Page 3 of Meet Jon, the Billionaire

Most people, when they think about visiting their aunt’s house, they expect to listen to dreary stories, or be forced to play with cousins they’ve never met. Me, when I think back to visiting my aunt’s house, all I can think of is working in the bakery.

I don’t mean to make her out to be a slave driver or anything. Working in the bakery was fun with a capital F. I learned all kinds of tricks that I later applied to other aspects of my life. Like bread. Simple product, right? Comes in a plastic wrapper with a little twisty tie thingy on the end. Sold to the general public and consumed usually without little enthusiasm.

Not in my aunt’s shop. Bread wasn’t treated as just a food staple, and certainly never without enthusiasm. I recall a time when Pedro, long the head baker at Breadcetera, told me that yeast never rises unless you feed them, speak to them—and beat the crap out of them.

When the bakery made bread, it did so with a capital B. I’m talking more than just your standard white-wheat-rye holy trinity. Asiago cheese bread. Italian olive bread. French toast loaf—one of the best sellers, and for good reason, even though it’s technically just an ingredient.

“Hello my little yeasties.” Pedro’s lips peeled back from a crooked grin as he held the bread pan in his hand. His tone was sweet, as if he were speaking to a tiny kitten. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you!”

He slapped a meaty palm on the side of the pan repeatedly, beating a rapid tattoo as I swept through the kitchen at Breadcetera, a phone up to my ear. Pedro noticed me, and a sheepish look stretched over his wizened face. He beat the pan noticeably softer.

“Okay, Ms. Taylor,” I said as I pushed the swinging aluminum door separating the kitchen and sales counter with my butt. “That was two dozen chocolate banana cupcakes with lemon frosting and the Power Ranger rings.”

“Not Power Ranger, Ninja Turtles.”

“I don’t know if we have—” I tugged a cardboard box filled with kid’s plastic rings and found a package with the pizza-loving reptiles. “Never mind. Ninja Turtles it is.”

I made a notation on my phone, and the message was instantly carried to the computer in the manager’s office. The printouts for the day’s orders would be generated and waiting for us. And it seemed like today they had to wait for a while.

I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but my aunt’s bakery was damn popular. Like, that morning, I couldn’t even stop to take a breath. Poor Sascha is an expert cashier, but even she struggled. I saw a line wrapping around the door and knew that we wouldn’t be granted respite any time soon.

My wait staff were mostly college kids, and they were swamped, too. I grabbed a pot of coffee in one hand, and a pot of decaf in the other, and swept through the dozen or so tables we had set up.

“Hey, Mr. Goldstein,” I said, stopping by his table. “Top you off there?”

“Why yes, thank you.” He gestured at the sandwich on his plate. “This Reuben is perfect. Tell Yerkov he’s a national treasure.”

“I’ll tell him.” I smiled and swept on to my next guest. Soon I’d emptied most of my coffee pot and done two refills of decaf.

“I’m about to quit, Amy,” Sascha said as I came past to start another pot of coffee.

“Hang in there, Sascha.”

“I can’t handle this. You need to get me some help in the mornings. We need two cash registers going on days like this.”

“If we had a place to put one, we’d already have it.”

It was true. Breadcetera was designed to be a mom-and-pop type operation, but its popularity had expanded in recent years. With the glass display counters—crucial to our point-of-sale system—taking up most of the space, we really only had room for one register. To install another one would require a major remodel, and we couldn’t spare an ounce of space from the kitchen or the lobby. Too many people sat down and enjoyed their breakfast for us to eliminate it, and those people who sat down tended to leave with a baked treat, too.

“I want a raise,” she called as I left. I didn’t pay her any mind. I knew that my aunt gave all her staff raises every three months without any of that corporate employee evaluation crap.

I returned to the kitchen and saw that Pedro had just put the bread loaves in the oven. I arched my brows at him. “Is there anything I can do to assist you?”

“Take the bagels out of the proofer and put them in the rack oven,” he said without hesitation. It didn’t matter that I was the owner’s niece, or technically in charge. Pedro knew that if I offered to help him, I meant it, no matter how menial the task.

“You’ve got it.” I rushed over to the walk-in proofer and dragged out the carts of multi-colored bagels. Breadcetera had more varieties than you could shake a stick at. I always liked the look of the bagels, from the bright red cherry to the speckled everything variety. I loved the way they smelled as they rotated through the rack oven.

As I slammed the doors shut, I saw something that caused me to gasp in shock. My Aunt Petunia, struggling to get to the manager’s office on two canes.

“Petunia, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to handle the phones for you,” she said. “You’re so busy this morning.”

She tried to hide the fact that her knees were in agony. Aunt Petunia is not a small woman, and her repaired knees needed time to heal. I wasn’t having any of it.

“No way,” I said. “Come on, let’s get you back into your chair.”

I walked her—or maybe I should say hobbled her—over to the waiting wheelchair and sat her down in it. “Isn’t Price is Right coming on soon? You know you don’t want to miss Drew Carrey.”

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