Page 18 of Hungry As Her Python

And now, twice in a couple of months, someone had decided to take a match to it.

I had no idea why, but looking at the destruction that surrounded me, I had a terrible feeling things were going to get worse before they got better.

And I wasn’t at all sure I could handle it.

Chapter Five-Bella

Some people thought running your own business meant loads of free time and setting your own schedule.

Bless their sweet, clueless little hearts.

They couldn’t be more wrong if they tried.

See, there was always something to be done. Inventory, invoices, bookkeeping, payroll—check, check, check, and ugh, so much more.

And it wasn’t just the fact that these things needed doing.

Oh no. It was the fact that you—the boss, the owner, the queen of all you surveyed—were the one responsible for making sure they actually got done.

No magical paperwork Fairies.

No enchanted ledger that balanced itself overnight.

Just me, my coffee, my loyal staff—I paid them very well, including all the sugary bonuses they could eat—and my eternal to-do list that somehow grew longer every time I crossed something off.

Every morning—and I mean pre-dawn morning, when the world is still dark and the only souls awake are Ghosts and Vampires headed home to their beds or coffins—I was at the bakery, getting shizzle done.

Schedules didn’t make themselves, you know.

Not anymore than my award-winning Double Chocolate Cupcake Bombs, which—side note—can double as real bombs if left out in the sun too long.

(Long story. Don’t ask. And definitely don’t store them in your car in July.)

It wasn’t glamorous.

No one was filming me for a reality baking show as I hauled fifty-pound flour sacks or scrubbed frosting out of a mixing bowl the size of a hot tub.

And yet, I loved it.

Even the parts that made me want to hex my spreadsheet.

Because this was my bakery.

My passion.

My joy.

My thang.

My blood, sweat, tears, and real, old-fashioned buttercream went into every inch of it.

The moment I turned the key in the lock and stepped into that warm, yeasty air, the world made sense again—at least until someone tried to burn it down. Twice.

Which, for the record, made absolutely no sense.

Kinda like a certain Python Shifter’s refusal to just fade gracefully into the background like an old Instagram trend.

I mean, honestly.