ELIANA

The bell above the door hadn't rung in four days.

I stood behind the glass display case of Sweetleaf Bakery, staring at trays of croissants going stale under lights nobody was here to see. It was Tuesday morning, four days since the bell above the door had rung for anyone but me. I'd stopped counting how many pastries I'd have to throw out tonight.

Somewhere around fifty, I lost the will to keep track.

My phone buzzed against the counter for the eleventh time that morning. I almost didn't look. Then I saw my cousin's name on the screen, followed by three exclamation points, and my stomach dropped before I even opened the message.

Have you seen this??? Someone's talking about your bakery online and it's NOT good.

A link followed. I wiped flour from my fingers onto my apron and clicked it, already bracing myself.

The page loaded slowly, like it wanted to torture me. A blog. Sleek, minimalist, black text on white. The header read: BLACKWOOD'S BITE. Honest Reviews for a City That Deserves Better.

I'd heard of it before, vaguely. The anonymous food critic every restaurant owner in the city either feared or pretended not to read. People said one bad review from Blackwood's Bite had closed two restaurants last year alone. I'd always assumed that was exaggeration.

I scrolled down and found my bakery's name in bold.

Sweetleaf Bakery: A Sweet Name for a Sour Disappointment.

My hand went still over the screen.

I ordered the lemon tart, the almond croissant, and what the menu optimistically called a "signature" chocolate babka. What I received tasted like ambition without execution, pastry that forgets what butter is for, and a chef who seems to be coasting on nostalgia rather than skill. Sweetleaf may have been beloved once. It isn't anymore. Save your money, and your appetite, for literally anywhere else on this block.

I read it twice. Then a third time, hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something kinder. They didn't.

My mother's recipes. My mother's name still painted in gold on the window outside. Twelve years since she'd passed, and this stranger, hiding behind a byline that wasn't even a real name, had just spent four sentences burying everything I'd spent the last three years trying to keep alive.

I should have expected it. Sweetleaf hadn't been doing well even before this. The lease had gone up. My supplier raised prices twice this year. I'd been quietly panicking for months, doing the math over and over, hoping if I just held on a little longer.

The bell above the door rang.

I looked up, startled, half expecting a customer, a real one, a miracle, and instead found a man in a charcoal overcoat standing just inside the doorway, glancing around the shop like he was appraising it for parts. Tall. Unfairly put together for eight in the morning. He had the look of someone who had never once had to wonder if he could make rent.

"We're not really open," I said, before I could stop myself. "I mean, we are. Just, there's nothing fresh. I haven't."

"I'm not here for pastries," he said. His voice was flat, economical, like he'd budgeted exactly how many words he intended to spend on me.

"Okay." I set my phone down, the review still glowing accusingly on the screen. "Then what can I help you with?"

"I'm looking for the owner."

"That's me."

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe, or recalculation. He studied me for a beat too long, the way people did when they'd expected someone else. Older, probably. Someone who looked more like they belonged behind a bakery counter and less like they'd slept four hours and cried in the walk in fridge twice this week.

"Eliana Jones?"

My pulse ticked up at the sound of my full name in a stranger's mouth. "Who's asking?"

He reached into his coat and produced a card, sliding it across the counter without ceremony. Cream cardstock. Embossed lettering. Lorenzo Blackwood. Blackwood Capital Holdings.

The name meant nothing to me. Not yet.

"I represent the firm that recently acquired the mortgage on this building," he said. "Your landlord defaulted on his loan three weeks ago. The bank sold the debt. We bought it."

The words landed like ice water down my spine. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You've been renting from a man who hasn't made a payment on this property since spring," Lorenzo said, entirely unbothered, as if he were reading me a weather report. "The foreclosure process completes in eleven days. After that, Blackwood Capital owns this building outright, and every lease inside it becomes void unless renegotiated with us directly. You'd have thirty days from that point to vacate the premises. That's forty-one days total, if you're counting."

My mouth had gone dry. "Nobody told me any of this."

"I imagine your landlord was hoping to avoid that conversation for as long as possible." A pause. Something almost like distaste crossed his mouth. "People often do, when they're about to lose everything."

"And you're here to what, gloat? Evict me faster?"

"I'm here," he said, "because Blackwood Capital doesn't typically bother meeting the tenants of buildings this small. But I looked over the file this morning, and I recognized the name."

"The name of my bakery."

"The name on the lease." He tilted his head slightly. "Jones. It's a common enough name. I assumed it was a coincidence, until I saw the pastry case behind you." His eyes moved, briefly, to the empty tart shells sitting untouched under the glass. "Sweetleaf. I had the tarts here once. Recently, in fact."

The floor seemed to tilt.

"You had." My voice caught somewhere in my throat as the pieces slammed together, ugly and fast. The blog. The initials. B for Blackwood. "You wrote that review."

For the first time since he'd walked in, Lorenzo Blackwood actually looked at me. Really looked, the way you look at something you've just realized might bite back.

"I write a lot of reviews," he said carefully.

"You wrote that one. This morning. About my bakery. About my mother's recipes." My hands had curled into fists at my sides without me noticing. "You destroyed us in four sentences, and now you're standing in my shop telling me you also own the roof over my head?"

Something shifted behind his composed expression. Not quite guilt. Calculation, maybe. A man quickly rereading a room he'd badly misjudged.

"That's an interesting coincidence," he said slowly, "but not one I intend to apologize for."

"Get out."

"Miss Jones."

"I said get out of my bakery."

He didn't move right away. Instead, he glanced once more at the pastry case, at the gold lettering on the window that read Sweetleaf. Est. by Marianne Jones, and something almost like reconsideration crossed his face.

"Eleven days," he said finally, turning toward the door. "After that, this becomes my property, and you'll need a very good reason for me to let you keep working in it."

The bell rang again as he left.

I stood frozen behind the counter, staring at the door, at the review still open on my phone, at the business card gleaming cruelly under the lights.

The man who'd ended my bakery in four sentences this morning was about to become my landlord by next week.

And somehow, I had exactly eleven days to figure out how to survive him.