Chapter 2 - THE CONSULTANT'S RECIPE
Avery Sloan did not look like a villain. She looked like a woman who had just realized the house she bought was built over a sinkhole.
We sat in the back of my delivery van behind the festival grounds while the noise of the crowd faded into the late afternoon heat. The air smelled of souring strawberries and exhaust. Officer Alvarez was twenty feet away, filling out assault and domestic dispute paperwork while Wade stood beside his lawyer near the police cruiser.
“He told me you were business partners,” Avery said, her voice quiet and even. “He said Rose & Rye was an LLC he founded with his family, and that you managed the baking operations while he handled corporate strategy.”
I leaned my head back against the metal wall of the van. The left side of my face throbbed in time with my pulse.
“Rose & Rye was established in 1982,” I said. “By my mother, Sarah Ellis. Wade joined the payroll five years ago when his previous logistics firm went under. He doesn’t own a single share.”
Avery pulled her phone from her apron pocket. Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the screen and handed it to me.
On the display was a series of text messages dating back seven months.
“Megan is purely technical,” one message from Wade read. “She’s resistant to growth. Once the buyout goes through and the trademark shifts to Sloan Hospitality, she’ll be transitioned into a head baker role with no voting power.”
Below that was a photograph of a signed letter of intent. My name was signed at the bottom in dark blue ink—a signature I had never made.
“He offered Sloan Hospitality a forty-percent stake in Rose & Rye in exchange for a six-hundred-thousand-dollar expansion loan,” Avery explained, her eyes fixed on the floorboards. “I came to Ashford to audit the operation before closing the deal. When he gave me the ring two weeks ago, he said it was a vintage piece he purchased at an estate auction in Richmond to mark our future together.”
“It belonged to my grandmother,” I said softly.
“I know,” Avery replied, looking up. “When it fell out of that cake today, I recognized the setting instantly. I saw the gold claw prongs. He must have hidden it inside the sugar tier when he realized I was coming to the contest. He didn’t want me to see you wearing it—or notice it missing.”
The piece of the puzzle clicked into place with sickening clarity.
Wade hadn’t just stolen my ring to sell it; he had recycled my inheritance to trick a wealthy investor into believing he was a successful, single entrepreneur. And Marjorie’s "masterpiece" cake wasn't baked in her home kitchen at all—it was a commercial display cake ordered through Sloan Hospitality’s catering division to make the family look qualified for a corporate takeover.
“The bottom of that box gave way because the damp sponge from the lower tier soaked through the cardboard,” I murmured, real realization washing over me. “Wade packed the cake himself this morning.”
“He wanted you to drop it,” Avery whispered. “He asked Marjorie to make you carry it. If you dropped it, the cake would be ruined, no one would inspect the layers, and the ring would stay buried until he could retrieve it later. But he didn't expect the sugar crown to split open on impact.”
I looked out the back window of the van. Wade was talking animatedly to Officer Alvarez, waving his hands, playing the victimized husband dealing with an emotionally unstable wife.
“What happens now?” Avery asked. “If I pull Sloan Hospitality out of the deal, he’s going to know I talked to you.”
I looked down at Avery’s phone, then at my own hands—calloused, dusted with flour, stained with strawberry juice. Hands that had worked sixteen hours a day to build a life Wade thought he could sell out from under me.
“Don’t pull out of the deal yet,” I said, my voice turning icy and clear. “Let him think you still believe him.”
May you like
Avery stared at me. “Why?”
“Because if he thinks he’s about to get six hundred thousand dollars, he’s going to make his biggest mistake yet,” I said. “And I want to be there to catch it on paper.”
