Noah was truly backed into a corner.
Every day, loan sharks from underground lending rings showed up at his door, pounding on it so hard the walls seemed to shake.
He kept Vivian completely in the dark and made one desperate gamble.
He reached out to a black-market chemical supplier.
Under the table, he bought massive quantities of cheap, toxic, industrial-grade flavoring agents.
"As long as it tastes right, who gives a damn what's actually in it?"
Inside a grimy, unlicensed workshop, Noah's eyes were bloodshot as he barked orders at the workers to dump the acrid chemical powders into the mixing tanks.
They disguised the operation behind a fake "Going-Out-of-Business Sale" campaign.
Then they dumped the entire batch of contaminated chili sauce at rock-bottom prices on food trucks a
