Dough & Devotion (Hearts in Bloom #1)

Chapter 1

Leo

The first mistake I made was agreeing to the Midnight Mavericks livestream.

The second was letting my friend Julian control the camera.

The third, and perhaps most grievous, was ignoring Marissa’s call. She goes crazy when I do, even though I told her it was over.

“And we’re live,” Julian announces, his voice a synthesized baritone of false bravado that grates against my headache. The red live icon on the eighty-inch monitor confirms it, along with a viewer count already climbing past two hundred thousand.

I am sitting, or rather perched, on a custom-designed sofa that cost a billion dollars and somehow still manages to numb my body in my penthouse apartment.

The space is a sterile expanse of glass, steel, and white marble overlooking a glittering, indifferent Chicago.

The room is silent except for the hum of the climate control and Julian’s narration.

Across from me, Julian mans the broadcast rig, his sharklike grin lit by the bluish glow of the equipment. To my left, Zara Chen, heiress to a shipping empire and a woman who has turned boredom into an art form, lazily swirls a glass of whiskey worth more than a midsize sedan.

“Welcome back, Mavericks,” Julian purrs at the lens, his voice a practiced and intimate growl. “Tonight, we’re answering the age-old question. What do you do when you have everything?”

“Go to sleep?” I say, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

The comment disappears immediately; a single drop of sincerity drowned in an ocean of digital noise. The chat feed scrolls past in an unreadable blur.

Leo, you’re a god.

Zara’s necklace is the crown jewels, oh my god.

Julian, ask him about the Mars contract.

I would sell my kidney for that sofa.

The Grizzlies are going to smash the Blades.

“You’re restless, Leo. We all know it,” Julian says, leaning closer, fully performing for his audience.

He is a content predator, and I am his favorite prey.

“You’ve disrupted biotech. You’ve optimized logistics.

You even, and I quote from your latest Forbes profile, made desalination twelve percent more efficient. Twelve percent. Thrilling stuff.”

The chat loves it.

Savage, Julian.

Laughing my ass off. Twelve percent.

“But the people want to know,” Julian continues, lowering his voice, “can you feel?”

This is the show's premise. A group of the world’s most obscenely wealthy heirs and innovators proving their humanity through a series of increasingly absurd and high-stakes stunts. I play along because, in a way, Julian is right.

I am restless.

I am drowning in an abundance of everything.

Data points. Meeting requests. Investment opportunities.

Sterile white marble surfaces. Everything except a genuine human connection.

My life is a series of optimized inputs and predictable outputs.

I crave a sliver of something real, something that does not come with a term sheet or a press release.

I am so bored with my own manufactured existence that even Julian’s parasitic antics feel like a small jolt of life.

“So tonight,” Julian says, his grin widening, “we don’t ask. We dare. Tonight, we spin the wheel. The Wheel of Dares.”

He cues the graphic. A garish, neon-splattered wheel fills the screen, its sections packed with the kind of absurd problems only the terminally wealthy could invent. Zara, with a theatrical sigh that doubles as her only contribution so far, taps a key. The wheel spins, a blur of neon options.

Buy a micronation and declare war on Switzerland.

Host a rave in Antarctica.

Adopt a tiger.

Date a rival’s AI for a month.

Become a monk. One-week silent retreat.

Solve a cold case.

Before I can read the rest, the wheel spins again, the digital clicking sound filling the silent penthouse. It slows, ticking past the ridiculous, the impossible, and the deeply illegal, before landing on something painfully and profoundly mundane.

WORK A REAL JOB FOR A MONTH.

A beat of silence. Then the chat explodes.

A real job, laughing my ass off.

Like an office? With a stapler?

Oh my god, he’s going to have a boss.

This is the most boring one. Spin again.

No. This is the best one.

“A real job?” Zara drawls, finally interested. She sits up, the movement sending sharp shards of light from her diamond necklace across the room. “Like data entry? Or customer service?” She shudders, a delicate and practiced reaction.

To my own surprise, I feel a tiny, unfamiliar spark. It is not excitement. It is curiosity. A problem I cannot simply throw money at.

Julian’s eyes ignite with the holy fire of viral potential.

He sees the entire narrative arc unspooling in real time.

“This is gold. Pure gold. But not just any job.” He is already pacing, storyboarding aloud.

“It can’t be at Ashford Enterprises. It has to be a business you own, or at least one you’ve invested in.

A business you’ve completely forgotten exists. ”

He swivels a secondary monitor linked to my office systems and pulls up my portfolio.

He scrolls past the aerospace companies, the AI labs, and the biotech disrupters, diving deeper and deeper until he reaches a folder I have not opened in years.

A folder my chief of staff has diplomatically labeled Community Ventures.

I vaguely recall it as a small-scale impact investment fund I set up in a fit of philanthropic optimism right out of university, before I learned that disruption is cleaner and more profitable than community. It is my guilt fund.

Julian scrolls past a co-op bicycle shop, a defunct vertical farming startup, and an app for trading artisanal cheese. His manicured, predatory finger stops.

“Here we go.” He zooms in, the text filling the screen. “Level Three Micro Investment. Fifty thousand dollars. Sunrise and Salt.”

I blink. I have zero, and I mean zero, recollection of this.

“Sunrise and Salt?”

“A bakery?” Zara asks, leaning in. She pronounces the word bakery as if it were a rare and slightly disgusting insect.

“A bakery!” Julian cackles, the sound echoing through the cavernous room. “Oh, this is perfect. You, Leo Ashford, the man who hasn’t touched a complex carbohydrate since 2023, are going to be a baker boy.”

The chat becomes a waterfall of hysteria.

He’s going to wear the little hat.

Leo making donuts.

I’m dead.

This is better than the goat.

I give him twenty-four hours.

“And the rules are,” Julian says, dropping his voice into a conspiratorial whisper for the camera, “you cannot be the boss. You cannot pull rank. You cannot buy your way out of it. You have to be a regular, bottom of the barrel, dough punching employee. For thirty days. Starting Monday.”

I finally glance at the minimalist clock embedded in the marble wall. The glowing numerals read 2:17 a.m.

“Julian,” I say, “tomorrow is in about thirty hours.”

“Then you had better get your beauty sleep, baker boy,” Julian grins, hitting the button to cut the feed.

The live light blinks off. The apartment plunges into oppressive silence, broken only by the almost inaudible hum of the air filtration system. The scrolling chat vanishes, replaced by a blank black screen. The performance is over.

Julian and Zara are already on their phones, the rapid click-click-click of their typing echoing off the marble.

I stay where I am, shoulders sinking slightly now that there is no audience to hold me upright.

The door slams open.

“You have to be joking.”

Rex Chen strides in like he owns the place, coat still on, tie loosened just enough to signal furious but controlled. His voice slices through the room, sharp and incredulous.

“Leo, you cannot just step away from business for thirty days.”

Rex Chen is Zara’s older brother, my business partner, and, as Julian calls him, his enemy.

Julian does not even look up. “It’s a dare,” he says lightly. “He has to.”

Rex rounds on him. “You think this is funny?”

“I think it’s content,” Julian replies, finally glancing up, smile all teeth. “And content is king.”

Rex’s gaze snaps back to me. “Ashford Ventures does not run itself. We have board meetings. Negotiations. You have obligations.”

“I know,” I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “And the world will not end in thirty days. It will be fine, Rex.”

“Fine?” He laughs, sharp and humorless. “You are the face of half our portfolio. You disappear, the market notices.”

Zara looks up from her phone, eyes glittering with mischief. “Do not you want to see him… work?” She draws the word out as if it were a novelty. “I mean, when was the last time Leo Ashford clocked in anywhere?”

Rex does not even look at her. His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking near his temple. “This is a mistake,” he says. “A very public one.”

Julian finally straightens, folding his arms. “Or,” he counters, “it is the first interesting thing Leo has done in years.”

That lands.

Rex’s eyes flick between us. “You are letting him humiliate himself.”

Julian shrugs. “I am letting him find out who he is without the money.”

Silence stretches.

I feel it then, the fork in the road. The familiar pull to smooth this over, to say never mind, to buy my way back into control. Rex is waiting for it. He always is.

Instead, I say, “I am doing it.”

Rex stares at me. “Leo…”

“Thirty days,” I repeat. “No money, no shortcuts, no rank.”

Julian’s smile softens just a fraction. Zara lets out a low whistle.

Rex exhales sharply through his nose. “You are making a spectacle of yourself.”

“Maybe,” I say.

Rex studies my face like he is seeing something unfamiliar, something inconvenient. “You are playing with fire.”

“I will learn how to work with heat,” I reply.

For a moment, no one speaks.

Then Rex shakes his head once, already retreating into strategy. “This better not cost us.”

As he turns toward the door, Julian calls after him, sweet as poison, “Relax, Rex. If he burns out, we will sweep up the ashes.”

The door closes behind Rex with a heavy finality.

Julian claps his hands together once. “Well,” he says brightly, “Monday morning. Alarm clocks. Aprons.”

Zara grins at me. “Try not to die.”

I look back at the dark screen where my face had just been broadcast to millions.

Thirty days.

“This will be huge for your personal brand, Leo,” Zara adds, her voice back to its usual monotone. “The Billionaire Apprentice. It is… humanizing.”

“Right,” I say flatly. “Humanizing.”

They leave in a cloud of expensive cologne and cynical ambition, leaving me standing alone in the center of my white marble cavern.

I look out the floor-to-ceiling window at the grid of city lights eighteen stories below.

I feel the familiar, hollow ache of my own life, a vast emptiness surrounded by priceless objects.

A bakery.

I sigh and pull out my phone. I do not call my driver. I do not call my publicist. I call my executive assistant, a woman who has, on three separate occasions, sourced a rare, endangered orchid for me with less than an hour’s notice.

“Amelia, sorry to wake you.”

A pause. “Mr. Ashford. How can I help you?” Her voice is crisp, unflappable, even at 2:20 a.m.

“I need… a uniform. For a baker.”

A longer pause this time. “…A baker, sir?”

“Yes. The best one you can find. The most authentic. And I need it tomorrow.”

“…Understood. And… a hat, sir? A baker’s hat?”

“Yes, Amelia,” I sigh. “A hat.”

“Very good. Anything else?”

“I need the address for a place called Sunrise and Salt. And, Amelia? Cancel everything. For the next thirty days.”

“Everything, sir? The Q3 review with the board? The transport merger?”

“Everything.”

I hang up. For the first time in as long as I can remember, my calendar is empty.

I am terrified.

And, if I am honest, I am a little bit thrilled.