It had started two months earlier.

Every evening, Espe left the bakery pulling that same black suitcase.

It arrived nearly empty in the morning and left so heavy at night that the little wheels groaned against the sidewalk.

And around the very same time, the inventory audits started coming up short — flour, sugar, oil, boxes of dry goods, gone.

To Corwin it felt personal.

He had opened Marigold on a small-business loan he could barely carry, and he still remembered the early months when he and his wife, Ofelia, worked sixteen-hour days baking and scrubbing floors because they couldn’t afford help.