Chapter 7 Rosie
Alexander Hunt shows up at my bakery before sunrise looking like a man who has never once had flour on his shoes by accident.
The sky outside is still that dim gray-blue stage between night and morning, the streetlights not quite off, the city not quite awake. Inside, my bakery smells like yeast, vanilla, and coffee strong enough to resurrect the dead. Liv is in the back proofing dough. Mateo is unloading cream cheese from a delivery crate. I’m at the front counter with a pencil tucked behind one ear, recalculating labor against yesterday’s disaster when the bell over the door rings.
I look up and immediately regret being alive.
He fills the doorway the way expensive men always do—like the room should make room before they ask. Charcoal coat. Crisp white shirt. Dark tie. Hair still perfect despite the hour. The kind of polished that feels insulting in a place where we earn every clean surface with bleach and exhaustion.
And because apparently my body has unionized against me, the first thing it does is remember his office.
The loosened tie. The roughness in his voice. The way I said stop me like I had absolutely no self-preservation left.
I grip the pencil harder until the wood bites my fingers.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
He closes the door behind him and the bell gives one final innocent jingle, like it hasn’t just welcomed the human equivalent of a contract dispute into my place of business.
“Good morning, Rosie.”
I laugh once. It comes out flat and hostile and exactly right. “Not for you.”
His gaze moves over the bakery in one efficient sweep—display case, prep lists, cooling racks, the repaired front freezer humming under protest, the chalkboard menu I never had time to rewrite yesterday. Then it comes back to me.
Too direct. Too aware.
I hate that he always looks like he’s reading the room and me at the same time.
“I need ten minutes,” he says.
“You had ten minutes yesterday. We all saw how badly that turned out.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something tightens at the edge of it. Good. Let him be uncomfortable in my sugar kingdom for once.
From the back, Liv calls, “Should I come out there or is this private wealthy-person nonsense?”
“Both,” I call back.
Alexander’s mouth almost moves. That tiny almost-smile again, the one I would like officially stricken from his face.
I set the pencil down and fold my arms. “Whatever this is, say it fast. I have actual work to do.”
He steps farther into the bakery, and the contrast is so wrong it almost makes me furious all over again—him all dark wool and contained power against my scratched wood counters and pastry case stickers and the smear of flour on the register from where I wiped my hands too quickly.
He does not belong here.
Which is exactly why I know this will be bad.
“Not here,” he says quietly.
I bark a laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is my bakery not discreet enough for you?”
“It’s not private enough.”
“Then you’re already in the wrong building.”
We stare at each other across the counter, yesterday’s office still hanging between us like a bruise neither of us can stop pressing.
Then Mateo appears from the back carrying a flat of berries, takes one look at Alexander, and slowly backs up like he’s spotted a bear in formalwear.
“Yeah,” I say without looking away from Alexander. “No. You can say whatever you came to say right here.”
He studies me for one beat too long. Then nods once.
“Fine,” he says. “I’m here to propose a solution.”
I close my eyes briefly. Of course he is. Of course he marched into my bakery at dawn in a beautiful coat to offer me a solution like my life is just one more problem set he can solve if everyone would stop being emotional and sign where indicated.
When I open my eyes, I already know I’m going to hate whatever comes next.
He does not ease into it.
No small talk. No fake concern. No softening language to make the poison go down easier.
“By Monday,” Alexander says, “the room needs a credible explanation for why you matter to me.”
I blink at him. Once. Slowly.
Then I actually laugh in his face.
Not because it’s funny. Because it is so deranged that laughter is the only available bridge between hearing it and throwing a scone.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I can breathe again. “Did you hit your head on the way over, or have you always opened conversations like a Victorian villain?”
His jaw shifts once. “This is not a joke.”
“No,” I say. “That’s what makes it amazing.”
Liv reappears from the back with a tray of croissants, senses danger instantly, and freezes halfway to the front counter. Mateo stops behind her, berries still in hand. Neither of them is subtle enough to fake disinterest.
I don’t care. Let them hear it. I need witnesses for the lunacy.
Alexander glances toward them once, then returns his attention to me. “The laundering narrative is spreading. So is the corridor clip. Someone filmed your bakery yesterday. Someone texted you directly. The pressure campaign is no longer staying in business channels.”
That does stop some of the laughter. Not all of it. But enough.
“So your answer,” I say carefully, “is what? Better locks? More security? A public statement?”
He holds my gaze.
“No.”
The word drops like a blade.
A terrible little instinct in my stomach already knows. Still, I make him say it.
“What answer?”
His voice stays calm. Too calm.
“A marriage narrative.”
The bakery goes completely silent.
Even the espresso machine seems offended.
Liv makes a noise so strangled it could mean six different things, none of them healthy. Mateo whispers, “Jesus Christ,” to the berries.
I just stare at Alexander.
Because maybe I misheard. Maybe I inhaled too much powdered sugar. Maybe yesterday’s near-sabotage and threatening texts have finally snapped the last workable thread in my brain and I am hallucinating a billionaire in my bakery proposing a fake marriage before sunrise.
“I need you,” he says, and somehow that’s worse, “to hear the full strategy before you react.”
I plant both palms on the counter and lean in. “Alexander. If you think I have not yet reacted, that explains so much about your personality.”
He doesn’t retreat. Of course he doesn’t.
“This gives the market a stable category,” he says. “It reframes the corridor access, neutralizes some of the gossip, and puts you inside a protected narrative instead of leaving you exposed as undefined leverage.”
There are probably words happening after protected narrative. I can’t hear them.
Because all I can see is his office. His mouth on mine. The fact that my body is shamefully, infuriatingly aware of the man standing in front of me while he pitches marriage like a risk-management deck.
“You are out of your entire mind,” I say.
“That is possible,” he says. “It does not make the logic wrong.”
“Oh, I hate you.”
“Not relevant.”
“Incorrect. It’s actually central.”
He exhales once through his nose, the closest thing this man ever does to showing strain. “Rosie.”
“No.” I push off the counter and start pacing because if I hold still, I may commit a felony. “Absolutely not. Not fake dating. Not fake engagement. Not fake marriage. Not me standing beside you smiling for cameras while rich people decide your morality based on whether I look wholesome enough in natural light.”
That last part lands because it is true. And because he knows it.
He watches me turn at the pastry case, flour on my leggings, hair half up, fury doing cardio in my bloodstream.
Then he says the worst thing yet.
“I’m offering stability.”
I whirl back toward him. “No. You’re offering optics.”
The bakery breathes around us, all the warmth and effort and humanity of the place I built with my own hands while he stands there turning marriage into an operational category.
I want to throw him into the bread rack.
He waits until my pacing slows enough to mean I’m listening despite myself.
I hate that he can tell the difference.
Then he lays it out like the polished, terrifying strategist he is.
Not romance. Not a love story. Not anything soft enough to humiliate me twice.
A framework.
“We announce a private relationship that has accelerated under pressure,” he says. “Courthouse marriage. Temporary privacy. A united statement. You gain security cover, credibility insulation, and immediate protection from being framed as random access or exploitable collateral. I gain a narrative the market understands as stabilizing rather than compromising.”
My mouth falls open.
Then shuts. Then opens again because apparently horror requires multiple passes.
“You gain a narrative,” I repeat. “How beautiful for you.”
His expression hardens. “You gain safety.”
“By pretending to be your wife?”
“Yes.”
He says it like yes, the sky is blue. Yes, compressors fail. Yes, this is now the least insane path.
It makes me want to scream.
Liv sets down the tray she’s still holding and murmurs, “Do you need me to throw hot coffee on him, or are we still in the listening phase?”
“Stand by,” I say, not taking my eyes off Alexander.
Mateo, traitor to civilization, mutters, “I’m weirdly in favor of hearing the package details.”
I point at him without looking. “Silence.”
Alexander continues as if my bakery staff have not turned this into live theater. “Your bakery is already being watched. Your number was obtained. If they move from intimidation into direct interference, a public attachment to me makes retaliation against you more expensive.”
I laugh again, ugly this time. “So this is what, exactly? Marry the mob boss for protection?”
His voice drops. “It is a shield.”
“And what does it cost me besides my sanity?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. That is new. That is worse.
Because when Alexander Hunt hesitates, it means the truth has sharp edges even he can’t sand down cleanly.
Finally, he says, “Temporary relocation. Coordinated appearances. A shared public line. Agreement terms you can negotiate.”
Negotiate. Of course. Even his fake marriage comes with clauses.
I fold my arms so tightly it hurts. “You cannot possibly think I’d hand you that much control over my life.”
His eyes lock on mine. “I think you’re smart enough to understand that right now the control is already elsewhere.”
That one goes in clean. No flourish. No smugness. Just a brutal fact dropped at my feet while the memory of anonymous texts still glows under my skin.
I hate him for saying it. I hate him more for maybe being right.
The bakery feels suddenly too small for the size of the argument in it. My display case. My chalkboard menu. My staff pretending to work while absolutely tracking every word. The street outside the front window where a black SUV sat and watched me like I was content in someone else’s campaign.
This is my life. My name on the lease. My recipes. My apartment upstairs with the cracked tile in the bathroom and the little basil pot on the windowsill. My bakery.
And he’s standing in the middle of it offering me a wedding as if stability can be rented by the hour.
“No,” I say.
He doesn’t move.
“No?”
“No.” I step closer now, my own temper finally outpacing the room. “I am not your fix. I am not your image rehab. I am not putting on a white dress—or a courthouse blazer or whatever billionaire-adjacent version of this nightmare you’ve already cost-modeled—because your investors are too morally flimsy to handle ambiguity.”
His gaze flicks once over my face, my hands, the rage I’m barely keeping attached to language. “It wouldn’t be a white dress.”
For one shattered second, the entire bakery pauses around us.
Then Liv makes a strangled noise behind the pastry case. Mateo actually turns away, shoulders jerking once in silent laughter.
I stare at Alexander.
“You unbelievable, arrogant, beautifully polished psychopath.”
That almost-smile again. Tiny. Deadly. Gone.
And God help me, some traitorous part of my body notices that too.
I should have thrown him out right then.
Instead I make the catastrophic mistake of listening.
Because once the first shock burns off, the details start landing where panic already lives. Protection for my staff. Security on the bakery and my apartment. A legal framework that stops random people from circling me like I’m easy collateral. A reason for his resources to move publicly instead of in the weird morally gray shadows where his help keeps showing up and making me furious.
I hate every inch of how persuasive that is.
“I can write protections into it,” he says. “For your business. Your employees. Your decision-making authority. Your apartment. Your lease position.”
Liv and Mateo have gone from alarmed to openly invested. Which is treason, but fine.
I point at Alexander like I’m cross-examining the devil. “You keep saying protections like that word isn’t just control in a nice coat.”
His face shifts—not much, but enough that I know I hit bone. “There’s a difference.”
“Not to women who’ve had men weaponize one as the other.”
Silence.
That lands too. Hard enough that even Liv drops her eyes for a beat.
Alexander takes one slow breath. “Then you write the difference yourself.”
I blink. Once.
He goes on, voice quiet and precise. “Terms. Boundaries. Duration. Separate rooms if needed. No authority over your bakery operations. Staff protection. Apartment access only with consent. You want financial insulation for your business during the term, we write it. You want an exit structure, we write it. You want the arrangement framed in ways that preserve your autonomy, we write it.”
The air changes. Not because I agree. Because for the first time he has stopped selling the broad architecture and started acknowledging what it would actually cost me.
Mateo clears his throat softly. “That is… annoyingly thorough.”
“Mateo.”
“I’m sorry. I support your outrage. It’s just very high-quality outrage.”
Liv says, “I hate that I’m team get-it-in-writing.”
“Both of you are dead to me.”
Alexander’s attention never leaves my face. “I’m not asking you to trust me blindly.”
I bark out a laugh. “That’s because you know I’d rather eat parchment.”
“Yes.”
Again with the honesty. Again with the maddening refusal to be the easier villain when I need one.
I pace once more, but slower now, thinking despite myself. Thinking is dangerous when a proposal is insane enough that instinct should be enough. But instinct got me kissed in his office yesterday, and my instincts are currently under review.
He follows me with his eyes and says, “Rosie.”
I stop.
“Look at me.”
I do. Not because he said to. Because I need to see whether he’s pitching this like a board move or asking it like a man.
What I find is worse. Both.
“The texts don’t stop because you’re proud,” he says. “The surveillance doesn’t stop because you hate me. Whatever this campaign is, it’s already touching your life. I can put weight between you and it in ways you can’t do alone.”
That is the sentence. The one that gets closest to the truth of the wound. Not that I’m incapable. That I’m outmatched. And I hate being outmatched most when I can feel how real the threat is.
I open my mouth to tell him exactly where to put his weight.
And that’s when the brick comes through my front window.
The sound is not what movies prepare you for.
Not one clean smash. Not dramatic shattering.
It’s a brutal exploding crack that seems to happen in layers—glass bursting outward, display items rattling, Liv screaming, Mateo shouting something I don’t catch because my whole body locks in one violent flinch before thought can catch up.
The front window caves inward in a spray of glittering fragments. A brick skids across the wood floor and slams into the base of the pastry case with enough force to make the whole thing shudder.
For one suspended heartbeat, nobody moves.
Then everybody does.
“Down!” Alexander’s voice cuts across the bakery like a blade.
He’s already moving before the command finishes—toward me, toward the window, toward the threat in the same instant. Noah appears at the door like he materialized out of panic itself, one hand already on his earpiece, the other shoving Liv and Mateo back from the glass line with efficient, practiced force.
I stumble one step as Alexander catches my arm and pulls me sideways out of the fall zone. Not hard. Hard enough. The instinctive violence of protection, not possession.
It doesn’t matter. My pulse doesn’t know the difference.
Glass tinkles across the floor in tiny delayed cascades. Cold air rushes in through the ruined pane. Outside, tires squeal somewhere too far away to matter.
Liv is breathing too fast. Mateo has both hands up like he wants to shield everyone at once and doesn’t know where to start. Noah is barking into his earpiece now, clipped and lethal.
“Front breach at Woods Bakery. Possible drive-by. Need exterior sweep, traffic cam pull, and plate capture now.”
My gaze drops to the brick. Brown paper is tied around it with white bakery twine from my own supply drawer.
I know that twine. I buy it in bulk because the cheaper stuff frays under tension.
My stomach turns.
“Rosie,” Alexander says, but I’m already moving.
He catches my wrist before I can crouch near the broken glass. "Don’t.”
The word lands low and sharp. This time I don’t fight him. Not immediately.
Because the note is right there. Because whoever threw it used my twine. Because that feels intimate in the ugliest possible way.
Noah sees where I’m looking and steps in with a handkerchief from his pocket, lifting the paper carefully off the brick without touching more than necessary. He unfolds it once. His expression, which I would have sworn was permanently welded to neutral, changes.
Not by much. Enough.
“What does it say?” I ask.
Noah looks at me. Then at Alexander. Then, because apparently we are all past the point of softening anything, reads it aloud.
“SELL OR BLEED.”
The bakery goes silent.
Not empty silent. Alive silent. The kind where fear takes up every inch of available air.
Liv makes a broken little sound behind the counter. Mateo swears quietly in Spanish. I just stand there staring at the words as if my body has forgotten what to do with itself when the threat stops being abstract and starts using objects.
Sell or bleed.
Not be careful. Not stay away. Not even leave him.
Sell. My bakery. My life. Everything I built after Carter gutted me and called it logic.
The rage comes back before the fear can finish setting. Bright. Clean. Useful.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
My voice is shaking. I don’t care.
“No one,” I say louder, “throws a brick through my window and tells me to sell my business like I’m some scared little—”
Alexander steps in front of the broken glass line before I finish the sentence.
Just like that. A shift of body. A wall where there wasn’t one before.
His coat is dusted with glittering fragments. His expression is carved into something colder than anger and twice as dangerous. He takes the note from Noah, reads it once, and folds it in half with surgical precision.
When he looks back at me, the softness from his office yesterday is gone. What’s left is the man people fear in boardrooms.
And for the first time since he walked into my bakery, I understand exactly why.
“Noah,” Alexander says without taking his eyes off me, “lock the storefront. No one in or out without clearance. Get someone here to board the glass now.”
Noah nods once and moves instantly, already on his phone again. Liv and Mateo are pale but mobile, obeying instructions because instructions are easier than terror. The whole bakery has shifted into emergency mode around us.
I should be leading it. I know that. I know this is my place, my people, my shattered front window and my problem to meet standing up.
But Alexander is still between me and the broken glass, and I hate the relief that flickers through me at the sight of it.
I cross my arms hard over my stomach. “Move.”
He doesn’t.
“Alexander.”
“No.”
The answer is quiet. That somehow makes it harder than if he’d barked it.
I take one step to the left. He matches it. One to the right. Same.
“You do not get to blockade me in my own bakery.”
His gaze locks on mine. “And you do not get to stand in front of a blown-out window when someone just escalated from surveillance to direct threat.”
“Someone threw a brick. They didn’t invade Normandy.”
“Rosie.”
That tone again. The one that makes my name sound less like a word and more like a line being drawn.
I despise how much my pulse reacts to it. Not now. Not with broken glass under our shoes and my staff listening with wide frightened eyes.
“I am not leaving,” I say.
“You are.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
The word hits the room with impossible certainty. Not arrogance this time. Decision. Already made.
Behind him, Noah starts ushering Liv and Mateo toward the back while the first emergency board-up team hustles out of a truck that must have arrived in record time, because apparently Alexander’s infrastructure really does spring from the ground fully formed the second he wants it.
I gesture wildly at all of it. “See? Great. Fantastic. You deployed your army. My windows get fixed. We all survive. End of crisis.”
Alexander’s expression doesn’t change. “This is not the end of the crisis.”
He unfolds the note once more and holds it just long enough for me to see the words again. SELL OR BLEED.
Then he folds it back down and slips it into his coat pocket like evidence and threat and promise all at once.
“They watched your bakery. They got your number. Now they’ve tested the perimeter and made direct contact with property.” His voice stays level, but every word is iron. “That means your apartment upstairs is compromised too.”
That hits. Not the bakery. The apartment. The little two-room place above the shop where my shoes pile by the door and my favorite blue mug always chips at the handle no matter how carefully I wash it and I sometimes fall asleep on the couch with Food Network on low because the quiet gets too loud.
Compromised.
For one terrible second, I can see it through his eyes. Not home. Exposure. Access point. A place someone now knows matters to me.
My breath goes shallow. I hate that he sees it. I hate that I can’t stop him.
He softens by half a degree. Not enough for anyone else to catch it. Enough for me.
“Pack a bag,” he says.
I stare at him.
He steps closer—not crowding, not touching, just entering the radius where his certainty becomes harder to ignore.
“You’re coming with me.”