MARA'S POV

He was there at six exactly.

I hadn't even finished setting up when I heard the knock at the back door, which threw me off because I hadn't told him to use the back door. I hadn't told him there was a back door. I opened it and found him standing there in a dark coat, hands in his pockets, looking completely unbothered by the early hour and the cold and the fact that he was standing in an alley behind a bakery instead of wherever billionaires normally were at six in the morning.

"How did you know about this entrance," I said.

"I've been here before," he said.

I stepped back to let him in before I could think too hard about what that meant.

I put coffee in front of him without asking how he took it because I didn't care how he took it and he could say something if he had a problem. He didn't say anything. He wrapped both hands around the mug and looked around the back room slowly, taking in the shelving and the proofing racks and the framed photograph of my mother near the door, the one where she was laughing at something off-camera with flour on her cheek.

He looked at the photograph a beat longer than I expected.

I sat down across from him and put my list on the table. I had written my conditions out properly, clearly, the way my mother taught me to handle any negotiation, know what you need before you walk in, don't adjust it in the room.

"I have four conditions," I said. "Non-negotiable."

He nodded once.

"First. The bakery block acquisition is not just paused. It is formally suspended for the full duration of the arrangement and for six months after the divorce is finalized. In writing, with your signature, before I sign anything else."

He looked at me steadily. "Agreed."

I kept my face neutral even though that was the condition I had been most prepared to fight for. "Second. I keep working here every day. I'm not decorating your penthouse while my staff, my one part-time staff member, runs this place alone. Whatever events you need me at happen around my schedule, not the other way around."

"Within reason," he said. "There will be events that require advance commitment."

"Give me the dates in advance and I'll arrange coverage. But the bakery stays open and I stay involved. That's not flexible."

"Fine."

"Third. My brother doesn't find out the details of this arrangement. As far as Carlos is concerned this is a relationship that moved quickly. I'll handle him. But I need to know that nothing comes from your side that contradicts my story."

Something shifted in his expression. Not disagreement, more like evaluation. "That's more complicated than the first two."

"Why."

"Because my legal team will need documentation of the arrangement. There are people on my side who will know the nature of this marriage. I can't control every person in my organization."

"Then control the ones who matter," I said. "I'm not asking you to lie. I'm asking you to not volunteer information that blows up my family while you're going through yours."

He held my gaze for a moment and then said, "Agreed."

"Fourth." I paused on this one because it was the hardest to say out loud without feeling exposed. "The bakery block. Even after six months. Even after everything is finished and done. You don't come back to this building. You find somewhere else for whatever you're building."

The room got quiet.

Dominic looked down at his coffee and then back at me and I could see him thinking, the careful precise thinking of someone who never makes a decision without running it through every angle first.

"That's a significant business concession," he said.

"I know what it is."

"You're asking me to walk away from an acquisition my company has been developing for eighteen months."

"I'm asking you to leave my mother's bakery standing," I said. "That's what I'm asking."

Another silence. Longer this time.

"I'll agree to a permanent suspension of acquisition plans for your specific building and the two properties directly adjacent," he said. "The rest of the block I can't commit to. That affects other business arrangements that have nothing to do with you."

It wasn't everything. It wasn't the whole block the way I'd wanted. But it was the bakery. It was the building my mother had poured her life into and the two small businesses on either side of it that had been here just as long.

"Put it in the contract," I said.

"It'll be in the contract."

I folded my list and put it in my apron pocket. "Then I'll sign."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a document that was already prepared, already printed, already thick with legal language I was going to need to read every word of before I touched it with a pen. Of course he had brought it already. Of course he had assumed I would agree.

"I'm not signing this today," I said. "I'm taking this to someone I trust and having it reviewed. I'll sign it in three days if everything checks out."

"That's fine."

"And I want a copy of the acquisition suspension filed with the city before the wedding. Not after. Before."

He almost smiled. I couldn't be completely sure because it was gone before it fully formed, but something in his face shifted in a way that wasn't entirely neutral. "You don't trust me."

"I don't know you," I said. "There's a difference."

He stood and picked up his coat. He had barely touched the coffee. He was almost at the back door when I remembered something that had been sitting in the back of my mind since yesterday.

"You said you've been here before," I said. "How many times."

He stopped with his hand on the door. He didn't turn around right away, just stood there for a second with his back to me.

"More than once," he said.

"That's not an answer."

He opened the door and the cold morning air came in and he stepped out into it without looking back.

"Get some sleep, Mara. We have a wedding to plan."