I brought the ruined confection closer, analyzing the composition.
Hazelnut.
Sea salt.
Vanilla bean.
The chemical signature was diabolical. A precise ratio of fat and salt engineered to bypass the body’sI’m fullsignals and hijack the pleasure centers of the brain. This wasn’t a dessert. It was a meticulously crafted addiction delivery system.
“Who made this?” I wiped the smear onto the grass, discarding the toxic waste on the ground. “Who is supplying you with this contraband?”
Barnaby crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a pout that might have been intimidating on a toddler. He stayed silent.
I didn’t ask again. I’d given him the chance to come clean, and he still refused. It didn’t matter. The answerwas easy to find, right on the wrapper that had hidden his crime.
There, printed in elegant, swirling letters that mocked the very concept of nutrition, was the source of my misery.
The Cocoa Bean
Hazel’s Chocolaterie & Sweets.
14 Primrose Lane, Oakhaven.
“Hazel.” The name was soft, deceptive. A tactical camouflage for a purveyor of high-calorie chaos.
The evidence in my hand told the real story. This ‘Hazel’ wasn’t a chocolatier. She was a saboteur. An agent of evil systematically undoing weeks of my hard work using ganache and gold leaf. She had targeted my client, exploited his weakness, and compromised the mission. This was no longer just about fitness. This was a professional turf war.
I crushed the wrapper in my fist, enjoying the sound of the foil dying.
“Pack your things.”
Barnaby’s ears trembled, his eyes going wide. “What… What are you going to do?”
My gaze shifted toward the path leading out of the woods. It wound down toward the human realm, toward the temptation that had led the Easter Bunny astray. “It’s quite simple, Barnaby. We are going on a field trip.”
2
The Supplier
Hazel
There was a specific moment when chocolate went from being just a melted ingredient to being perfect.
Nana Beatrice had once told me that perfection was not a goal, but a weapon. “Imperfection,” she’d said, adjusting the perfect white gloves she wore to tea, “is a crack in your armor. It is an invitation for the world to see you as less. Never, ever, give them that invitation.”
For her, it was about flawless place settings, ironed-flat social smiles, and a life without a single smudge. Or at least, none except the ones she herself engineered.
She was right about the principle, but just wrong about the medium.
Perfection was simply a matter of physics. You had to heat something, cool it down, and then bring it back up again, just slightly, to align the crystals within. If you did it right, the chocolate snapped, a perfect, delicious little shield. If you did it wrong, it looked dull and gray, like a rainy morning in a dentist’s waiting room.
I was currently covered in dull and gray.
“Come on,” I whispered to the tempering machine, watching the dark liquid swirl in hypnotic spirals. “Don’t be difficult. Be delicious.”
The machine hummed its mechanical disagreement. I’d been working with this particular batch of Venezuelan cacao for three hours, and it was fighting me every step of the way. Temperamental chocolate was a special kind of torture, like trying to reason with a toddler who had just discovered the word ‘no.’
My shop, The Cocoa Bean, was my quiet rebellion against everything Nana Beatrice stood for. It smelled of roasted espresso beans, vanilla pods, and melted chocolate, a trio of scents that made even the grumpiest customers soften at the threshold.
