Chapter 4
Tess
“Leo Ashford,” I repeat.
The name tastes like ash in my mouth. Like burnt crust scraped off the bottom of a pan you can’t afford to replace. Like the sour aftertaste of a miracle that turned out to be a line item. Like the fear I once felt, of losing everything.
Leo is standing just inside the door, like he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to exist in this space. He’s tall, annoyingly so, with broad shoulders stuffed into a Halloween version of a baker. He’s too clean. Not polished, untouched. Like the city hasn’t had a chance to wear him down yet.
He’s looking around the bakery like it’s a museum exhibit. His mouth is slightly open.
I hate that my first thought is, “Oh no.” Because men like this don’t come in without consequences. They come with expectations. With questions.
I notice his hands next. Big. The kind of hands that don’t belong in a kitchen, let alone near laminated dough.
“The investor,” I say softly.
The word opens a trapdoor in my chest.
For a split second, the bakery isn’t here anymore.
I’m not standing on flour-dusted tile with my hands on my hips, spine straight.
I’m sitting in a glass conference room with a skyline view I don’t want, hands folded tightly in my lap so no one notices they’re shaking.
I’m twenty-four, exhausted, three months behind on equipment payments, and one bad oven day away from shutting down completely.
The table is long and gleaming, too perfect. I can see my reflection in it: pulled together on the surface, cracked underneath. My blazer is borrowed. My shoes pinch. My entire future is stacked neatly in a folder in front of me, corners bent from being opened and closed too many times.
Across the table sit two men and a woman. Neutral colors. Controlled smiles. People who have never cried in a walk-in because they didn’t know how to make payroll.
“So,” the woman says, tapping her pen against the folder. “Sunrise & Salt. It’s charming.”
Charming.
I swallow.
“It’s operational,” I say. “We’ve been profitable for over a year.”
One of the men nods, like he expected that. “Barely.”
The word lands like a pinprick.
“We’ve reviewed your numbers,” he continues. “You’re disciplined. Careful. Almost to a fault.”
I know what that means.
“You don’t scale,” the other man says gently, like he’s trying not to scare a skittish animal. “You don’t expand. You don’t leverage demand.”
“I’m not trying to build a chain,” I say. “I’m trying to build something that lasts.”
They exchange looks. A silent conversation I’m not invited into.
The woman finally speaks. “We’re not offering equity.”
My head snaps up.
She slides a document across the table. Not glossy. Not flashy. Dense. Legal. Heavy.
“It’s a loan,” she says. “Through Ashford Capital’s small business arm. Fixed interest. Long runway. No ownership. No board seat.”
My heart stutters.
“No… control?” I ask carefully.
“No control,” she confirms. “We don’t want your bakery. We want our money back.”
The man beside her adds, “You’re too small to be worth owning.”
It’s meant to reassure me.
It doesn’t.
I flip through the pages. Numbers blur. Interest rates. Grace periods. Penalties. There it is, buried on page twelve: personal guarantee required.
My stomach tightens.
“If the bakery fails,” I say slowly, “you come after me.”
“Yes,” the woman says calmly. “That’s how loans work.”
I picture my parents’ restaurant again. The slow bleed. The nights my dad stared at spreadsheets as if they could absolve him. The phone calls. The way failure didn’t arrive all at once—it crept in, polite and patient, until there was nothing left.
I should say no. I should stand, take my folder, and walk away like I promised myself I would.
But my oven is dying. My landlord raised the rent. My mixer sounds wrong. My staff deserves better than “we’ll see.”
I think of Gwen. Of the regulars. Of the line that wraps around the block on Saturdays because people believe in this place.
I think of how close I am to losing it.
“What’s the interest?” I ask.
They tell me.
It’s brutal. But survivable. If nothing goes wrong. Something always goes wrong.
“And this is…” I hesitate. “Ashford?”
“Yes,” the woman says. “Ashford Capital.”
The name lodges in my chest like a stone.
I sign.
Not because I trust them. Not because it feels good. Because sometimes survival looks like agreeing to terms, you’ll spend years resenting.
The money hits the account two days later. The oven gets replaced.
The mixer gets fixed.
The doors stay open.
And every month after that, I send a check to Ashford Capital. Every month, I feel the invisible hand at my back. Not steering. Not controlling. Waiting.
The flashback snaps shut.
I’m back in my bakery.
Leo Ashford is standing in front of me, smiling like his last name doesn’t carry weight. Like it isn’t printed on checks I’ve written with clenched teeth. Like it didn’t save this place and haunt it at the same time.
My jaw tightens.
“The investor,” I repeat, more to myself than him.
He brightens so fast it’s almost physical, like someone turned on a light behind his face.
“Yes! That’s me.” He smiles, awkward, hopeful, a million-dollar reflex. “I wasn’t sure you’d…”
“You’re here to work,” I cut in. If I let him fill the air with whatever he’s about to say, I’m going to do something that gets me featured in a true crime podcast.
My voice comes out dangerously quiet. “Why?”
He has the decency to look embarrassed. I’ll give him that. He rubs the back of his neck, his crisp white sleeve crinkling with a sound that can only be described as new money. He looks like he’s never done a manual task in his life without someone documenting it for a magazine spread.
“It’s, uh…” He winces, searching for an entry point into this conversation like it’s a locked door and he’s trying random keys. “It’s a bit of a story. You might have seen it? A livestream? ‘Midnight Mavericks’? No? Ok.” He swallows. “Well. There was a wheel. And a dare.”
A dare.
My expression, which has been hovering around lukewarm contempt, drops into absolute, glacial zero.
This isn’t just ignorance. This isn’t even just rich-person cluelessness, the kind I’ve learned to expect from people who can’t tell the difference between flour and powdered sugar because both arrive at their homes in identical white bags carried by other people.
This is poverty tourism.
This is a game.
My life, my stress, my bakery, my spreadsheets, my 4 a.m. mornings and eighteen-hour days, is a stop on his bored, rich-boy amusement park ride.
“A dare,” I repeat, to make sure he hears how ugly the word sounds.
“Yes,” he says, trying for charming again, and it bounces off my stare like a rubber ball off concrete. “I lost a dare. And the dare was to work a real job, at a business I invested in, for a month. So…” He spreads his hands, like he’s presenting himself. Like he expects applause. “Here I am.”
Here I am.
I look at him.
I look at his hands again. Clean. Soft. Unscarred. Hands that have never been split open by cardboard boxes or burned by a tray that came out of the oven too fast. Hands that probably haven’t touched sanitizer unless it came in a designer bottle labeled in French.
I look at his uniform. Sterile white, crisp, custom-tailored. Not the kind of chef whites you wear in a real kitchen. The kind you wear in a movie about a kitchen, where no one ever sweats, and the lighting is always flattering.
Two thousand dollars, minimum. Possibly more. Probably more than my walk-in freezer.
I look at his face. Earnest. Confused. Handsome in a symmetrical, billboard way. Like he belongs in an ad, not standing on my doorstep at five in the morning while my butter costs are up twelve percent and my margins are practically translucent.
I think about my spreadsheets.
I think about butter.
I think about the dream. The real dream, the one I keep in a separate notebook because it is too tender to put in a spreadsheet. Even though I tried. A paid apprenticeship program for marginalized youth. A way to give kids who grew up like me a skill, a trade, a future that is not luck-based.
And this man, this walking investment check, has the power to make that dream real with a single phone call.
And he is here because of a dare.
As a joke.
As content.
Something sharp and acidic rises in my throat, two years in the making. All the 4 a.m. mornings. All the eighteen-hour days. All the nights I sat on my apartment floor crying over invoices. All the panic of keeping this place alive, keeping his investment alive, while he forgot.
Gwen appears at the prep room door, eyes wide, holding a block of butter like it is a weapon. She does not say anything. She does not have to. Her face is a silent, stunned witness to the universe’s cruel sense of humor.
I take a deep breath. Slow. Controlled. I taste flour in the air. Yeast. Cardamom. The faint tang of sanitizer. The smell of my life.
I could throw him out.
I absolutely could.
It would be satisfying. It would be righteous.
It would also be incredibly stupid because he is still technically my investor.
“What do you know about a bakery?” I ask. Gwen chuckles somewhere behind me.
“Nothing,” Leo says confidently.
“What do you know about sourdough?”
“Nothing.”
“About oven settings?”
“Nothing.”
“You are really selling yourself well,” Gwen laughs from behind the counter.
“Besides your dare, why do you want to work here? My business isn’t some kind of joke,” I say, and I notice my voice sounds sharper than I intended.
“I want to learn. I want to do real work. I want to earn something.”
Earn.
The word hits harder than it should.
I cross my arms. “Do you have any relevant experience?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
“Well,” he says slowly. “I once burned toast so badly the fire alarm went off in a hotel suite in Zurich.”
Gwen wheezes.
“That’s a no,” I say.
“But I’m good with my hands,” he adds quickly, holding them up. “I mean, strong. Coordinated. I play squash.”
“Congratulations,” I say flatly. “So do half the finance bros who think croissants are just fancy bread.”
Gwen makes a strangled noise and has to turn away.
I rub my temples. “Leo.”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t a hobby. It’s not cute. It’s six days a week, twelve-hour shifts, burns, cuts, and being yelled at by me before sunrise.”
“I’m ok with that.”
“You will smell like yeast forever.”
“I already kind of do,” he says, sniffing his sleeve.
“You will not be special.”
“I don’t want to be special.”
“You will take directions.”
“I will take directions.”
I squint at him. “You say that now.”
Behind me, Gwen loses it.
“Ok, no, I’m stepping in,” she says, popping up between us like an unhinged referee. “Because this man, this specimen, just said he likes directions.”
Leo smiles at her. “Hi, Gwen.”
“How do you know my name?”
I point at him. “You don’t even know how to hold a bench knife.”
“I can learn.”
“You don’t know baker math.”
“I’m good at math.”
“You don’t know how to clean a mixer.”
“I can Google it.”
“No Googling,” Gwen and I say in unison.
He blinks. “Ok.”
I exhale. Long. Slow.
This is insane.
This is reckless.
This is exactly how people get hurt or worse, get romantic ideas about bakeries, and then leave when they realize croissants do not care about your feelings.
“I’m not saying no,” I say finally.
His shoulders lift. Just a little.
“I’m saying go home.”
His shoulders drop again.
“Think about it,” I continue. “Actually think. Not billionaire thinking. Not, I’ll try it for a week, thinking. Think about whether you want to scrub floors at five in the morning and have a nineteen-year-old tell you you’re folding wrong.”
Gwen grins. “Hi. That nineteen-year-old is me.”
Leo nods slowly. “Ok.”
“And,” I add, holding up a finger, “if you come back, you start at the bottom. No exceptions.”
“I wouldn’t want any,” Leo says, determined.
“You won’t get paid,” I say quickly. Leo does not look surprised.
“Fine.”
“No perks.”
“I don’t need perks.”
“No quitting dramatically.”
“I don’t quit,” he says, and something in his voice shifts. It is serious now. Grounded.
I study him. The flour on his sleeve, even though he did not touch a single thing in the bakery. The nervous hope he is trying to hide. The way he hasn't looked at his phone once, even though I can hear it buzzing.
“Come back tomorrow,” I say. “Or don’t. Either way, I need to know you chose this.”
He smiles. Small. Real.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
He turns to leave, pauses, then looks back. “Thank you. For not laughing.”
I do not soften. But I do not harden either.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say. “You haven’t met the dough.”
He leaves.
The bell jingles.
The door shuts.
There is a beat of silence.
Then…
“Oh my God,” Gwen screams. She grabs my shoulders. “Tess, you just interviewed a hot, rich man and sent him away like a stray cat.”
“I did not.”
“You told him to go think about it. Who are you?”
“He needs to be serious.”
“He is serious,” Gwen says. “He looked like a golden retriever who just got told to sit.”
“Do not anthropomorphize him,” I say, laughing.
“I absolutely will. Also, if he comes back, I get to train him.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she says smugly. “Because if I don’t, you are going to fall in love with him while explaining gluten development by accident.”
I try to hide my laughter as I grab a tray and shove it at her. “Go prove something before I fire you.”
“Boss?” Gwen says, grinning like a menace.
“What?”
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not.”
She laughs all the way back to the ovens, and despite myself, so do I.