He Took One Bite and Remembered His Mother

Chapter 3

That night, Adrian could not sleep.

He and Elise had taken rooms at a modest hotel across the square. He had spent hours staring at the rusted key in his palm, turning over every memory he had of his mother, his father, and the bakery where he had grown up.

He remembered warmth.

Bread cooling by the window.

His mother singing softly before dawn.

His father coming home dusty and tired, kissing Marianne on the forehead before washing up.

He also remembered the week before his father died.

The arguments.

The fear in his parents' voices.

His father saying, "If anything happens to me, take the boy and leave."

Adrian had been too young to understand then.

Now he did.

At midnight, Adrian left the hotel and made his way to the old bakery on Rue Saint-Michel. The building had been abandoned for years. The sign was broken, the windows clouded with grime.

Elise followed him despite his protests.

"I'm not letting you walk into something dangerous alone," she said.

Inside, the bakery smelled of dust and old wood. The ovens were cold. Shelves leaned at crooked angles. Everything felt frozen in another time.

Adrian found the loose floorboard beneath the back counter exactly where his mother had once hidden emergency money in winter.

He pried it up.

Underneath was a tin box.

Inside were letters. Dozens of them. All addressed to him.

And beneath the letters was a leather ledger and a sealed envelope marked with his father's name.

Adrian opened the first letter with shaking hands.

My dear Adrian, if you are reading this, then God has finally been kinder than the men around us...

It was his mother's handwriting.

Every letter she had ever sent.

Every word he had never received.

Elise put a hand over her mouth as Adrian read faster, his face growing harder with every page.

The letters told the story plainly. Adrian's father had discovered that the Varel textile company, the biggest employer in town, had knowingly used unstable chemicals in its mill. Workers had died. Records were falsified. Bribes were paid. When Adrian's father threatened to expose them, he was silenced.

The company owner had been Lucien Varel's father.

And after the death, Marianne had tried to go public.

Instead, she had been declared unstable.

Her property taken.

Her son sent away to war with no way back.

Adrian looked up from the letters, breathing hard.

Elise whispered, "Lucien knew."

Before Adrian could answer, a floorboard creaked behind them.

A voice came from the doorway.

"More than you realize."

Lucien stood there, holding a pistol.