Chapter 7 - THE GIRL WHO FINALLY STOPPED BEING AFRAID
“DOWN!”
Roman moved before anyone else.
He threw himself across Lily.
I hit the floor.
The window cracked.
A shot struck the opposite wall.
Daniel dragged Sophia behind the kitchen island while two guards rushed toward the adjoining room.
Roman covered Lily completely.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Clare?”
“I’m okay.”
Another shot never came.
Sirens erupted outside almost immediately.
The hotel had already been under police protection.
Whoever had fired had taken one desperate chance and run.
Roman lifted his head.
His face was different.
Not enraged.
Not wild.
Clear.
Elena’s letter had changed something.
Roman grabbed his phone.
“Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“No chasing.”
Daniel stared.
“Sir?”
“Give everything to the police. Hotel cameras. Street cameras. Elena’s files. Marco’s statement. Everything.”
Sophia looked shocked.
I did too.
Roman noticed.
“What?”
“You’re really doing it.”
“Yes.”
“No revenge.”
His eyes moved to Lily.
“No revenge.”
Lily started crying.
This time, when Roman held her, she didn’t look frightened of what he might become.
Three hours later, Adrian Sanz was arrested at a private airfield outside Chicago.
He had tried to leave the country using identification that police had already flagged.
Victor Sanz was arrested the same afternoon.
Elena’s files did more than solve her murder.
They exposed years of corruption involving companies Roman had inherited but never fully examined.
That part devastated him.
Not because he feared losing money.
Because Elena had died trying to expose crimes committed under the Duca name.
For the first time in generations, Roman opened the doors.
He handed financial records to investigators.
He dismissed men who had worked for his father.
He shut down businesses he could not verify as legitimate.
People warned him that he was making himself weak.
Roman disagreed.
“A man who needs criminals to keep his chair,” he told Marco, “was never sitting securely.”
Marco eventually testified.
He faced consequences for his involvement in the financial scheme, but his cooperation helped dismantle what Victor and Adrian had built.
Sophia visited him anyway.
She complained the entire drive.
Family, apparently, was complicated.
Honey & Rye reopened three weeks later.
Roman replaced the front window.
I protested.
He ignored me.
So I mailed him an invoice for one dollar.
He framed it.
I hated him a little for that.
The morning we reopened, there were sixty people waiting outside.
Some were regular customers.
Some were reporters.
Some were simply Chicagoans who had heard the story about the baker who threw flour at Roman Duca.
I refused every interview.
Lily sold commemorative flour bags for charity.
That had been Sophia’s idea.
They read:
NEGOTIATION TOOL — HONEY & RYE.
We sold out in forty minutes.
Roman bought one.
“For sentimental reasons,” he claimed.
“For self-defense,” I corrected.
Lily began spending Saturdays at the bakery.
At first, she came for galettes.
Then sourdough.
Then cookies.
Eventually she started working the register, where she discovered she possessed an alarming talent for convincing customers to order twice as much as they intended.
“You’re a Duca,” Roman told her proudly.
I threw a towel at him.
“Do not encourage organized pastry crime.”
Life did not become normal immediately.
Lily still had nightmares.
Some mornings she barely spoke.
She started therapy.
Roman went too.
He hated it.
Which was how I knew it was probably good for him.
I never asked what he talked about.
He never asked what Lily told me during baking lessons.
Trust, we learned, sometimes meant not demanding access to every locked room inside another person.
Roman’s changes went beyond therapy.
He sold several companies associated with his father’s old operations.
He kept the legitimate real estate and hospitality businesses.
He established the Elena Duca Foundation to support teenagers who had lost parents to violence.
He asked Lily before using her mother’s name.
That mattered.
She said yes.
Spring reached Chicago.
Then summer.
Roman continued coming to Honey & Rye every morning.
He waited in line.
Every time.
At first, customers were terrified.
Then they became annoyed when he took too long choosing.
One Tuesday, an elderly woman tapped him on the shoulder and told him to move because she had a dentist appointment.
Roman apologized.
I nearly fell into the espresso machine.
The fake girlfriend story became a joke between us.
Except we were dating now.
Actually dating.
Slowly.
Painfully.
With rules.
My rules.
Rule one: no gifts worth more than fifty dollars.
Roman violated this once by buying me a commercial mixer.
I made him return it.
He sulked for two days.
Rule two: no surprise security.
Rule three: no solving my problems unless I asked.
That one nearly killed him.
Rule four: no calling me his girlfriend until we had an actual conversation agreeing that I was his girlfriend.
We had that conversation in April.
It lasted forty-five minutes.
Thirty-seven of those minutes consisted of arguing.
At the end, Roman kissed me behind the bakery.
Sophia saw us through the window.
She immediately called three relatives.
By dinner, apparently we were engaged.
We were not.
Yet.
A year after Elena’s death, Lily asked to visit the place where her mother’s car had gone through the guardrail.
Roman took her.
I came too.
They left flowers.
Lily stood beside the lake for a long time.
Then she read part of Elena’s letter aloud.
Not the part about danger.
Not the part about revenge.
A different line.
Make a life big enough that grief is only one room inside it.
Roman looked away.
So did I.
Lily folded the letter.
“I think Mom would like Clare.”
Roman said, “She would.”
I glanced at him.
“You don’t know that.”
“Elena enjoyed difficult people.”
“Excuse me?”
Lily laughed.
That laugh was no longer rare.
It was loud now.
Frequent.
Sometimes annoying.
Perfect.
Two years after the morning she first walked into Honey & Rye, Lily was eighteen and preparing for college.
She had decided to study psychology.
Roman attempted to convince her to attend Northwestern so she could stay nearby.
Lily chose Boston.
Roman reacted as though Boston were located somewhere beyond civilization.
“It’s a two-hour flight,” I told him.
“Exactly.”
“That is not far.”
“It is if she needs me.”
Lily walked past carrying boxes.
“I have a phone.”
Roman looked betrayed.
I kissed his cheek.
“You raised an independent woman.”
“I see the flaw in my strategy.”
That same evening, after closing the bakery, I found Roman sitting alone at one of the small tables.
No guards.
No expensive suit.
Just jeans, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and two cups of coffee.
“You’re breaking and entering after hours now?”
“I have a key.”
“I regret giving you that.”
“No, you don’t.”
I sat across from him.
He looked nervous.
That frightened me more than any armed man ever had.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Two-second pause.”
He sighed.
“You have weaponized that.”
“You made it easy.”
He reached into his pocket.
I immediately stood.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“No?”
“If that is a diamond the size of a Buick, I’m leaving.”
He laughed.
Then he opened his hand.
There was no enormous diamond.
Instead, he held a simple gold ring.
Small.
Elegant.
Beautiful.
My heart stopped.
“It was my mother’s,” Roman said.
I sat down again.
“Sophia kept it.”
He swallowed.
“I spent most of my life thinking love meant keeping people close enough that nothing could happen to them.”
His eyes held mine.
“Elena proved I was wrong.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Lily taught me that protecting someone isn’t controlling them.”
He smiled faintly.
“You taught me that repeatedly. Usually while throwing something.”
“Only flour.”
“And one towel.”
“The towel barely counts.”
“Clare.”
I went quiet.
Roman took my hand.
“I don’t want to own your time. I don’t want to buy your problems. I don’t want you to become part of my life by disappearing inside it.”
His thumb moved across my knuckles.
“I want a life with you where you remain exactly as impossible as you are now.”
I was crying.
I hated crying.
Roman looked alarmed.
“That wasn’t supposed to be insulting.”
“Keep going.”
“Right.”
He stood.
Then he got down on one knee.
“Clare Bennett, will you marry me?”
I looked toward the kitchen.
The door moved.
“Lily,” I called.
A whispered curse came from behind it.
Roman closed his eyes.
Sophia suddenly shouted, “Just answer him!”
I laughed so hard I had to wipe my face.
“How many people are back there?”
Silence.
Roman muttered, “Apparently everyone.”
I looked at him.
At the man I had once covered in flour because he believed money could turn no into yes.
He had changed.
Not perfectly.
Not completely.
Neither had I.
But he had learned the difference between protecting and controlling.
Between power and fear.
Between possession and love.
“Yes.”
Roman blinked.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
The kitchen door burst open.
Lily screamed.
Sophia cried.
Daniel applauded.
Someone popped champagne.
Roman stood and kissed me while half his family cheered.
When we finally separated, Lily held up a white paper bag.
“I brought something.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“What?”
She opened it.
Flour.
Roman saw it.
“No.”
Lily grinned.
“Family tradition.”
She threw it.
The bag hit Roman directly in the chest.
Flour exploded across his white shirt.
Everyone froze.
For one perfect second, we were back at the beginning.
Roman looked down at himself.
Then at Lily.
Then at me.
I folded my arms.
“Well?”
He started laughing.
Not the quiet controlled laugh of the man I had met years earlier.
A real one.
Lily joined him.
So did Sophia.
Eventually, I did too.
Roman pulled me against him, coating my dress in flour.
“You realize,” I said, “this is exactly why I said no to you the first time.”
His forehead rested against mine.
“And now?”
“Now you finally understand what no means.”
He smiled.
“And yes?”
I looked around my bakery.
At Lily laughing.
At Sophia pouring champagne.
At Daniel sweeping flour because apparently some things never changed.
At Roman.
The terrifying man who had once tried to buy every pastry in my display case because he didn’t like waiting.
The man who had learned to wait.
“For you?” I whispered.
I kissed him.
“Yes.”
May you like
And this time, Roman Duca didn’t need to buy anything at all.
THE END
