Chapter Six
Noah
The bell over the bakery door jingles.
Soft. Cheerful. Hopeful.
I step inside, carrying nothing but a worn backpack filled with cameras and the weight of a promise I made with my hand wrapped around Juliet’s pinky.
She’d kissed my knuckles after.
Whispered, “Just keep an eye on him, yeah? Tell me what he does when he’s relaxed.”
So here I am.
First day. First mission.
I’m officially Vitaly Volkov’s newest bakery assistant.
Unofficially… something closer to a spy.
The air smells like warmth and sugar.
Yeast, vanilla, cinnamon, and that faint citrus bite that clings to metal trays after being washed with lemon soap.
The walls are old cream, the counters polished wood, and there’s a handwritten sign that says “Baked With Love. And Real Butter.”
The display case gleams under soft lights.
Rows of pastries, golden and perfect.
Each one placed with care.
Like someone who knows what it means to feed people.
It feels like a place where nothing bad could happen.
Which means it’s probably the most dangerous kind of place.
I’ve only met Vitaly twice before.
Big guy. Quiet voice. Moves carefully. Like he’s aware he could break things but doesn’t want to. A gentle soul dressed in a villain’s skin.
Juliet swears he’s dangerous. I’m still trying to see it.
Behind the counter, he’s already working.
Vitaly Volkov.
Broad shoulders strain against a white t-shirt dusted with flour.
His hands are massive, knuckles scarred.
He dusts flour off his forearms, wipes his hands on a dish towel, and nods toward the back.
“You’re early.”
His accent is thick. But soft around the edges.
Like warm bread instead of hard liquor.
“I like mornings,” I say, and it’s true.
They feel like blank pages.
He walks me through the morning routine.
Patient. Thorough.
Shows me how to measure by weight, not volume.
“Precision,” he says, tapping the scale. “Is respect for the recipe.”
When I stumble over the pronunciation of Kartoshka, he smiles.
Actually smiles.
“Again,” he says gently. “Kar-TOSH-ka. Little potato.”
I try three more times before I get it right.
Each time, he just nods.
Never impatient. Never condescending.
When I finally nail it, he hands me one from the cooling rack.
“Try. Tell me what you taste.”
I bite into it.
Soft. Rich. The filling sweet but not cloying.
“Chocolate,” I say. “And... condensed milk?”
He nods, pleased. “Good palate.”
And just like that, I’m not a spy anymore.
I’m a student.
And he’s teaching me something he loves.
I’m organizing trays when I slip the first camera behind the stack of mixing bowls.
Tiny thing. Juliet had them shipped in bulk. She called them “nanny cams for naughty boys.”
I place another behind the spice rack.
Another near the flour bins.
One tucked behind the stack of branded takeout boxes, just in case he ever mutters something criminal while packaging Medovik.
“This is for her,” I remind myself. “For us. For safety. We have to know who he is before we bring him home.”
Still, my hands sweat.
Because he just taught me how to make something special to him.
And I’m repaying him with surveillance.
Even though I smiled. Even though he smiled back.
He trusts me.
And that makes this harder.
We relax into a rhythm.
Vitaly shows me how to fold the parchment paper just right so it hugs the edges of the pan.
His hands dwarf mine, thick fingers moving with surprising gentleness.
“You fold toward the heart,” he says, “so the edges don’t burn.”
There’s something poetic about that. I think he knows it too.
He smiles easily, it’s small and real.
We talk while we prep.
I ask about his home country.
At first, he’s guarded. Answers in single sentences.
But then I ask about the recipes.
“Did you learn these from family?”
His hands still.
For a second, I think I’ve pushed too far.
But then he smiles. Soft. Sad.
“My grandmother,” he says quietly. “She taught me everything. Said a man who can feed his family will never be useless.”
He measures sugar with his hands, no scale needed.
“She would make Medovik for my birthday. Every year. No matter how little we had.”
His voice goes distant. Warm.
“I can still see her hands. Small. Wrinkled. Covered in flour. She would hum while she worked. Old songs. I don’t remember the words anymore. Just the feeling.”
He looks at me.
“That’s why I bake. To remember her. To keep her alive in the sugar and butter.”
My throat tightens.
Because that?
That’s not a criminal.
That’s a man who lost everything and rebuilt himself one pastry at a time.
I watch him work.
The careful way he shapes each piece.
The gentle pressure of his massive hands.
The way he hums under his breath.
Unconscious. Unguarded.
Juliet’s right.
We don’t have one like him.
Our house needs his energy.
His warmth. His quiet strength.
The way he makes something beautiful out of nothing but flour and time.
I can already picture him in our kitchen.
Teaching Juliet to braid dough.
Laughing at Callum’s terrible jokes.
Spotting for Orion at the gym.
Listening to Elliot talk philosophy while he kneads bread.
He’d fit.
The cadence of his voice is relaxing. I can imagine him singing as I play the guitar and Juliet melting into a puddle.
He asks if I have family nearby. I say “Sort of.”
He nods like he understands.
He doesn’t ask many questions.
He doesn’t flirt.
He doesn’t pry.
He just teaches.
By the time I refill the sugar canister, I’m starting to wonder if Juliet’s wrong.
Because if I didn’t know better?
I’d say Vitaly Volkov is just a baker.
A lonely one.
The front door swings open hard enough to rattle the tiny bell above it.
I don’t look up at first. Just assume it’s a late customer or someone desperate for coffee.
But then the air changes.
It goes... flat. Heavy.
Like the pressure drop before a storm.
I feel it in my chest.
The way you feel danger before you see it.
I turn.
She’s already crossed the threshold.
Tall. Angular. Sharp in a way that has nothing to do with beauty.
Hair pulled so tight it stretches her face.
Red coat. Designer. Expensive.
But it looks like blood.
High collar framing her throat like armor.
She doesn’t walk. She stalks.
Heels clicking like a countdown.
Vitaly steps out from the kitchen, towel still slung over his shoulder.
His expression doesn’t change, but his body goes tight.
She speaks in rapid Russian.
I don’t understand a word of it.
But I feel it.
The way her voice cuts sharp. Low. Too smooth to be calm. Too close to a hiss.
She grabs him by the front of his shirt.
Yanks him forward.
Hard.
Hard enough that I hear the fabric strain.
She speaks inches from his face.
Low. Venomous.
Like she wants to climb down his throat and burn him from the inside out.
Vitaly doesn’t fight back.
His hands stay at his sides.
Fists clenched but controlled.
Like he’s done this before.
Like he’s learned that fighting back makes it worse.
I step forward before I even think about it.
My pulse pounding.
My hands shaking.
Because I’m not Orion. I’m not built for this.
But I can’t just stand here.
“Hey.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Back off.”
Her head turns.
Slow. Predatory.
Eyes like polished ice. Mouth curled in something between amusement and hunger.
She lets go of Vitaly, but not in a way that makes me feel better.
Then she circles me.
Like I’m an exhibit. Or a threat.
Or prey she hasn’t decided how to skin yet.
“So pretty,” she says, switching to English now, her accent dragging the words like silk over a blade. “You learn to fold the dough, pretty boy?”
I say nothing.
Her finger trails over my shoulder. Down my arm.
I freeze.
“Careful with your hands, pretty boy,” she purrs. “There are other things to knead.”
She leans in.
Close enough that I smell her perfume. Expensive. Cloying.
“And if you misbehave…”
Her nail digs into my wrist. Just enough to hurt.
“You’ll learn more than pastries.”
She smiles.
Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
It doesn’t even pretend to.
She taps my chin with one long, manicured finger.
Her eyes flick to Vitaly. “Friday. I won’t ask nicely again.”
She turns, heels clacking like gunshots across the tile.
The bell chimes when she leaves.
It doesn’t sound soft anymore. It sounds wrong.
Vitaly doesn’t move.
Not at first.
Just stands there, still staring at the door like maybe if he waits long enough, it’ll erase what just happened.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
He walks past me.
Goes to the prep station.
Grabs a bowl.
Pours flour.
Misses the edge.
A cloud of white dust explodes across the counter and coats his forearm, but he doesn’t react. He just swipes at it too hard and knocks the mixing bowl sideways.
It lands with a crack on the floor and rolls under the counter.
I crouch to retrieve it.
My hands are shaking too.
Because I just saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.
A man breaking.
When I stand, he’s bracing himself against the counter.
Breathing slow. Controlled.
Like he’s counting.
Like he’s trying not to shatter.
“She wants something I can’t give.” His voice is quieter than usual. Rougher. Frayed.
I study him for a beat.
“You know… if someone’s giving you trouble…” I say gently. “I know people who can help.”
That’s when he looks at me.
Really looks.
Not like a co-worker.
Like someone holding a secret so heavy it’s pulling his bones down.
And for a second, just one second, I see him.
Not the baker.
Just a man.
Afraid.
We try to keep working.
Vitaly pulls fresh dough from the cooler and turns it out onto the floured counter, but his rhythm’s wrong. His hands don’t follow the patterns he just taught me. He moves like someone trying to mimic memory, not muscle.
After the third time he presses too hard and ruins the fold, I gently take the dough from him.
“Sit down. Just for a minute. I’ll clean this up.”
He doesn’t argue.
I bring him a Medovik from the display case and a mug of something warm. I think it’s his tea blend. Earthy and bitter, like he roasts the leaves himself just to spite commercial brands.
He holds the mug with both hands. Doesn’t drink.
“I didn’t have a sponsor,” he says quietly.
No preamble. No lead-in. Just truth.
“I wanted to bake. Open a place. Make something with my hands that wasn’t…”
He trails off. Swallows.
“I had no one left. Home or here. So I paid her. Lied on forms. Said we were engaged. She vouched for me. And then…”
He shrugs. Doesn’t look at me.
Looks at his hands.
Those massive, scarred hands that fold dough toward the heart.
“She wants more. Money. Access. A clean place to run dirty bills.”
His voice cracks.
Just slightly.
“If I say no, she reports me. I lose the bakery. Maybe get deported. Maybe worse.”
I don’t say anything.
Because I don’t know what to say.
He finally looks at me, something raw flickering in his expression.
“I just wanted a quiet life. A warm kitchen. A place that smelled like sugar instead of blood.”
When he gets up, I pretend not to watch him wipe his eyes on the towel.
He goes back to measuring butter like nothing happened.
Like it didn’t cost him something to tell me that.
I clean the counter. Fold the towels.
Finish shaping the last tray of bread while he moves stiffly through the rest of the prep.
But inside?
I’ve already decided.
I can’t fix this. Not alone.
I can’t stop Oksana. I don’t even know what she’s capable of.
But Juliet will know how to handle it.
Juliet always does.
At the end of the day, I take a photo of the bakery’s front window.
The one with the hand-painted sign.
The basket of plastic pastries underneath.
The warm glow from inside.
It looks like the kind of place where nothing bad could happen.
But I know better now.
I type.
Me: We have a problem. Oksana isn’t just annoying. She’s dangerous. She’s blackmailing him. Family meeting?
I stare at it for a second.
Then I hit send.
Because protecting someone doesn’t mean keeping secrets.
Sometimes it means telling the girl you love that the guy she’s obsessed with is caught in something real.
Telling the family.
I know they’ll want to protect him, too.
Because that’s what we do.
We protect what’s ours.
And Vitaly?
He’s already ours.
He just doesn’t know it yet.