My Mean Girl Bully Demanded A Wedding Cake — She Didn’t Know My Husband Owned Her Family’s Empire
Part 1
Gossip in this city travels faster than a speeding bullet, especially when blood money and buttercream are involved.
Nobody believed a size twenty-two baker with flour constantly stuck in her hair could capture the city’s most feared syndicate leader.
That was, of course, until he walked in.
In a neighborhood where women survived on green juice and whispered prescriptions for weight loss drugs, I was an unapologetic anomaly.
My name is Heather Barnes, and I carry my two hundred and fifty pounds with a quiet, practiced grace.
My soft belly presses gently against the ties of my heavy linen aprons every morning.
My thick thighs chafe after fourteen-hour shifts standing over the hot stoves.
I own Sweetbriar Confections.
It is a high-end bakery tucked away on a quiet cobblestone street.
Almost accidentally, it has become the most exclusive dessert spot in the entire city.
Despite my undeniable culinary genius, to the old money socialites who frequent my shop, I am just the chubby help.
My shop is a sanctuary of French vanilla, burnt sugar, and roasting espresso.
It is also a vicious shark tank.
Every Tuesday morning at exactly ten o’clock, Brenda Caldwell and Megan push through my heavy glass doors.
Brenda is the heiress to Caldwell Equity, a venture capital firm with billions in assets.
Megan is a fashion executive who practically lives at the most expensive boutiques.
Both of them are a size zero, perfectly polished, and exceptionally, casually cruel.
Brenda drawled my name this morning, adjusting a Birkin bag on her sharp shoulder.
Her eyes lazily raked up and down my flour-dusted form.
Her gaze lingered intentionally on my heavy hips and my double chin.
Megan snickered, poking at a delicate raspberry tart.
She claimed that looking at the sheer volume of my body, I was probably eating half the inventory.
I kept my expression completely neutral, sliding a white pastry box across the cold marble counter.
The daily microaggressions washed over me like a dull, familiar ache.
Growing up fat meant developing skin as thick and resilient as fondant.
I asked Brenda for forty-five dollars, keeping my voice perfectly level.
She tossed a sleek black credit card onto the counter with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
She offered me her personal trainer’s phone number, claiming it was genuinely concerning seeing me wobble behind the counter.
I took a deep, steadying breath.
I told her my chef coats were custom-made and wished her a wonderful day.
As they strutted out, leaving behind a suffocating cloud of expensive perfume, my shoulders slumped slightly forward.
What Brenda and the rest of high society did not know, however, was my secret.
His name is Dan Romano.
To the public, Dan is an elusive real estate magnate.
To the authorities, he is the ruthless head of the Romano syndicate.
He is a man made of sharp angles, tailored suits, and a reputation so violent that grown men stutter in his presence.
He is also desperately, madly, obsessively in love with me.
We met eight months ago when he slipped through the back alley door of my bakery bleeding from a messy wound.
I calmly locked the door behind him and handed him a clean kitchen towel.
He found a woman whose soft, full figure grounded him.
He began visiting me in secret, eating fresh cinnamon rolls and watching me work.
He loved my softness, and he fiercely guarded me.
Six weeks ago, Dan slipped a massive emerald-cut diamond ring onto my finger.
We were waiting for the right moment to go public, but to the mean girls of the city, I was still just a punching bag.
A week after that Tuesday, Brenda marched in, flanked by Megan and three other women.
She announced smugly that she was getting married to a powerful man.
She demanded the most spectacular custom cake for four hundred guests by this Friday.
I blinked, staring at her in genuine disbelief.
I told her I was entirely booked and could not deliver a custom cake in three days.
Brenda’s smile dropped instantly, her eyes turning into cold slits.
She told me she was paying handsomely and suggested I use the money for a gastric bypass surgery.
The bakery went dead silent.
I felt the blood rush hotly to my cheeks.
I told her my weight had nothing to do with my schedule and firmly refused the order.
Megan chimed in, calling me an arrogant fat cow.
Right on cue, a man walked in, dressed in an expensive but slightly flashy suit.
He wrapped an arm around Brenda’s waist.
I recognized Tyler instantly from Dan’s private files as one of his low-level foot soldiers.
Tyler walked right up to the pastry counter, leaning over it to intimidate me.
He told me I was going to bake the cake for half price as an apology.
He promised that if I refused, my little sugar shop would have a very bad accident with a grease fire.
I stood my ground, my heart hammering aggressively against my ribs.
I looked him dead in the eye and said no.
Tyler’s face twisted in sudden, violent rage.
He reached aggressively across the counter and grabbed a massive, three-tiered display cake.
He shoved it hard.
The cake tumbled off the marble, crashing onto the immaculate tile floor in a tragic splat of ruined icing.
Brenda and Megan erupted into malicious, high-pitched laughter.
Tyler smirked, telling me I had some cleaning up to do.
Before Tyler could finish his arrogant sentence, the atmosphere in the bakery shifted.
The air seemed to instantly, sharply freeze.
Three massive, black-suited men stepped silently through the front door and locked it behind them.
Brenda’s laughter died instantly in her throat.
Tyler turned around slowly, his arrogant smirk faltering as he took in the sheer size of the security detail.
Then the crowd of suits parted.
The entire bakery went dead silent as the most feared man in the city stepped over the ruined cake, his murderous eyes locking onto the man who had just threatened me.
