Chapter 3 - Flour and Fire
The private office on Aurelia’s mezzanine level was lined with dark walnut paneling and smelled of old paper, leather, and unlit tobacco.
A silver bucket filled with shaved ice sat on the massive mahogany desk. Adrian didn't call an assistant; he wrapped the ice in a soft, dark towel himself, walked around the desk, and handed it to me.
“Hold that against the cheekbone,” he instructed, taking a seat opposite me in one of the club chairs. “Don't push hard. The soft tissue is already traumatized.”
I took the pack, pressing the numbing cold against the pulsing heat of my skin. “You know who he works for.”
“Mercer Financial Holdings,” Adrian said, leaning back and resting his elbows on the arms of the chair. “Sloane’s father is the chairman. Evan has spent the last two years running their secondary distribution clearing house. He thinks he’s a player. In reality, he’s the sacrificial lamb they’ll throw to the regulators the moment the audit team smells the rot.”
He nodded toward the folder resting on my lap. “May I?”
I handed it over. My fingers brushed his as the paper changed hands. A tiny spark of static snapped between our skin, so sharp and unexpected that my breath caught. Adrian didn't flinch. His eyes flicked to mine for a heartbeat—searching, intensely focused—before he opened the file.
For ten minutes, the only sound in the office was the rustle of paper and the distant, muffled jazz drifting up from the dining room below.
I watched him read.
Evan had spent four years telling me that men like Adrian Bellandi looked down on women like me. Women with wide hips, round bellies, and thick thighs. Women who spent their days covered in unbleached flour, kneading sourdough until their forearms burned, wearing aprons that smelled of cinnamon and vanilla instead of Chanel No. 5. Evan used to say that taste in women was an index of a man’s status—that you showed the world what you deserved by the narrowness of your companion’s waist.
Yet Adrian Bellandi, whose net worth was discussed in Forbes and whispered about in federal courtrooms, didn't look at my body with disgust.
When he had stood beside me in the dining room, his gaze had taken in every inch of me—from my messy brown curls pinned up with a plastic clip to the tight curve of my blue dress—and there had been no pity in it. There had been an assessing, heavy heat that made the hair on the back of my arms stand up.
“Your grandmother taught you well,” Adrian finally said, closing the folder with a dry snap.
“She was an auditor for thirty years,” I said. “She told me that men lie with their mouths, but their spreadsheets always tell the truth if you know how to read the trailing zeroes.”
A faint smile touched the corner of his lips. It transformed his face, smoothing the hard edges around his scar and making him look strikingly, dangerously handsome.
“She was a wise woman,” he murmured. “These wire routing codes aren't Mercer’s. Evan was routing freight surcharges through an account in the Caymans, then skimming two percent off the top before moving the funds back into Mercer’s operating accounts. That’s why he was so terrified of you. This isn't just civil breach of contract. This is federal wire fraud.”
My phone buzzed on the arm of the chair.
I looked down. A notification flashed across the screen from my bank.
*Incoming Wire Transfer: $55,000.00 from Account *412. Status: Cleared.*
The air rushed out of my lungs in a long, ragged exhale. The money was back. The inheritance my grandmother had broken her back to leave me—the safety net that was supposed to keep *Clementine Bakeshop* alive through the winter—was sitting in my account.
“He paid,” I whispered.
“Of course he paid,” Adrian said calmly. “He’s a coward. Men who strike women only do so when they believe there will be no physical or financial consequence. The moment the calculus shifts, they fold.”
He rose to his feet. He was easily six-foot-two, his broad frame casting a long shadow across the polished floorboards. He walked over to a credenza and poured two fingers of amber liquid into a heavy crystal tumbler. He didn't offer me a glass; he simply brought the tumbler to his lips, took a slow sip, and looked down at me.
“What is your business, Maddie?”
Hearing my first name in his voice felt like a sudden drop in an elevator. “I own a bakery in Brooklyn. *Clementine Bakeshop*. On Hoyt Street.”
“I know Hoyt Street,” he said. “You do wholesale?”
“Some. Mostly retail. Artisanal breads, laminated pastries, wedding cakes.”
“Good,” Adrian said. “Because in two weeks, I am hosting the annual winter benefit for the Bellandi Foundation. Four hundred guests. Heads of state, real estate magnates, international shipping partners. My executive chef walked out yesterday after a disagreement regarding the pastry program.”
I stared at him through the cold pack. “You have Aurelia. You have five other Michelin-starred kitchens in Manhattan alone. You don't need a neighborhood baker from Brooklyn.”
Adrian stepped closer. He set his glass down on the edge of the desk, leaned forward, and placed his hands on the arms of my chair, effectively caging me between his broad shoulders. The clean scent of him—sandalwood, dark wool, and raw power—filled my senses.
“I don't hire corporate catering syndicates for the Foundation, Miss Vance,” he murmured, his voice dropping into that dangerous, intimate register. “I hire people who have fire in their blood. People who can take a blow to the face, spit out the blood, and demand what belongs to them with fifty witnesses watching.”
His eyes traveled down to my lips, lingering on the small red split at the corner.
“Fifty thousand dollars for the contract,” he whispered. “You design the dessert menu. You source the ingredients. You run the service. And in exchange, my legal team takes these documents and turns Evan Cole into a memory.”
My pulse hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Why do this for me? You don't know me.”
Adrian tilted his head. His thumb reached out and lightly brushed against my uninjured cheek. The skin was rough, calloused, but his touch was shockingly gentle.
“Because,” he said softly, “I have spent twenty years watching men like Evan Cole take things they didn't earn from people who couldn't fight back. And tonight, watching you stand in my dining room with blood on your teeth and fire in your eyes, I decided I wanted to be on your side.”
He pulled his hand away, but the ghost of his heat remained on my skin.
May you like
“Go home, Maddie,” he said, standing straight once more. “Put raw honey on that cut. Open the bakery at dawn. And tomorrow afternoon, expect a black town car outside your door.”
***
