Her Secret Sauce, Her New Life

Chapter 3

He leaned in close to me, deliberately lowering his voice.

"Be good and go back to the kitchen, and I can still let you be Mrs. Martinez. If we really tear this apart, you'll have a sick child and three million dollars in debt. You could end up sleeping under a bridge, and no one would pity you," he said.

I looked at the face I had seen for twelve years and suddenly felt like I was looking at a stranger.

"Robert, let's get a divorce," I said.

He scoffed as if he'd heard a joke.

"Fine. When you're kneeling and begging me, don't blame me for not giving you a way to back down," he replied.

The day Grace was transferred to a general ward, eighteen stores switched to the first batch of knockoff sauce.

In a short video, Robert was personally overseeing things in the kitchen.

He announced to the camera that the flavor had been upgraded, also insinuating that the previous supplier had cut corners.

That night, The Martinez's received more than four hundred new bad reviews.

A: [The barbecue ribs only tasted sweet.]

B: [The signature roast chicken didn't smell like it used to.]

C: [After eating here for ten years, that was the first time we'd left half the dishes untouched.]

Robert deleted comments, handed out vouchers, and had the store managers add more MSG to the dishes.

Foot traffic still dropped by nearly half.

He didn't come to see me; he only had his lawyer send a demand letter, alleging that The Lopez&Martinez had maliciously cut off the supply and demanding six million dollars in compensation.

Michael Davis finished reading the contract and pushed the documents back across to me.

"Did you draft the supply contract?" he asked.

"It's an old version my father left behind. I've revised it several times," I replied.

"The clause about suspending supply for overdue payment is very clear. He can't win. The real trouble is the loan. You did sign it. To prove the funds weren't used for your shared living expenses, you'll need complete transaction records," Michael said.

Michael was a lawyer introduced by Avery, and he didn't come cheap.

I swiped my last bit of credit to pay him.

As I was checking out of the hospital, Grace asked me, "Mom, are we still going home?"

The Martinez family house was in Charlotte's name.

Yesterday, she'd thrown my clothes and documents out at the workshop entrance.

I squatted down to tie Grace's shoelaces.

"Let's go back to Grandpa's old workshop, okay?" I said.

"Okay. Wherever Mom is, that's home," Grace replied.

There were two old rooms out back.

Avery and I cleaned through the night and set up wooden plank beds.

Grace's chest hurt, but she insisted on helping me wipe the tables.

Early the next morning, I pushed the old food cart to the back gate of the county hospital.

Twelve years ago, I had relied on this cart to sell sauced meat wraps.

Robert handled the money; I kneaded the dough, simmered the sauce, and tossed the filling in a skillet.

After the first store opened, he said it was unseemly for the boss's wife to be out front, and had me retreat into the back kitchen.

That retreat lasted twelve years.

The skillet heated up, the flatbreads hit the skillet, and the aroma of sauce soon filled the street corner.

The first to recognize me was James, the taxi driver.

"Ms. Lopez? Were you the one who made the sauced meat wraps back in the early days of The Martinez's?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

He bought two portions, took one bite, and immediately waved over his companions.

Before 9 o'clock, all eighty wraps I'd prepared were sold out.

I packed up and went back to the hospital for my follow‑up, but that afternoon I received a call from a market supervision officer.

Someone had reported me for operating without a license and using expired meat.

The food cart was temporarily confiscated, and the workshop was also facing inspection.

Charlotte blocked the entrance to the workshop, pointing at me and cursing.

"Taking food out of your own husband's mouth, aren't you afraid of karma? Robert gave you twelve good years, and now that you've left him, all you can do is run a broken‑down stall," she said.

The crowd of onlookers grew.

I produced the workshop's business license, food production permit, and the day's purchase receipts, handing them to the inspectors one by one.

"Please proceed with the inspection in accordance with the law. Every batch of raw materials has a retained sample, and we keep the surveillance footage for ninety days," I said.