Chapter 4 - The Unlikely Apprenticeship
By the end of the second week, the morning routine at Honey & Rye had evolved into something I never could have predicted in a million years.
At 7:45 AM sharp, Roman’s black sedan would pull up to the curb. Roman would step out, walk inside, order his black coffee, and sit quietly in the corner table with a stack of encrypted corporate reports or shipping manifests. Ten minutes later, Lily would arrive, throw her backpack onto the wooden bench, slip into an apron, and report for duty behind the counter.
The sullen, walled-off teenager was slowly being replaced by a sharp, observant girl who possessed an uncanny knack for pastry decoration.
“You’re pressing too hard on the piping bag,” I instructed one Tuesday morning, guiding Lily’s hand as she squeezed lemon cream into a batch of tarts. “Let the pastry do the work. If you force it, the filling breaks.”
Lily concentrated fiercely, her tongue poking out slightly between her lips—a habit she clearly inherited from nobody in the Duca family, though I suspected Roman did something similar when he was signing death warrants or auditing spreadsheets.
Across the room, Roman looked up from his tablet, watching us with an expression of such intense, quiet devotion that it made my chest ache. He hadn't brought up his fake girlfriend proposal once since the flour incident. He didn't have to. The charade was no longer necessary; we had forged something far more complicated—an alliance built on butter, yeast, and shared custody of a grieving teenager.
“So,” Lily said casually, not looking up from her tarts. “Are you and my uncle actually dating, or was that just a lie Aunt Sophia made up to stop him from going to the opera with Mrs. Moretti?”
I nearly dropped a bowl of powdered sugar.
“Your aunt Sophia,” I said carefully, “has an overactive imagination and a terrifying talent for matchmaking.”
“So it’s a lie?” Lily pressed, glancing up with a knowing smirk that was entirely too similar to Roman’s.
“It’s... a work in progress,” I muttered evasively.
Just then, the front bell chimed, interrupting our interrogation.
A tall, impeccably dressed man in a tailored grey tweed suit walked into the bakery. He had silver-streaked hair, sharp, predatory eyes, and an air of old-money arrogance that immediately clashed with the cozy, flour-dusted aesthetic of Honey & Rye.
Victor Vance. A rival syndicate captain whose territory bordered Roman’s on the West Side.
The moment Roman saw him enter, he stood up from his table. Every muscle in his body coiled like a spring. The relaxed, doting uncle vanished instantly, replaced by the apex predator who ruled the Chicago underworld.
“Roman,” Victor said smoothly, his voice carrying easily across the small shop as he stepped toward the counter. “I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time in family-friendly establishments lately. Rumor has it the great Duca syndicate is getting soft, trading shipping docks for artisanal bakeries.”
Lily froze, her hands dropping the piping bag. The color drained from her face as she recognized the name. Victor Vance’s faction had been tied to the violent turf war that indirectly claimed her parents' lives.
Roman stepped between Victor and the counter, his frame blocking Lily from the man's view entirely. His voice dropped into a low, lethal register.
“If you have business with me, Victor, you take it to the docks. You don't bring your shadow into a civilian establishment.”
Victor smiled, a cold, humorless stretching of his lips. “Just stopping by to sample the pastries, Roman. I wanted to see what was worth risking a war over. Turns out, it’s just a sweet little shop. It would be a terrible shame if a gas leak turned all this flour into cinders.”
The threat hung in the air like a rotting corpse.
Before Roman could move, before my protective instincts could fully override my common sense, I reached down beneath the front counter, grabbed a fresh, unopened twenty-pound bag of unbleached flour, hoisted it with both hands, and slammed it down onto the display surface with a deafening CRACK.
Victor blinked, startled out of his monologue, looking down at the heavy white sack sitting right inches from his designer lapels.
May you like
I leaned across the counter, my eyes locked onto his with absolute, ice-cold fury.
“If a single crumb in my bakery gets damaged,” I said, my voice dangerously calm, “I won't just throw flour at you, Mr. Vance. I’ll feed you to the industrial dough mixer.”
