Chapter 6 - Camila Goes Live
At 12:03 p.m., Camila Reyes turned on her bakery’s old social media account.
At 12:04, two hundred people were watching.
At 12:06, there were six thousand.
At 12:10, Adrian’s public relations team asked her to stop.
Camila ignored them.
She sat at a folding table in front of her burned bakery. Behind her, plywood covered the broken windows. Her hair was tied back. She wore the same green shirt because she had decided she was done being embarrassed by it.
“Hi,” she said into the camera. “My name is Camila Reyes. Apparently some of you know me as the baker who ruined an engagement party.”
Comments flew across the screen.
She continued.
“I want to show you something.”
She held up the twelve-year-old photograph of herself and her grandmother beside the dahlia cake.
“This is my grandmother Elena. That cake design existed long before I met Victoria Langford.”
Then she showed dated menus.
Old customer photographs.
Invoices.
A 2019 newspaper clipping that mentioned her burnt-honey orange cake.
She did not insult Victoria.
She did not cry.
She did not mention Adrian once.
She simply laid out the timeline.
Then she held up the event contract.
“I signed something I should have read more carefully. That part is on me. But hiding a clause doesn’t make stealing right. And buying the building where someone works doesn’t make their history yours.”
The comments slowed.
Then changed.
People started asking questions.
Reporters joined.
Former customers posted pictures of Camila’s cakes from years earlier.
A food blogger found an archived 2020 review praising the same guava cream pastry Hartwell now claimed was newly developed.
Then the impossible happened.
A woman named Sophie Chen joined the livestream.
Sophie had worked as a junior brand strategist for Hartwell Hospitality.
Her comment appeared at the top.
I HAVE THE ORIGINAL DECK.
Camila froze.
“What deck?”
A direct message arrived.
Twenty seconds later, Camila’s email chimed.
Attached was a ninety-page internal presentation titled PROJECT DAHLIA.
Naomi, standing just off camera, opened it on her laptop.
Her face changed.
“Camila.”
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
Camila ended the livestream.
Within minutes, the file was mirrored in three secure locations.
The presentation had been created six months earlier—long before Victoria entered Reyes Bakery.
Page one showed an image of Camila’s storefront.
Page four called Reyes Bakery “an undercapitalized heritage brand with high emotional authenticity.”
Page nine contained photographs of Camila taken through the bakery window.
Page thirteen described her as “financially vulnerable.”
Page eighteen listed a strategy:
1. Commission private event.
2. Secure broad IP assignment.
3. Acquire building.
4. Eliminate independent storefront.
5. Launch premium derivative brand.
Camila stopped reading.
Adrian swore.
Naomi’s face was white with anger.
“They didn’t find you by accident,” she said.
Camila looked at Adrian.
“You knew Hartwell did acquisitions like this?”
“Not like this.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He went still.
Camila’s chest tightened.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Adrian looked toward the burned bakery.
“My company partnered with Hartwell two years ago on a redevelopment fund.”
Camila stared at him.
“No.”
“I didn’t know your building was in the pipeline.”
“But your money was.”
“Yes.”
The word hit harder than she expected.
All morning, Adrian had been standing beside her as if he were outside the machine that had targeted her.
He wasn’t.
Maybe he hadn’t chosen her bakery.
Maybe he hadn’t written Project Dahlia.
But his company had helped build the system that made it possible.
Camila stepped back.
“Please leave.”
“Camila—”
“Leave.”
“I can fix this.”
She laughed once.
It sounded bitter.
“That’s exactly what rich men always say after they discover they helped break something.”
He flinched.
She hated that it hurt her to see it.
But she did not take the words back.
Adrian left.
That evening, Camila stayed alone in the bakery doorway while contractors boarded the rear entrance.
At 9:17, someone slid an envelope under the temporary plywood.
Inside was a photograph of her younger brother Mateo leaving campus.
On the back, someone had written:
Drop the lawsuit.
May you like
Or next time, we burn something you can’t rebuild.
