Chapter 2 - The Loaf of Rosemary Bread
Only after the heavy glass doors swung shut did Mabel let out a slow, shuddering breath. She turned around, facing the stranger who remained slumped against the brick wall.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly, her hostility entirely gone, replaced by profound concern.
The man slowly lifted his head. He stared at her through dark, intense eyes—stared as though no human being had asked him that simple, kind question in years.
Without waiting for an answer, Mabel hurried back through the kitchen doors. A few minutes later, she re-emerged carrying a ceramic mug of steaming hot coffee and a warm, freshly baked loaf of rosemary bread wrapped in paper.
“I paid for these out of my own pocket,” she explained, kneeling slightly to place them beside him. “So nobody inside can complain about theft.”
The stranger looked down at the offering, then back up at her. “You should keep your money. You worked for it.”
“I’ll survive without lunch,” Mabel smiled gently. “Eat. You look like you haven’t had a hot meal in days.”
The stranger accepted the warm loaf carefully, his large, calloused hands cradling it as if it were a fragile artifact. “Why would you do this for someone you don’t know?”
“Because they were wrong,” Mabel said simply.
She stood up, dusted off her apron, and walked back inside the restaurant, completely unaware of the sleek, black sedan idling quietly across the four-lane street—or the dangerous man behind tinted windows who had watched every single second of the exchange.
The stranger remained beneath the gold awning, holding the warm loaf of rosemary bread against his chest.
Across the street, inside the darkened interior of the sedan, the driver lifted a secure satellite phone to his ear.
“She stood in front of you,” he reported quietly into the receiver once the connection went through. “She had no idea who she was protecting.”
May you like
A low, gravelly voice echoed from the other end of the line, cold and absolute.
“Keep eyes on her. Nobody touches her. And compile a list of everyone inside that restaurant who watched and smiled.”
