Chapter 1 - The Flour-Dusted Ultimatum
The morning air inside Honey & Rye Bakery always carried the heavy, comforting scent of melting butter, raw cane sugar, and toasted pecans. By 3:30 AM, when most of Chicago was still wrapped in a deep, freezing slumber, I was already knee-deep in dough, wrestling with heavy sacks of flour and fighting off the bone-deep exhaustion that came with owning a small business on the city’s North Side. At thirty-one, my life was simple, predictable, and entirely my own.
Until Roman Duca walked through my front door.
Before I had known Roman Duca for even a full hour, I found myself holding a twenty-pound bag of unbleached all-purpose flour, my muscles locking, and hurling it at him with a force born entirely of pent-up retail rage. The white powder exploded across his immaculate, custom-tailored charcoal suit like a miniature dust storm, coating his broad shoulders, ruining his silk tie, and dusting his polished Italian leather shoes in a thick layer of white sediment.
Nobody in my bakery moved. Not his two towering, stone-faced guards standing near the condiment station; not his eccentric, pearl-wearing aunt Sophia; and certainly not me. I stood behind the glass display case, chest heaving, pointing a flour-caked finger straight at the chest of the most feared Mafia boss in the city of Chicago.
“Maybe now,” I panted, my voice echoing off the subway-tiled walls, “you’ll finally understand what the word no means.”
My name is Clare Bennett. I’m five-foot-six, slim, permanently exhausted, and far too tired to care about reputations, syndicates, or men who thought the world operated on their personal schedule.
Roman Duca looked down at the white cloud settling over his lapels. He didn't flinch. He didn't reach for a hidden weapon. Instead, he let out a slow, measured breath.
“You’re terrible at negotiating,” he said, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that somehow cut through the hum of the display refrigerators.
“No,” I snapped back, slamming the empty flour bag onto the stainless-steel counter. “You’re just entirely unaccustomed to people rejecting you.”
Behind him, his aunt Sophia made a sudden, suspicious choking sound that sounded suspiciously like suppressed laughter.
“This is entirely your fault,” I told her, leveling my glare at the older woman.
Sophia looked utterly delighted, her eyes sparkling behind oversized designer frames. Ten minutes earlier, she had cornered a local delivery driver near the door and loudly declared that her nephew Roman couldn’t possibly attend the family’s Sunday dinner because he was “busy spending the morning with his girlfriend.”
She had pointed a jeweled finger directly at me while I was trying to frost a tray of cinnamon rolls.
“I was arguing with him,” I explained furiously to the room at large, “because he tried to buy every single pastry in my display case just so he wouldn't have to wait behind two elderly women in line!”
“I offered to pay for everyone’s individual orders plus a generous gratuity,” Roman replied smoothly, brushing a speck of flour off his sleeve.
“They wanted breakfast, not a hostile corporate takeover of my croissants, Roman!”
One of his armed guards coughed awkwardly into his fist. Roman cast a single, glacial look in his direction, and the man instantly snapped back to rigid attention.
The trouble had started twenty minutes prior when Roman had marched into the bakery like he owned the entire block, attempting to bypass the morning rush. When I told him to take a number and wait his turn like everyone else, Aunt Sophia had materialized out of nowhere, beamed at us both, and declared us a couple. Instead of correcting her polite fiction, Roman had looked at me with those piercing dark eyes and calmly announced to his aunt: “Three months.”
That was the exact moment my patience had evaporated.
“Stop calling me your girlfriend,” I hissed across the counter.
“My aunt believes it now,” he countered, entirely unbothered.
“I couldn't care less.”
“It stops her from arranging blind dates with the daughters of rival shipping magnates.”
“Wonderful. Go find another fake girlfriend in the yellow pages.”
“I would prefer you.”
I stared at him, my jaw tightening. “Why on earth would you prefer me?”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second—a tiny, imperceptible pause. “Because Sophia already believes it.”
“Wrong answer.” I pointed a finger toward the glass exit door. “Get out.”
Roman should have left. Any normal man, covered in forty cents' worth of generic baking flour in front of his subordinates, would have cut his losses and fled.
Instead, he reached into his ruined jacket, pulled out a sleek, minimalist business card embossed with silver lettering, and placed it neatly on my flour-dusted counter.
“I have a business proposal.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard the terms.”
“I’ve heard quite enough proposals from arrogant men who begin our acquaintance by lying about our relationship status.”
He almost looked amused, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. “If you maintained the appearance of my partner for a period of three weeks during select family functions, I would compensate you handsomely.”
Everything inside me went cold. The exhaustion of waking up at 3:30 AM every day, the mounting rent, the stress of keeping the bakery afloat—it all suddenly pressed down on me.
“You want to pay me,” I whispered, “to pretend I’m your girlfriend?”
“For your time and inconvenience.”
“My time has a price, Mr. Duca. But my dignity is not for sale.”
May you like
Then, Roman leaned forward and named a specific financial sum—a figure so obscenely large it could pay off my commercial lease for the next five years in a single stroke.
That was the exact moment I reached for the twenty-pound bag of flour.
