Chapter 5 - The Baker's Books
By the third week of her stay on the thirty-fifth floor, Jenna was no longer confined to the guest bed. The soft brace on her left wrist allowed her to move her arm, and the rib bindings had reduced the sharp agony to a dull, manageable ache that only caught her when she laughed or turned too quickly.
The guest suite was larger than her entire apartment on Archer—all cream silk walls, pale oak floors, and a private terrace that looked out over the gray, white-capped waters of Lake Michigan.
At 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, the double doors opened, and Dominic walked in. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket; he wore a charcoal wool vest over a white silk shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the long, pale scars from an old knife fight near the docks. He carried a thick, leather-bound folder under his arm.
He tossed it onto the small mahogany dining table near the terrace doors.
"Sit down, Jenna," he said, pulling out a chair for her.
Jenna walked over, her steps slow but steady, and slid into the seat. She looked at the folder, her brow furrowing. "What's this? More police reports?"
"The financial ledgers for the Grand Avenue Bakery," Dominic said, sitting down opposite her, his long fingers laced together under his chin. "The manager, Mr. Rossi, has taken an early, permanent retirement to Arizona as of five o'clock yesterday morning. The audit on the shop’s accounts is complete."
Jenna blinked, her blue eyes wide behind her clear-framed glasses. "Mr. Rossi retired? But he’s only forty-five. He always said he’d die behind that counter."
"He was dying behind the counter, Jenna," Dominic said smoothly. "Specifically, he was dying of greed. He’s been taking twenty percent of the flour and sugar subsidies provided by the city development fund and routing them into a private account registered to a shell company owned by Ryan Perez."
The revelation hit Jenna like a physical blow. She leaned back against the high leather cushion of the chair, her breath catching in her throat. "Rossi was... he was paying Ryan? With the bakery money?"
"Perez wasn't just terrorizing you because he was a monster, Jenna," Dominic explained, his gray eyes fixed on her face with an absolute, unblinking intensity. "He was using you as an insurance policy. He knew you were the head baker. He knew you handled the daily inventory logs. If the city inspectors ever noticed the three-ton discrepancy in the grain shipments, the paper trail led straight to your signature on the delivery manifests. He setup you to take the fall if the logistics hub ever went under audit."
Jenna looked down at the leather folder, her fingers trembling as she flipped open the first page. Rows of numbers, written in Rossi’s neat, round handwriting, detailed the systematic bleeding of the small shop she had dedicated three years of her life to saving.
"I... I trusted him," she whispered, a sudden spark of hot, defensive anger breaking through the residual fog of her fear. "I stayed until midnight every Friday to balance the grain sheets because Rossi said the corporate office was strict. I thought I was protecting the business."
"You were protecting my business, Jenna," Dominic said softly, his voice dropping into a register that sounded remarkably human. He reached out, his large hand resting flat on the table near her splinted wrist, not touching her without permission, but offering a solid, unyielding presence that seemed to stabilize the room. "And you did it perfectly. Even with Rossi’s theft, your recipe adjustments and inventory controls kept the Grand Avenue branch in the black for six consecutive quarters. You're a brilliant operations executive, Jenna. You just had the misfortune of working for two men who belonged in a ditch."
He stood up, walking over to the glass doors that led to the terrace, looking out at the skyline. "As of next Monday, the Grand Avenue Bakery is no longer a subsidiary of Moretti Logistics. I’ve transferred the deed, the building, and the equipment into a private trust registered under your name. You aren't the head baker anymore, Jenna. You own the shop."
Jenna sat frozen, her heart hammering against her ribs with a rhythm that had nothing to do with fear. "You're... you're giving me the bakery?"
"I don't give gifts, Jenna," Dominic said, turning his head to look at her, the sharp winter light catching the iron line of his jaw. "I invest in assets that produce value. You kept my shipping lanes clean while two criminals were trying to turn them into a crime scene. Consider the deed your retroactive compensation. The only condition is that you change the flour supplier. I have a mill in Indiana that doesn't include a cop in the markup."
May you like
A small, rare smile touched the corners of Jenna’s mouth—a beautiful, liberating thing that transformed her bruised features into something entirely different. "I think I can manage that, Mr. Moretti."
"Dominic," he corrected her quietly, his gray eyes locking onto hers with a promise that sounded like an oath. "In this building, you call me Dominic."
