Chapter 2 - The AuditBy 4:00 AM the next morning, the bakery windows were fogged with the heat of rising dough and baking cardamom.
Nathan hadn't slept. He had spent the night pacing the creaky wooden floors of his father’s farmhouse, watching the shadows stretch across the empty rooms where Rebecca’s ghost seemed to sit in every chair. Her absence was a physical weight, heavy and suffocating.
You’re terrified of letting anyone close, Claire’s voice echoed in his head, mocking him through the dark hours.
At 5:15 AM, the bell above the bakery door chimed.
Nathan walked in, pulling his wool coat tighter against the morning frost. The shop smelled of heaven—butter, yeast, and roasted pecans. Claire was standing behind the glass counter, flour dusting her apron, boxing up a dozen maple-pecan scones for the local diner order.
She didn’t look up immediately. “You’re early.”
“I don’t sleep much,” Nathan said, setting a twenty-dollar bill on the wood. He didn’t wait for change. “Give me a black coffee and whatever’s fresh.”
Claire paused, her hands hovering over a box of pastries. She looked up, studying the dark circles under his eyes, the tense set of his shoulders, and the raw stubble along his jawline.
“You look like hell, Nathan.”
“Thanks. You look like you haven’t slept since 2018.”
“That’s because I haven’t,” she said dryly, pouring a steaming paper cup of dark roast and sliding it across the counter. “Inheriting debt is a great cure for insomnia.”
Nathan wrapped his cold hands around the cardboard cup, letting the heat seep into his skin. “How much do you actually need?”
Claire’s hands froze. The atmosphere in the cozy shop instantly dropped ten degrees. The easy, sharp banter vanished, replaced by a sudden, razor-sharp tension.
“Excuse me?”
“The debt,” Nathan said quietly, his voice devoid of judgment, pure and clinical. “Evelyn’s books were a mess. Old suppliers, unfulfilled tax liens, high-interest commercial loans from the regional bank in Lansing. You’re bleeding five figures a month just servicing the interest.”
Claire stepped back, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. The warmth drained from her face, leaving her pale beneath the flour. “Did you go through my grandmother’s estate records?”
“Public record, Claire. Small towns have loose filing systems. Anyone with a county login can see a foreclosure notice coming down the pipeline.” Nathan took a step closer, leaning against the counter. “You have sixty days before the bank initiates a receivership sale. They’ll auction off the building, the recipes, and the equipment to a commercial franchise. You’ll be out on the street with fifty thousand dollars in residual personal liability.”
Silence slammed down on the bakery. The hum of the pastry refrigerator sounded deafening.
Claire gripped the edge of the counter so hard her knuckles turned translucent white. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, ragged breaths.
“Are you here to gloat?” she whispered, her voice trembling with a fury that scared even her. “Did the big-city billionaire come back to his tiny hometown just to watch a twenty-six-year-old orphan lose everything her grandmother built?”
“No,” Nathan said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “I’m here to make a proposal.”
Before Claire could answer, the front door flew open. A bell chimed violently, and a tall, sharp-featured man in an expensive charcoal suit stepped into the bakery, bringing a gust of freezing wind and an entirely different kind of storm.
“Well, well,” a smooth, oily voice drawled. “Looks like I found you, Nathan. And right on schedule.”
May you like
Nathan closed his eyes for a single second. When he opened them, his gaze was lethal.
Standing in the doorway was Julian Vance—his former chief legal counsel at Cole Urban Development, and the man Nathan had fired six months before selling the company for corporate espionage.
