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The bell above the door rings. Brock rises immediately, instinct and protectiveness moving together so naturally that the habit sends something warm through my chest. Then Ollie walks inside and the tension dissolves. Mostly.

He carries several folders beneath one arm, his expression unusually bright — a strange sight on a face more accustomed to mild exhaustion. "What happened?" I ask.

Ollie drops the folders onto the counter. "You'll never believe this."

That sentence almost never leads anywhere good. Today appears to be an exception. He grins. "Witnesses."

Brock's attention sharpens instantly. "How many?"

"More." Ollie points at the folders. "Way more."

My eyebrows rise. "What changed?"

Ollie shrugs. "No idea." I know immediately that's not entirely true — everyone in this room knows what changed. People are starting to realize they're not alone. They're realizing somebody is finally fighting back, and that realization has a way of unlocking courage that fear had bolted shut.

Brock opens one folder, then another, his expression shifting as he reads. "Statements," he says, and my pulse quickens. Real statements — signed, detailed, specific. Exactly what we need. Exactly what kept disappearing every time we got close.

Ollie looks entirely too pleased with himself. "I'm helping."

Brock snorts. "Debatable."

Ollie gasps with genuine theatrical offense. "I carry justice through those doors and this is what I receive in return." Despite everything, a laugh escapes me — real and unguarded — and the sound surprises me almost as much as it surprises Brock, whose expression shifts into something that looks very much like relief. That reaction doesn't escape me. Neither does the warmth that follows it.

The door opens again and Helena walks in, folders already tucked under one arm, expression focused and energized in the way that means she has been working and has found something worth the effort. She drops additional files onto the counter without preamble. "More victims."

Ollie points at himself proudly. "I just said that."

Helena barely glances at him. "Excellent." Ollie looks offended. The rest of us move on.

Helena begins sorting documents across the counter — witness statements, financial records, business reports — and the case keeps growing around us, piece by piece, victim by victim, evidence by evidence, until it finally begins to resemble something undeniable. Something that can stand in a room and not be dismissed.

I watch Helena work, watch Brock review reports, watch Ollie organize statements with more care than he would ever admit to, and something shifts inside me. Small, but significant.

For months I have been carrying this alone — the blame, the fear, the guilt. Every failure felt personal, every loss felt earned, every morning felt like another opportunity to ask myself what I had done wrong and why I deserved it. The question became a habit. The habit became a weight.

Now the truth stands directly in front of me, spread across my own counter in folders and signatures and documented proof, and it is saying something I haven't let myself hear until this moment.

This was not my fault.

The realization arrives quietly, not dramatically, not all at once. It simply settles into place like something that was always true and only needed the right moment to become undeniable. I didn't destroy my bakery. I didn't sabotage my business. I didn't forge those records or manufacture those complaints or earn a single morning of what this year has cost me. Someone else did that. Someone who knew me well enough to know exactly where to cut.

The weight I've been carrying begins lifting — slowly, steadily — and the feeling leaves me almost breathless.

Brock notices. His gaze finds mine across the room and something softens in his expression, as though he understands exactly what is happening behind my eyes. Maybe he does. He has been watching me long enough.

I smile — a genuine one, the kind that doesn't require any effort — and something settles in his face in response, quiet and certain, like a question he already knew the answer to.

The fight isn't over. Not even close. The warrants still need filing, the case still needs presenting, and Marissa is still somewhere out there assuming her maze held. But standing inside my bakery, surrounded by people who refused to let me fall and kept showing up even when I gave them every reason not to, I understand something that fear had been drowning out for months.

I am no longer fighting just to survive.

I am fighting to win.

28

BROCK

The cabin is Theo's idea — a quiet place outside town, borrowed for the night so Juniper and I can finally breathe without the weight of Maple Hollow's eyes on us. I don't expect to like it. I don't expect the woodsmoke and pine and the particular hush of a place with no permits to check, no complaints to file, no one watching either of us for cracks.