“Nice to meet you, miss. Joey Luciani’s the name,” I say with an extended hand.

“Amelia,” she says curtly, shaking my hand in return. “Did you start all this trouble? My customers are not to be disturbed. If you are here to talk business, come with me.”

Without giving me the opportunity to say a word, she just turns and starts walking toward the kitchen.

“Wait, what?!” I say, running after her with the rest of the sisters and Irene in tow.

Before knowing it, I’m in The Three Roses’ kitchen. Unlike the more spartan look of Happy Bakery, it’s plenty pretty, with more metal and glass than I am used to. Also, no massive ovens lining the walls.

Many employees look at me as I follow Amelia's long stride, but none of them seems particularly impressed with what’s happening. More than that, even at first glance, I can tell that all these people here look very professional. With no shade to Raissa, she would have been eaten alive in this place—it’s like a sixth sense. Whoever is doing the hires must have some supernatural instinct for good recruits… well, if it’s Camilla, I can see that happening.

It went away fast, but she did propose to buy me out at the price of what’s probably a few hundred thousand golds. That’s… insane. I bite my lower lip as I keep running.

Insane but not wrong.

If these people could steal Clodia’s bread business, I could see them putting Clodia’s shoulders against the wall. Wait. Amelia… putting Clodia… shoulders against the wall…

I swallow.

“Jesus,” I say, entering a room after Amelia and wiping my forehead.

“Joey Luciani,” Amelia says, taking a seat at an oval table. “Sit down.”

“Miss, I told Camilla already: I am not looking for a new employer. I promised Clodia that I would keep working with her for at least a year. I never go back on my word.”

Amelia doesn’t even bat an eyelid at me.

You know how certain women are so stupidly beautiful that they make you… stupid? Well, if some beautiful girls have that power, Amelia makes you… the r-word.

“Damn it!” Camilla storms into the room, followed by Flavia and Irene. “Great move, Amelia! Take the rope!”

“Camilla!” Irene literally slaps Camilla’s neck. “Don’t you spout that idiocy ever again!”

Flavia skates around the two and takes a seat at the table in front of Amelia, to the left of the head of the table.

Interesting, I tell myself, looking at what I guess is the arrangement.

“Joey, sit at that end,” Amelia speaks evenly, without even looking at me. “Please.”

“Alrighty, then,” I nod, taking a seat for myself.

It takes a few minutes of pointless fighting between Irene and Camilla, but we end up all sitting around the table.

“I like how this table looks now,” Camilla says with a smirk. “So, Joey, when the contract with Clodia goes out, will you come to work for us?”

“I don’t have a contract,” I say.

The atmosphere had just started to relax, and now they are all looking at me like rapacious eagles.

“So, when you say you gave Clodia your word, you literally meant your word and your word only? Rotten roots,” Amelia swears.

Tell you what, I would have expected Camilla to be talking straight to me at the moment, but instead, she’s just looking very intensely at me. It’s a bit… creepy.

“How did Clodia allow it?” Amelia asks. “How did she allow you not to have a contract? That’s not something Clodia would ever do.”

“I simply have trouble with paperwork,” I shrug. “I can’t sign or read documents without losing my mind. Call it a quirk—or mental illness. They are pretty much the same thing.”

“Mental… illness?” Flavia chews on the words, confused.

“When your head doesn’t work right,” I explain.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Couldn’t you make an effort?” Amelia scrunches up her forehead. “Clodia’s mother is investing so much gold, and you don’t even have a contract? Don’t you care for the people putting money up for you?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Human,” Amelia’s voice goes colder, “are you telling me that a simple, whiny request of yours was accepted because you struggle with signing and reading documents? What about Clodia and Happy Bakery’s security? What happens if you just decide to cross them?”

“I won’t,” I blink.

“You say you won’t, but who’s there to guarantee it?” Amelia growls back.

“Amelia, leave Joey be,” Irene sighs. “Happy Bakery will conduct business however they see fit. And they are our competitors. If they don’t want to do things the right way, better for us.”

Wait. Was that supposed to be Irene defending me? What does she mean if they don’t want to do things the right way?

“Girls,” I say with a strained smile, “I assure you that these are all speculations. I have sworn on a truth stone. Clodia knows I am right. Also, Irene, do you think this is wrong?”

“Joey, I don’t want to talk about this,” she replies, shaking her head. “You and Clodia can do whatever you want.”

“Excuse me?” I say.

“I need a word with that woman,” Amelia says, looking harshly at me.

“Enough!” Camilla slams her small hand on the table. “Amelia, Flavia, back to work! Irene, don’t be contaminated by that idiot’s stupidity.”

“Camilla—” Amelia starts speaking, but a teacup flies by her head before she can say anything else.

I look amazedly at the porcelain just bouncing off the wall, not breaking into a thousand pieces.

What the hell?

“Back to work,” Camilla says with a tone so plain that it sounds scary.

Amelia looks at the younger sister before slowly getting up. I think there’s some understanding in the way they are looking at each other, but there’s also some deadly threat hidden in there.

The tension in the room seems to escalate when Amelia lingers at the door, looking even more meaningfully at her younger sister. But the same way it has materialized, it evaporates when Amelia goes, soon followed by Flavia.

Now, it’s me, Camilla, and Irene.

“Joey,” Camilla says with her jittery tone, “I want to work with you.”

“Not for a year—give or take. It’s been a few weeks since it started.”

Camilla starts fidgeting with her hands, taking another teacup from the center of the table and starting to rotate it in between her lithe fingers.

“I could propose a merger to Clodia if she knew what was what,” the blonde says pensively. “But she would not understand. Her mother, perhaps.”

“What?!” Irene erupts.

Camilla doesn’t even acknowledge the other woman, staring at the teacup and now tracing its rim with a finger.

“Happy Bakery and The Three Roses together would crush the market,” she mutters to herself.

I look at the blonde sporting a bob cut and, apparently, a very daring way of thinking.

Honestly? She’s a genius.

Yeah, sure, she might look like she’s on the purest cocaine brand of all, but she is, without the slightest doubt, a genius. It’s math, really. Flavia is an administrator, which Happy seems to lack since Clodia hates that part of the job. Flaminia is the best [Baker] in town. Amelia looks as resolute as Margaret Thatcher, which would definitely be good to organize…

A lightbulb goes off in my head.

Wait.

If they merged…

I stroke my chin.

“Camilla,” my voice comes off more intense than I usually intend to, “if we merged, do you think we could pay off every military debt in Amorium?”

The short Elf looks straight into my eyes—damn, she has some pretty green irises, by the way.

“Amorium?” She smirks. “Why just Amorium?”

A shiver goes down my spine.

It’s in her eyes. I can see her envisioning Big Pastry, a mafia-like conglomerate of great [Bakers] and Bakers taking over the continent.

“It’s… definitely interesting,” I mutter to myself.

Sure, we could help a lot of people, but it would also be a huge responsibility. The kind of expansion a crazed person like Camilla would try and start would take an immense amount of money up front—which would probably be provided by Clodia’s mother.

Damn. My capitalist senses are tingling at the idea.

“You would be ready to work with Clodia and let go of the whole rose thing?” I ask.

Camilla falls silent at that, looking around the bakery. She is probably imagining what it would be like to relinquish all she has worked so far in order to merge the two bakeries.

“Camilla, are you seriously considering this?” Irene barges into the discussion.

“Yes.”

The cautious instincts my father passed onto me, though, rein the enthusiasm in even more. My mother was the reckless investor in my family, while my father was the more conservative force. It’s not a case that I took out significant loans only after my father had died. And sure, it paid off in the long term, but it’s also true that we went close to bankruptcy a few times along the way before making everything work.

And do you know what happens when you get too close to bankruptcy? You go bankrupt. A pretty simple equation if you ask me.

“I think we should table this discussion for the future,” I say with a smile. “It’s interesting, and I might float the idea by Clodia, but Happy Bakery definitely needs to get the place in order before attempting anything.”

Clodia’s already struggling with the whole supply chain and deliveries or whatnot. Adding another thought on top of that might very well drive her crazy. I also told her we would be taking it slow; if I go back and tell her that Camilla made a proposal this crazy and that I really want to make it happen, I don’t know how she would react.

I have seen businesses trying to expand too rapidly and just implode. It’s not pretty. It’s not pretty at all.

“Camilla, one last question,” I say, “I know Clodia finds it strange how I want her to pay the debts of the ex-[Soldiers] and make them into [Bakers] or other stuff like that. Can you tell me what you think about it? It’s an interesting hypothetical, the one we have here, but I can’t do business with people who don’t share my values.”

“[Soldiers] are trained to be efficient and work even when they are not motivated,” she replies plainly. “They would make for good workers. But I’m in it because I want to build the best bakery on Epretos, Joey,” she stretches my name and passes the ball back to me.

“I’m good with that. As long as making a better bakery doesn’t mean just getting rid of the people if they are not perfect, I’m all for it.”

“Then, what do you say about bringing me to dinner so we can think about this together?”

Irene looks at the short Elf with daggers in her eyes.