you mean?”

And just like that, the cook was employed under his employer. It was another normal day of Coco trying to impart something to someone who just wanted to do their job. But she was not going to let only that happen. Not in that moment. And what moment would just be a plain one ever again?

“This is your official review. Sorry it’s a little more than you sitting across from me in a corner office.”

He was a marked man from the start. Since he was made, he should have been dead much earlier. Surely, before Dean. He was a little lost on the details, but of course Coco was going to be his guide for the next few minutes.

“With exception to this dead guard behind me, and Hendrix’s kill shot, you’re responsible for killing the rest of these men.”

Alvin’s eyes widened with the statement.

“We needed someone who was capable of dealing the most lethal blow. And for this operation to be successful, that wasn’t with guns ablaze. Your food was the perfect