Tony
The evening had settled over Mount Tabor like a heavy wool blanket, quiet and suffocatingly still. After the poison Jason Thorne had dripped into the air this morning, the bakery had felt different—fragile, like a glass ornament held in a trembling hand. We’d pushed through the rest of the shift in a sort of focused trance, but once the "Closed" sign was flipped and the last crumb was swept, the weight of that forty-thousand-dollar mountain came crashing back down.
I’d been downstairs for an extra three hours. After finishing the prep work, I tinkered with the hinges on the display case and checked the seals on the walk-in, mostly just to keep my hands moving so my mind wouldn't start doing the math.
When I finally climbed the back stairs to the apartment, the scent of garlic, toa
