“I will learn how to work with heat,” I reply.
For a moment, no one speaks.
Then Rex shakes his head once, already retreating into strategy. “This better not cost us.”
As he turns toward the door, Julian calls after him, sweet as poison, “Relax, Rex. If he burns out, we will sweep up the ashes.”
The door closes behind Rex with a heavy finality.
Julian claps his hands together once. “Well,” he says brightly, “Monday morning. Alarm clocks. Aprons.”
Zara grins at me. “Try not to die.”
I look back at the dark screen where my face had just been broadcast to millions.
Thirty days.
“This will be huge for your personal brand, Leo,” Zara adds, her voice back to its usual monotone. “The Billionaire Apprentice. It is… humanizing.”
“Right,” I say flatly. “Humanizing.”
They leave in a cloud of expensive cologne and cynical ambition, leaving me standing alone in the center of my white marble cavern. I look out the floor-to-ceiling window at the grid of city lights eighteen stories below. I feel the familiar, hollow ache of my own life, a vast emptiness surrounded by priceless objects.
A bakery.
I sigh and pull out my phone. I do not call my driver. I do not call my publicist. I call my executive assistant, a woman who has, on three separate occasions, sourced a rare, endangered orchid for me with less than an hour’s notice.
“Amelia, sorry to wake you.”
A pause. “Mr. Ashford. How can I help you?” Her voice is crisp, unflappable, even at 2:20 a.m.
“I need… a uniform. For a baker.”
A longer pause this time. “…A baker, sir?”
“Yes. The best one you can find. The most authentic. And I need it tomorrow.”
“…Understood. And… a hat, sir? A baker’s hat?”
“Yes, Amelia,” I sigh. “A hat.”
“Very good. Anything else?”
“I need the address for a place called Sunrise and Salt. And, Amelia? Cancel everything. For the next thirty days.”
“Everything, sir? The Q3 review with the board? The transport merger?”
“Everything.”
I hang up. For the first time in as long as I can remember, my calendar is empty.
I am terrified.
And, if I am honest, I am a little bit thrilled.
Chapter 2
Tess
