Chapter 11 #2
Before him was the largest man he’d ever seen, both in height and muscle. Nik would have laid money he was a blacksmith if it weren’t for his dingy beige apron. The man’s fingers were gnarled with calluses and covered in burns, and scars stretched along his muscles, which bulged against his coat.
His mouth folded into a miserable frown beneath his graying ginger beard.
“I’m here as a reference call,” Nik continued, “for an applicant I’ve had to my bakery.”
“I’ve had the same employees for years now. You got the wrong place.”
He turned to go back to work.
“That’s strange,” Nik said, following, “because they claimed to know you. Elouise Auclair.”
It was a gamble. One that paid off.
The hitch in the man’s step would’ve been imperceptible to most. Weakness showed many signs: shifty eyes, pale cheeks, or … a softening of the shoulders in a very large, very guarded man.
“Auclair. Elouise Auclair?”
“The very same.”
The man turned back, and the change almost made Nik retreat a step. The aloof, drunken veneer had sharpened into something lethal, and he had a feeling those muscles could do much more than knead bread.
Those beady eyes searched Nik up and down before he said, “Come on.”
Nik followed through to the back and into a small broom closet.
No, an office. The shelves were lined with recipe books, extra ingredients, and spare uniforms. Papers crowded the desk, many spilling over with blaring red ink: UNPAID and OVERDUE.
It made sense why the man had a collection of empty wine bottles spilling out from every corner.
“Gaetan Arnaud.” He offered his paw of a hand.
“Jean Escoffier.” Gaetan’s fist swallowed Nik’s, but it was gentle despite the calluses.
“Elouise never formally worked here. Happy to see she’s done well enough to end up in the Objet d’Art. Plouffe keeps babbling about her changing-faces act.”
“She was impressive! I simply want to be the first in line to offer her a job should she…”
“Not make it.”
“Precisely.”
“Then why do you need to talk to me?” Gaetan asked.
“You’ve no doubt had countless interviews. People can present themselves like beautifully decorated cakes on the outside. It isn’t until you cut them open that you find the truth.”
Gaetan whistled low. “An intense hiring process.”
“I am nothing if not thorough in knowing who I’m working with.”
“And what do you think of her so far?”
Frustrating. Exceedingly tedious. A tantalizing puzzle.
“Talented with her art,” he decided to say, “though she struggles under public pressure. Rough around the edges, but she could be polished with time.”
The man let out a great howling bark of laughter.
“Say that to my wall out there!”
“She did that?”
Gaetan blanched, as if he’d made a mistake. “No real harm done. She’s just a bit … eager.”
“Would you say she’s unreliable in that regard?”
“No.” His expression softened as he glanced upward. “She’s young, and life hasn’t been particularly easy for her. That stubbornness and pride comes from a place of wanting to do great things, to uphold a legacy that died a long time ago.”
Nik understood that longing.
“El … ouise is afraid to break cycles,” Gaetan added.
“Is that why she presented clafoutis? It’s an old recipe.”
Gaetan’s lips pressed tight.
A knock sounded at the door, and another baker poked their head in. “The baguettes are losing their shape, and the customers are about to riot.”
Gaetan stood with a bolstering grunt. “Duty calls.” He turned when he reached the door. “If she loses, hire her. Get her as far away from the Restes as possible and don’t ever let her turn back. She deserves as much.”
He clapped Nik on the shoulder with a tight squeeze before disappearing down the hall.
Nik stared after him, more lost than before.
Gaetan knew her, that much was true. Whatever connection they had was powerful enough for him to support the lie of her name change, enough to cover up whatever she was running from.
It was a secret worth hiding.
And Nik would find out what it was.
When the sound of pans and oven doors resumed, Nik started picking through the shelves Gaetan hadn’t been able to look away from. He flipped through recipe books, dug through boxes, and held his breath as he peeled through the piles of stale clothes. Something had to be here.
His fingers flipped over a thick piece of paper.
A photograph.
The technology was fairly new, having only been invented in the last two decades by Arts Visuels, which meant they were expensive. Most houses sported them in gilded frames on mantels, yet this one was shoved away to be forgotten.
Within the frame, a small crowd smiled joyously back at him.
The majority of the party, who grew increasingly familiar the longer Nik looked, would seem to have nothing in common with the two people in the center.
How could they, when the two wore their brown Aspirant Arts Culinaires uniforms with pride?
Gaetan was a few years younger, his beard less whitened by age—or stress—and he stood proudly beside a woman whom the city could never forget.
Nik never would. She and so many others in the frame haunted his nightmares.
He’d never known her personally, but her black hair and freckles were unmistakable because she’d passed them down to the little girl clinging to her skirts.
The same girl who’d crashed into Nik’s life like a storm.
Blai had been entirely wrong.
Elouise Auclair wasn’t some poor Restes girl with an unfortunate past.
She was the daughter of Corinne Rousseau—a rebel and a murderer.