Chapter 1

Millie

Three times.

Three times my rent has gone up since I opened my bakery, and it’s only been four years.

I’ve tried to stay current with the rising and falling costs, inflation, and the usual indicators that my finances are about to suffer for one intangible reason or another. No matter how much research I do, I can never find a reason to justify these price increases aside from pure greed, and I won’t have it.

It took me years to get to where I am now. Owning my own business wasn’t something I ever thought was possible for me. I came from a single-mother household where I was in charge of taking care of my siblings, unable to develop any skills or interests beyond keeping a house. I dropped out when I was sixteen. I spent what felt like an eternity picking up the pieces of my lost childhood to make a life for myself.

And now, I’ve been thrown into chaos again. Something has to change.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to call a meeting with the other business owners who rent units in this building. I don’t know a lot of them personally, but we all have more or less the same customer base, and I know for a fact that at least one other business is struggling. If turning a profit becomes an insurmountable task, why are we even here?

To be fair, I don’t think profit is at the forefront of everyone’s mind here. I’m certain that at least a few of the shop owners in my building are only in business because their rich husbands opened a boutique for them to keep them out of the house. It wouldn’t surprise me if half the stores in this building were an effort to subdue a budding benzo addiction in the face of existential suburban boredom.

But some of these people, I assume, are serious like me, and they must be pissed off at the rent increases too.

Come closing time, I prepare a place in my shop for everybody to sit. I can’t hide the fact that I’m nervous about coordinating a group full of angry women to stand up to our landlord. I’ve never been the most confrontational person on the planet, and from what I’ve heard, the man who owns all of the properties on this block is absolutely terrifying.

There are rumors that he only owns the building because of money laundering, and if that were the case, I doubt we could convince him to lower our rent at all. He’d sooner toss us all out on the street than bother dealing with our demands.

Though, considering the crowd of fidgety women I have in front of me today, a criminal enterprise is probably one of many stupid fantasies invented by them to continue living in their high school drama long past graduation.

I take a deep breath and remind myself that I’m not confronting a dangerous criminal. I’m having a civilized discussion with the property owner so that I can stay in business, and I can’t let my nerves affect me to the point that I lose my determination to fight.

I’ve worked so goddamn hard for this shop. I spent years struggling, going hungry, and making countless sacrifices in order to keep this place going, and I’ve established myself as one of the best bakers in the city. I refuse to let some greedy asshole take that away from me.

Because what’s my alternative? The only work experience I have besides the bakery was a job at a strip club, taking my clothes off and humiliating myself in front of the worst kind of men. I started for all the wrong reasons, just like everyone else that I knew from that time in my life. We were all too suggestible and naïve to know the difference between empowerment and exploitation, and we were conned into believing that our bodies were the only thing we’d ever be able to support ourselves with.

I was only eighteen. I still believed in all of the Hollywood glamor of stripping – the neon, the danger, the oversaturated beauty of the women who danced. I wanted to be desirable. I wanted to be someone that a man would pay to watch. Once I became that person, I would never be the same again.

Honestly, I consider myself one of the luckier ones. I got out relatively early, at least before the lifestyle had begun to wear on me physically. Most of the dancers started dabbling in drugs after a few weeks: one pill to keep up your energy throughout the night, a different pill to counteract the first pill to help you relax, and whatever ended up being consumed in between.

The clubs I worked in were notoriously run-down, dirty, and crawling with questionable people at all hours of operation. There was rampant drug use and prostitution, and I thank god every day that I was able to keep myself uninvolved in either of the two. That’s probably the reason I didn’t last very long.

But now I’m here, having clawed my way out of that scene and into another that threatens to sap the last bit of sanity from my aching joints.

I have to be strong. I have no other choice.

The first person to arrive for the meeting is Cheryl, a wiry middle-aged woman who owns a boutique just a few suites down from me. I’ve never spoken to her for more than a few minutes, but I get the impression that she’s a good person who is just trying to make it like everyone else.

“Damn, it looks really nice in here,” she says as she sits down at the table I’ve arranged for the group. “The last person who ran a bakery through here had no idea what the hell she was doing.”

I smile. “Yeah, it was a little rough when I first moved in here, but now there’s nothing about it that I would change... except for the fact that we’re getting shafted by the landlord,” I reply, rolling my eyes.

“I mean, he’s really not a bad guy, at least not the one who comes around here and collects from me when I’m late with the rent. He’s a little intimidating to look at, but definitely not ugly,” she responds as if I’m interested in hearing about how attractive my new adversary is.

Why should I care? He’s practically stealing from all of us.

I laugh dryly. “Doesn’t matter to me. If I had my way, we could stage some kind of walkout, but that’s a lot more difficult to do with businesses than employees,” I say.

“For real, though. He’s so attractive that I don’t even mind when he yells at me for being late with the rent. It’s actually kind of a turn-on,” she replies, grinning. “I wouldn’t mind a spanking either.”

I cringe. Seeing Cheryl get so distracted by this man’s appearance does not inspire confidence in me. I’m not easily swayed by a handsome face, having seen plenty in my youth that were coupled with bad attitudes and a multitude of bright red flags, but I’m worried what the rest of the women will think of our new opponent. I have no idea how I would respond if they agreed with her. If everyone else is this easy to distract, we’re hopeless.