Ash grits under my soles. The air has that after-burn metallic taste that sticks to the back of the tongue. I cross the sidewalk slowly, my fingers skimming the edges of the sign as I pass. Paint flakes onto my palm, but I don’t wipe it off.
Inside is worse. Blackened studs arch overhead. The counter where I used to lean to chat with regulars is a skeletal line of char. The espresso machine is an animal that died mid-scream. The chalkboard menu lies face down under a beam, the chalk dust melted into a gray smear on the floor. I step carefully between broken ceramic and metal. My mind starts cataloging even as grief drags at my insides. Tiles are still intact near the back. The steel sink is warped but salvageable if I want it. The back office door stands crooked but present.
Luka keeps close without crowding me. His eyes sweep the perimeter, then return to me, studying each small tremor I can’t disguise.
Kolya plants himself at the threshold, one hand inside his jacket, his stance loose but lethal. Misha moves in a slow grid, checking corners, scanning the soot-streaked ceiling, and listening for something I can’t hear.
This used to be warm. This used to be a home that smelled like cinnamon and ground beans. Now it looks like a rib cage pried open and forgotten.
Near where the pastry case stood, a sheet of roofing collapsed in a warped oval, heavy enough to crush a person who didn’t see it coming. The sight narrows my focus until all I can hear is my own breath. I try not to picture the night itself, the first lick of flame, the hand that sparked it, or the rush of heat as everything I once touched gave itself over to ruin.
“Careful,” Luka murmurs when a board near my boots groans. He reaches out on instinct, and I feel his fingers bite lightly into my forearm. The contact centers me more than it ought to. He lets go only when my stance is solid again.
“I need the office,” I state matter-of-factly, turning toward the back, where a small corridor used to run alongside the kitchen. Everything is different, yet my feet find the path the way muscle remembers a dance.
The door hangs off one hinge. I nudge it with my knuckles and wiggle through. The room beyond is half burned. Papers are turned to ash. The filing cabinet is blackened at the top, the drawers swollen with heat. A safe crouches in the corner, stubborn under a skin of soot. My desk is a bent skeleton, one leg crushed, the others clinging to balance.
On the floor, under where the small shelf used to sit, lies a metal box with daisies stamped into the lid. Scorched but whole. My chest stutters, my knees fold without my permission, and I kneel in the mess with the box in my lap.
Misha steps forward and goes still, understanding without a word that this small object draws a line he won’t cross. “We pulled that the night it burned,” he explains softly. The road was hot. We stashed it here until the heat died down. Nothing inside has been disturbed.”
I trace the daisy petals with my thumb. The metal is cold and a bit greasy with soot. A tiny latch rests under my fingertip. I lift it, just enough to peek. The cards show my mother’s familiar script, a careful slant that used to guide me even when she was not there. Lemon loaf. Molasses sugar cookies. Her Sunday cinnamon rolls.
The tightness in my throat draws tighter until it threatens to tear. I pull the box closer, pressing it to my chest. The touch hurts and heals in the same breath.
Luka stops beside me, ash rising around his boots like smoke that refuses to die. For once, he doesn’t look carved from command and iron will.
“You kept it safe,” I manage, glancing up at Misha. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I won’t let them fall.
Misha tips his chin. “Your mother’s hand is inside. We do not leave family on the floor.”
Family.The word splits me open and settles the ache all at once.
Kolya’s voice reaches us from the main room. “Two pedestrians paused to look,” he reports, his tone cool. “Then kept walking. Nothing anchor-worthy.”
“Five minutes,” Luka replies, not taking his eyes off me. “Take what you need.”
I press my palms into the box until the corners bite. When the burn behind my eyes eases enough to breathe, I rise. Luka is ever watchful, every inch the predator who never truly rests. Vega slips around his leg, nudges my hip once, then stations himself in the doorway like a sentry.
I take one slow circle of the office and let my mind do its work. I note what can be cleaned, what must be replaced, and what I would do differently. The old, tiled back wall can be sanded and sealed. The layout near the service line was always too tight, leaving Jenny and me with bruised hips most Saturdays. If I push the bar three feet toward the windows, I could improve the flow and hide the reinforced steel supports within a white oakfacade. I could build the bakery into a visible corner, put the daily bread behind glass. We can rivet the logo into a copper plate and hang it inside, not on the street, where wind and winter can’t scar it.
“I’m going to rebuild it,” I whisper to the broken room. “Not the same. Better and stronger.”
Luka turns slightly toward me. I can’t read him, not really, but a subtle change softens the line of his mouth, maybe admiration, curiosity, or a new calculation. Maybe all three.
“You do not yet know the scope of what stands against you,” he replies, almost gently. “It will not be a problem solved only with walls and permits.”
“That never stopped my mother,” I return, lifting my chin. “It won’t stop me.”
We move through the main room as a unit on the way out. Kolya exits first, sweeping the sidewalk with a lazy swagger that fools no one. Misha follows, slipping his phone back into his jacket. Luka falls in beside me, his hand finding the small of my back as we step over a split plank. The touch is light, but his presence is impossible to ignore. Vega threads between us and the ruined counter, as if he had walked this route a hundred times.
At the threshold, I hesitate, looking back one final time. It still aches to breathe, but the pain feels purified, numbed by resolve.
Outside, the cold stings my cheeks, brisk enough to wake what’s gone numb. I blink against the wind. Across the street, the diner that never liked me still hangs its open sign crooked. A teenage couple hurries past, heads ducked against the chill, their laughter spilling into the air in small white clouds. The rest of the town moves as if nothing ever changed.
We return to the SUV with purpose. Misha opens the rear door and waits while I climb in. Luka follows, sealing us in a leather-and-heat cocoon. Vega hops up and settles with his head on my boot. Kolya checks the mirrors. Misha pulls away as smoothly as if we were leaving church.
The silence stretches for three breaths, then five. I keep my palms pressed to the box in my lap, chewing on my bottom lip as I decide what to say.
