"If you don't want face, then don't expect me to give you any!"
Toby Dickerson stared straight at me as the words left his mouth.
I smiled. "I've already called the police. We wait."
I turned to glance at the clients seated behind me.
This was supposed to be a business dinner, after all. What had happened was embarrassing, and I owed them an apology.
"Everyone, I apologize. Please go ahead and leave."
"We can pick up the business talk tomorrow."
"I'll take care of this on my own."
I addressed the group directly.
They nodded, understanding the situation.
Several of them were already getting to their feet when Toby's entire demeanor shifted.
Anger flashed across his face. He fixed his eyes on me. "Nobody leaves!"
"Shut the doors!"
"Until this bill is settled, no one walks out of here!"
The two security guards behind him moved at once, pulling the doors closed.
The heavy doors slammed shut.
Toby's gaze locked onto me.
There was something cold and flat in his eyes. "President Gilbert, I'm warning you right now—if you don't pay up, nobody leaves this room."
"Come on, President Gilbert. A man in your position—you wouldn't want to make this hard on us, would you?"
His voice was all ice, threaded with threat.
The clients frowned, their eyes shifting to me.
I could see it in their faces—they thought I was the one trying to skip out on the bill.
"Alex, what's really going on?"
"If the tab isn't too bad, we can cover it between us."
A few of the clients I was closer with spoke up.
I shook my head and set the $200,000 bill down in front of them.
The room went silent. Every one of them froze.
A few faces turned ashen.
These people had eaten with me here plenty of times. They knew what a normal tab looked like.
This bill was wrong, and it was obvious.
Eight bottles of premium wine, all opened in a single sitting.
Not to mention the liquor and cigarettes tacked on.
I always picked up the check, and my clients had always been reasonable about it. None of them would have run up a tab like this.
Seeing their faces darken, Toby turned to me immediately. "President Gilbert, these are all your clients."
"I'm sure you don't want them stuck in this room with you all night."
"If you won't pay, none of you are leaving."
He said it like he was stating a fact.
I looked at him. Smugness was written all over his face.
It was obvious what he was thinking—I had clients with me, so of course I'd pay rather than lose face.
What he didn't know was that my relationship with these clients ran deep.
And I wasn't about to do whatever he told me.
When Toby first walked in, I'd quietly started recording on my phone. I knew that in a situation like this, preserving evidence was what mattered most.
"Toby, I'm not paying this."
I looked him dead in the eye. "And I have every reason to believe you're trying to pin someone else's charges on me."
"I've called the police."
"We'll sort this out when they get here."
As my words landed, Toby's expression turned dark. His stare bored into me for a long moment before his head slowly turned toward my clients.
