Before I had known Roman Duca for an hour, I threw a bag of flour at him hard enough to explode across his charcoal suit.

“That’s a raspberry almond tart,” I said, setting down the flour bag on the back prep table and wiping my dough-dusted hands on my apron. I stepped around the counter, putting myself at eye level with Lily. “And if you want it, it’s yours. No charge.”

Lily glanced sideways at Roman, her posture instantly stiffening into that cautious, guarded defense mechanism I’d seen in kids who felt like every kindness came with a price tag. “I have money.”

“I don’t care about your money,” I replied gently. “I care about people who appreciate good pastry. Go on, try a bite.”

I opened the glass case, pulled out the small, round pastry with its glistening crimson berries and toasted almonds, and handed it to her on a small paper plate.

Lily took a tentative bite. For two seconds, the distant, sullen teenager vanished. Her eyes widened, her shoulders dropped three inches, and she let out a quiet sigh of genuine bliss. “Oh. That’s actually... really good.”

Beside her, Roman looked at his niece as if she had just performed a medical miracle.

The dark, imposing Mafia Don who controlled half the shipping docks in the city was standing in my sunlit bakery wearing a three-thousand-dollar charcoal suit, staring at a sixteen-year-old girl eating a raspberry tart like he was watching the moon land.

“She hasn’t eaten breakfast in four days,” Roman said softly, his voice dropping into a register meant only for me as Lily took another eager bite.

I looked at Roman. Up close, without the flour cloud between us, I noticed the exhaustion etched around his sharp jaw and dark brown eyes. He wasn't just a crime boss. He was a desperate guardian holding on by a thread.

“What happened to her parents?” I asked quietly, pouring a fresh cup of dark roast coffee and sliding it toward him.

Roman accepted the cup, his fingers brushing mine for a fraction of a second. A strange, warm jolt ran up my arm. “My brother... her father... passed away six months ago in an 'accident' in Detroit. Her mother left when she was three. The court granted me temporary custody two weeks ago. She hasn't spoken more than ten words to anyone in my house since she arrived.”

I leaned against the wooden counter, crossing my arms. “And Aunt Sophia?”

“Sophia is a force of nature,” Roman sighed, taking a slow sip of the coffee. He paused, looking at the cup with mild surprise. “This is extraordinary coffee.”

“Don’t try to flatter me, Duca. What does Sophia have to do with Lily?”

“Sophia believes my home is too dark, too dangerous, and too bachelor-centric for a teenage girl,” Roman admitted, his voice dropping lower. “She’s threatenening to file for custody herself. If she does, the family council will back her. Lily will be shipped off to a boarding school in Switzerland within a month to 'keep her safe.'”

He looked over at Lily, who was now leaning against the display case, carefully picking every last almond off the paper plate.

“Lily hates crowds. She hates travel. She’s terrified of being sent away,” Roman said, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my heart do a sudden, unscripted flip in my chest. “She needs stability. She needs to see that I can give her a normal home. A real family.”

“And you think fake-dating a baker makes you look like a wholesome family man?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I think a baker who hurls twenty pounds of Gold Medal unbleached flour at my face without flinching is the only person in this city who isn't afraid of me,” Roman countered smoothly, a faint, devastating smirk touching the corner of his lips. “And more importantly... she made Lily smile in under thirty seconds.”

I opened my mouth to shoot back another sharp rejection, but then Lily looked up from her plate.

“Can I come back tomorrow?” Lily asked me, her voice small, tentative, and deeply fragile. “I mean... if you’re not too busy?”

I looked from Lily’s hopeful, shadowed eyes to Roman’s quiet, desperate gaze.

Every rational voice in my head roared at me to run. I was a baker. I paid my taxes, I made sourdough, and I went to bed at nine p.m. I had no business getting involved with Roman Duca or the shadowy criminal underworld that followed him.

“You can come back tomorrow, Lily,” I heard myself say, inwardly cursing my own bleeding heart. “In fact, if you get here at seven, I’ll teach you how to roll the croissants.”

Lily’s face lit up with a genuine, brilliant smile. “Deal.”

She turned and headed out the front door toward the waiting black sedan. Roman stayed behind for a second, standing at my counter.

“Thank you, Clare,” he said softly.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I warned, pointing a wooden spoon at his chest. “We’re not fake-dating. We’re not engaged. You are a customer who buys overpriced coffee, and Lily is my new morning apprentice. Got it?”