MAVEN
I was fuming.
I’d come in to work this morning and started my day like any other day.
I’d gotten all my pastries baked and out in the cases, my hand on the door sign poised to flip it to open, when a man wearing a Dallas Health Department embroidered shirt showed.
He had a look on his face that let me know clearly that my day was about to be fucked.
Why?
Because my dad hated me, and he knew everyone in the city.
And that wasn’t an understatement.
My dad was the chief of police for the Dallas Police Department.
If he didn’t know them, he would get to know them.
And he intimidated them all.
The health official had stood at the door to my business and pasted a sign on the glass stating that my business was officially closed due to health violations.
Which was a fucking lie, because my place was as clean as a whistle.
It had to be because my dad sent the health inspector out every single week to get me closed down.
I’d managed to avoid actually closing down until this morning, when they’d forced my hand.
Now I had thousands of dollars’ worth of bakery items that would go to waste, and no way to recoup it since I wasn’t allowed to sell anything until I was reinstated to work.
I also knew that if I tried to sell anyway, I’d be arrested.
There was likely some douchebag cop who was loyal to my father somewhere keeping watch, just in case.
Pepper had arrived in time to see the health inspector leave, and she’d waited with me until well past nine in the morning—four hours after I was supposed to open and six since I’d gotten there this morning—to call the health inspector’s office to file an official complaint.
Though, I’d been able to get ahold of my lawyer much faster than that, and she’d promised to have a suit filed by Monday morning.
Needless to say, after hanging up the phone, the last people I wanted to deal with were a couple more cops.
Though, the Carters seemed to be better than most.
I especially liked the two who were here.
Atlas was the sweetest man I’d ever met.
Meanwhile, his polar-opposite twin, Auden, was the one that always caught my eye and held it.
Where Atlas was welcoming and always smiling—at least with me—Auden was standoffish and scowling.
Auden’s chocolate brown eyes weren’t exactly welcoming, but they were still my obsession.
Chocolate, from a very young age, had become one of my favorite things in the world.
And the deep, melty chocolate color of Auden’s had been the first thing I noticed about him.
Then had come the blond hair, cropped close to his head but still long enough to curl. It had been so much like my own that I’d been entranced.
And his skin.
It was smooth and tan, in stark contrast against the blond of his hair.
The tattoos down his muscular arms caught my attention and held it.
He had a gold star on his right forearm that looked a lot like a badge, with dark red and black ink swirling out around it.
“What’s going on?” Auden asked, avoiding my gaze.
Pepper, my one and only employee, who’d been with me for about six weeks now, said, “She already told y’all. Her dad is being a giant douchebag, and he’s been trying to get this place shut down since she opened. He’s finally succeeded, at least for today.”
That was the truth.
It was only for today.
I could do this.
I could, right?
“What is he trying to do?” I laughed at Auden’s earlier question.
God, the man was beautiful.
Right now, he looked like he was about to fight a bear just for me—that bear being my dad.
And he hadn’t cared that I was literally threatening the chief of police with murder.
“Yeah,” Auden said. “What else is he doing? I hate to admit this, but we were aware he had something against this place. He fuckin’ hates when we bring in food from your shop. He doesn’t outright say it or anything, but the man makes it clear that he doesn’t like when those pretty pink boxes arrive. We can’t prove it, but we’re fairly sure he throws it all in the trash if we leave it in the break room and he goes in there. We’ve taken to keeping all the food at our desks.”
The prick.
I hated him so much.
“The better question would be what hasn’t he done?” I fumed. “Other than making me hate living with him for most of my childhood. So much so that I stayed with my grandparents every chance I got. I even started calling myself by my grandparents’ last name since I couldn’t change it legally. He never supported me in any way. I wanted to do gymnastics? He refused. I wanted to go to a church camp and spend time with friends? Refused. I wanted to go to college in Michigan? Refused. I wanted to move out, refused.
“I have literally had to climb uphill to pull myself from under his thumbs. I mean, I tried to ask for my birth certificate once, and he all but threw a fuckin’ fit. I don’t have it, by the way. I can’t get a passport without it, either. So I’ve yet to go on my vacation of a lifetime.”
“He hates your best friend, too,” Pepper added softly. “When he heard they were friends—something she had to keep secret from her dad because he didn’t like her having friends—I thought he was going to tear the bakery down around us. He came in, told her that she would never speak to Athena again, and scared the absolute shit out of both of us.”
I sighed, running my hands over my face for a few long seconds before I pulled them away.
“You interested in going fishing?” Auden asked in that velvety smooth voice. “That’s where we’re headed. Maybe it’ll give your lawyer time to work, and you enough time to calm down.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Pepper pushed. “She needs to get out of here.”
“You’re coming, too.” Atlas narrowed his eyes at her. “Can’t have you out here following through with her threats. Don’t think I didn’t notice you eyeing your car, ready to head to the station yourself.”
Pepper would do it, too.
She was a spitfire, and took no shit from anyone, even my father.
Pepper shrugged. “You have no clue the stuff she has to put up with when it comes to that man.”
I could feel Auden and Atlas staring at me, but I looked away, trying to control the anger.
I had no clue why my father was the way he was.
I had no clue why I couldn’t hang out with friends.
I didn’t know why I was never able to attend prom, have social media, or date.
Hell, the last man I’d dated my father had threatened with deportation—and he was an American citizen! I had a feeling he could make it happen, too.
The man had left without a fight, and I’d realized that I would never be able to have a boyfriend in this state.
Hell, I should’ve gone with my first instinct to move away and start this business.
But Athena was here and had no intentions of ever leaving. And after her brother had died a few years ago in a line of duty accident, I hadn’t wanted to let her be here alone—couldn’t, really. She was the one constant in my life after everything my dad had put me through, and my mom had stood by and allowed.
Consequently, I’d stayed.
And now I was paying the price.
“Then it’s settled,” Atlas said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go. Bring the food. We’ll see how much we can get through.”
I snorted. “I don’t think you have any understanding how much food is currently in the back of my car.”
Movement caused my gaze to shift from the good twin to the evil twin.
A shit-eating grin came over Auden’s face once he saw he now had my attention. “How bad do you want to piss him off?”
I studied the man, taking in his clothes, his five o’clock shadow, and the chocolate swirl of his eyes.
“If it makes him want to shoot himself, I’m down,” I grumbled darkly.
Amusement danced in Auden’s eyes, and I realized then that he wasn’t too upset about my threat to shoot the chief of police.
In fact, he was looking at me with an intensity that had my belly fluttering.
“I can have one of my brothers come over here and take this all to the station,” he said. “It’s been a pretty bad week there. Today marks a year since we lost a police officer in the line of duty. The pall at the office is kind of sad. You could take that all in, be their hero.”
I thought about that for a long second before saying, “How about we just stop there first? I’ll leave my car there. You can tell your brothers to meet us, then they won’t have to bring the van. But make sure to move over whatever you don’t want them to take.”
“Deal,” Auden said.
