Mine, little baker 🎂🎂

HERE 2 CAKES DENOTE SERIES 1 IF U HAVE NOT READ SERIES 1 PLEASE GO CHECK IT 💖

The morning after everything shattered, Moscow woke up cold.

Not the usual cold — the kind that bites your skin and reminds you you’re alive. No. This was a different cold. A hollow cold. The kind that crawls inside your chest and sits there, heavy and permanent, like grief wearing a winter coat.

Massimo D’Angelo had not slept.

He had not moved from the chair by the window of his penthouse since three in the morning. His suit jacket was still on — wrinkled, damp from the snow that had soaked through when he knelt to pick up the ring. His shoes were still wet. His hair was a mess — fingers had raked through it so many times that it stood in every direction, dark and wild.

The ring sat on the table beside him.

A thin gold band. A pale blue stone. The exact color of the butterflies on her dress.

He hadn’t put it in a box. He hadn’t locked it away. He just... set it there. On the cold glass table. And stared at it.

Like if he stared long enough, her hand would materialize beneath it.

His phone had seventeen missed calls — Riccardo, Rocco, two associates from Milan, a number he didn’t recognize. He hadn’t touched it. Hadn’t looked at it. Hadn’t moved.

Because moving meant accepting that yesterday happened. And he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

Rocco found him at six in the morning.

He didn’t knock. He never knocked. He had a key, and he had instincts, and both told him that this morning was going to be bad.

He stepped inside the penthouse and stopped.

The lights were off. The curtains were open, letting in the grey, pre-dawn light of Moscow winter. The city stretched out below — towers, roads, frozen rivers — all of it muted and colourless, like someone had drained the world of warmth.

And there was Massimo.

Sitting in the dark. Still in last night’s suit. Staring at a ring on the table.

Rocco had seen Massimo survive gunfights without flinching. He had watched him sit across from men who wanted him dead and smile —smile— while negotiating terms that would ruin them. He had been beside him at his father’s funeral when Massimo was sixteen years old, dry-eyed and iron-jawed, refusing to break even as the coffin lowered into the ground.

But this?

This was something Rocco had never seen.

This was a man who had been unmade.

“Massimo.”

No response.

“Massimo.”

Nothing.

Rocco walked closer. Slowly. Carefully. Like approaching a wounded animal. He crouched beside the chair and looked up at his best friend’s face.

Massimo’s eyes were red. Not bloodshot from drink — he hadn’t touched alcohol. Red from something worse. From hours of sitting in the dark, replaying every moment, every lie, every word, every second of her face crumbling when she heard his real name.

“Have you slept?” Rocco asked quietly.

Massimo’s jaw tightened.

“Have you eaten?”

Silence.

“Massimo, look at me.”

Finally — slowly, painfully — Massimo turned his head. His grey eyes met Rocco’s dark ones. And Rocco saw it. The thing he’d feared most.

Emptiness.

Not anger. Not determination. Not the fire that usually burned behind those cold eyes. Just... nothing. A void where something alive used to be.

“She left,” Massimo said.

His voice was hoarse. Cracked. Like it had been scraped raw from the inside.

“I know,” Rocco said gently.

“She put the ring on the ground.” A pause. “On the snow. She didn’t throw it. She didn’t... she placed it. Carefully. Like it still mattered to her. Like she was returning something sacred.”

Rocco said nothing. He just listened.

“And then she walked away.” Massimo’s hand curled into a fist on his thigh. “She didn’t run. She didn’t scream. She just... walked. Straight. Steady. She didn’t look back. Not once.”

His voice broke on the last word.

“I stood there. In the middle of the street. And I watched her disappear. And I couldn’t — I couldn’t move. I couldn’t call her name. I couldn’t —”

He stopped. His throat closed.

Rocco put a hand on his knee. “We’ll fix this.”

Massimo shook his head slowly. “You don’t fix this. This isn’t a negotiation. This isn’t a deal. I can’t — I can’t threaten my way back into her heart, Rocco. I can’t send men. I can’t buy a solution. She’s not — she’s not afraid of me. She’shurtby me. That’s worse. That’s infinitely worse.”

Rocco let the silence sit.

Then, carefully: “Where is she now?”

Massimo’s jaw clenched. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t —”

“I had men outside the bakery. Standard protection detail. She walked back toward the bakery after she left me, but she didn’t go inside. She walked past it. Kept walking. My men followed at a distance, but I called them off.”

Rocco blinked. “You called them off?”

“She asked me once — when we were at the lake — if I believed people deserved privacy. She said everyone deserves a place where no one watches them.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve already stolen enough from her. I won’t steal that too.”

Rocco sat back on his heels. In fifteen years of knowing Massimo D’Angelo — fifteen years of blood and bullets and board meetings and bodies — he had never heard him prioritize someone else’s feelings over his own need for control.

This girl had changed him.

And it might have been too late.

At seven-thirty in the morning, Massimo finally stood up.

He didn’t shower. He didn’t change. He didn’t eat. He picked up the ring, put it in his coat pocket, and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” Rocco asked, already knowing.

“The bakery.”

“Massimo —”

“I need to see her.”

Rocco grabbed his arm. “And if she’s not there?”

Massimo stopped. His back was rigid. His shoulders were locked. He didn’t turn around.

“Then I’ll wait.”