Page 1 of Wrangled By the Minotaur
Chapter 1
The Monster Next Door
Frankie
The foreclosure notice has beenstaring at me from the refrigerator for three days now, pinned under Grandma’s cheerful bee magnet like a cruel joke.
Three months to save the farm, or lose everything she built over sixty years.
Forty-three thousand dollars. I might as well need forty-three million.
I reach for the jar of clover honey I left out yesterday, unscrewing the lid with shaking hands. Stress eating honey straight from the jar probably isn’t the best reaction to impending financial ruin, but honestly? I’m fresh out of mature ideas.
The honey tastes like sunshine and better times, which only makes the knot in my stomach tighten. This kitchen still smells like Grandma’s lavender soap and the cinnamon rolls she’d bake every Sunday. Her reading glasses sit on the windowsillnext to a collection of seed packets she never got to plant, and sometimes I catch myself listening for her footsteps on the creaky floorboards upstairs.
God, what would she think of me now? Her granddaughter, failing to figure out how to make a profit from two-hundred thousand bees.
I traded my steady job at the office for this. I thought I could honor Grandma’s memory by keeping her apiaries running. Turns out there’s a pretty significant difference between romanticizing the simple life and actually living it.
The learning curve has been… steep. And expensive. And apparently, I’m failing spectacularly.
I glance at Grandma Rose’s photo on the counter. It’s the one where she’s wearing her faded bee suit and grinning like she knows a secret the rest of the world hasn’t figured out yet. She started Baker Family Apiaries with two hives and a dream back in 1963. Built it into one of the most respected honey operations in the Santa Ynez Valley through sheer stubbornness and an uncanny ability to think like a bee.
And she was healthy right up until her last year. She fought so hard to keep things running even while the medical bills piled up, mortgaging everything to avoid selling the farm. She was fiercely independent right to the end, not even letting me know she needed help. I think she thought she’d bounce back. Instead, she passed peacefully one night, and the farm became mine.
I could have sold it and stuck with my stable job in the city, but there was no way I’d let her legacy end just like that.
I thought I could carry the torch, pay off everything in a reasonable time, and keep the business going.
But even after being at this for a year, I still haven’t been able to catch up on the debt.
“I wish you were here, Grandma,” I mutter, screwing the lid back on the honey jar. “You’d know exactly what to do.”
I hold my breath, waiting, as if Grandma Rose might whisper some sage advice from beyond, tell me exactly how to fix this mess. But the kitchen stays silent except for the tick of the old wall clock and the distant hum of my hives waking up with the sunrise.
I press my lips together and force the loneliness back down where it belongs, buried deep enough that it can’t paralyze me. Wallowing in how utterly alone I am in this mess won’t make the foreclosure notice disappear or bring Grandma back to fix everything I’ve managed to break.
There’s work to do.
I grab my inspection tools from the mudroom: hive tool, smoker, and the worn leather gloves that still smell faintly of Grandma’s hand cream. I then step outside into the kind of California morning that makes you understand why people pay ridiculous amounts of money to live here.
The air is crisp and sweet, carrying the scent of wildflowers and that particular honey-tinged perfume that means my girls have been busy overnight.
The Santa Ynez Valley stretches out before me in rolling hills dotted with ancient oak trees, their branches heavy with vines catching the early light like nature’s own chandelier. Wildflower meadows paint the landscape in patches of purple lupine and golden poppies, and somewhere in the distance, I hear the gentle lowing of cattle from a neighboring ranch.
This is why I gave up my old life. This view, this peace, the feeling that I’m part of something bigger than quarterly reports and client presentations.
Too bad serenity doesn’t pay the mortgage.
My hives sit in neat rows along the eastern edge of the property, white wooden boxes that house some of the hardest-working ladies in California. Each colony contains about fifty thousand bees during peak season, and together they should be producing enough honey to keep me afloat financially. “Should” being the operative phrase.
I light my smoker, stuffing it with dried pine needles and cotton scraps until it produces a steady stream of cool, white smoke that keeps the bees calm during inspections. The familiar ritual helps calm my nerves as I work my way down the line, checking each hive for signs of disease, adequate food stores, and the general health of the colonies.
Everything looks good until I reach the far end of my property, where my most productive hive should be humming with activity. Instead, I’m staring at a half-empty hive stand and a few confused stragglers circling the abandoned boxes.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, my heart sinking. “Where did you go?”
Swarming is natural bee behavior; when a colony gets too crowded, the old queen takes about half the workers to find a new home while a new queen takes over the original hive. It’s actually a sign of a healthy, thriving colony. It’s also a beekeeper’s nightmare when you’re already struggling financially and can’t afford to lose a single productive hive.
