Chapter 3
Lorenzo read Ethan’s name and went quiet in a way that made every guard in the room stand straighter.
Not louder.
Not angrier.
Quieter.
That was his dangerous place.
“Tell me about him,” he said.
I laughed once.
It came out ugly.
“My ex?”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather swallow glass.”
“Amelia.”
The softness in his voice hurt.
Because he was not ordering.
He was asking.
So I told him.
Not everything.
Enough.
“Ethan Cole was charming in public and surgical in private. He never yelled when people could hear. He corrected. Suggested. Improved. He made every meal a test and every mirror an enemy.”
Rosa’s hand tightened on her cane.
Marco looked at the floor.
Lorenzo’s jaw flexed.
“He touched you?”
I looked away.
“Not the way you mean. He didn’t need to. He made me do most of the damage myself.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
That seemed to anger him more.
“He knew about the arrangement?”
“Everyone in Milwaukee knew. Ethan made sure to call it my desperate mafia audition.”
My phone buzzed again.
A photo appeared.
Ethan standing outside my bakery.
That morning.
I stood so fast the chair scraped.
“No.”
Lorenzo took one step toward me.
I shook my head.
“My staff.”
I called the bakery.
No answer.
I called my assistant, Tessa.
Straight to voicemail.
Panic rose sharp.
Lorenzo turned to Marco.
“Milwaukee. Now.”
“Already moving.”
“I’m going.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“No.”
Wrong answer.
I stepped close enough to make him blink.
“That bakery is mine. Those people are mine. If Ethan is there because of me, I go.”
“You could be walking into a trap.”
“Then I’ll trip dramatically and ruin their timing.”
Rosa muttered, “I like her.”
Lorenzo did not.
But he handed me my coat.
We left in a convoy.
Three black SUVs.
Six armed men.
Rosa insisted on coming and threatened to haunt anyone who objected while still alive.
The ride to Milwaukee felt endless.
Lorenzo sat beside me, huge and silent, one hand resting open on his knee.
I stared at that hand.
The same hand that lifted steel.
The same hand that waited for permission.
I hated that fear and safety could look so similar from the outside.
He noticed.
“I won’t touch you without asking.”
My throat tightened.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at him then.
“Yes.”
It was the first time I realized I meant it.
My bakery sat on a corner with blue trim and crooked flower boxes.
The front window was dark.
The sign had been flipped to CLOSED.
That never happened before six.
Tessa’s car was still outside.
I reached for the door.
Lorenzo stopped me with two words.
“Let Marco.”
I wanted to argue.
Then I saw the shadow move inside.
Marco entered first.
Then two guards.
Then he called, “Clear, but you need to see this.”
I ran in.
The bakery smelled like sugar and fear.
Chairs were overturned.
Flour covered the floor.
Tessa sat in the office with a blanket around her shoulders, crying.
I dropped beside her.
“Tessa.”
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “He said he was your fiancé. He said you owed him.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
“What did he take?”
She pointed to my locked file cabinet.
The drawer was open.
My financial records were gone.
So were my father’s old ledgers.
My father, Patrick Carter, had run the bakery before me.
He died five years earlier of a heart attack in the storage room, surrounded by invoices he refused to let me worry over.
At least, that was what I believed.
Lorenzo crouched beside the cabinet.
“You kept old financial records here?”
“Dad’s tax files. Vendor accounts. Loan papers.”
Marco held up a torn folder tab.
CARTER SUPPLY 2018.
Lorenzo’s face changed.
“What?”
He stood slowly.
“Carter Supply handled food contracts for Duca warehouses before your father died.”
I stared.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“My dad sold bread and pastries.”
“And delivered to Duca properties.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Lorenzo did not answer.
That meant it did.
Tessa wiped her face.
“Ethan said something strange.”
I turned.
“What?”
“He said your father should have taken the first offer.”
My skin went cold.
“What offer?”
“I don’t know. Then he found the red ledger and laughed.”
Red ledger.
My father’s forbidden book.
The one he always kept locked.
The one I never opened because grief makes cowards of daughters too.
“Did he take it?”
Tessa nodded.
Lorenzo’s phone rang.
Marco answered, listened, and went pale.
“Boss.”
Lorenzo looked at him.
“Say it.”
“Ethan Cole just entered Chicago. He’s heading toward the old Duca chapel.”
Midnight.
The text.
The trap was closing exactly on schedule.
Then Tessa grabbed my wrist.
“Amelia, wait. Before he left, Ethan said if you followed, you should remember what your father wrote on the wall.”
I frowned.
“What wall?”
“The freezer wall. Behind the flour racks.”
I ran.
In the walk-in freezer, my breath smoked in the air.
Lorenzo moved the racks himself.
Behind them, scratched into metal, were words I had never seen.
If I’m gone, find Rosa Duca.
I turned.
May you like
Rosa stood in the freezer doorway, her face white.
“Oh, Patrick,” she whispered.
