Chapter 3

The phone rang four times before a gravelly, distracted voice answered.

"Oakhaven. If this is about the late-season squash blight, call the extension on the bulletin."

"Elias," I said.

A pause on the other end.

The background noise of a packing shed—the hollow clatter of wooden crates and the distant hum of a tractor—dropped away.

"Sienna?" Elias asked, his tone shifting from routine weariness to sharp, guarded surprise.

"It's been almost two years. Last I heard, you and your brother had moved on to bigger suppliers."

"Things change," I said, keeping my voice flat.

"I'm running a small pop-up next Tuesday. I need produce—heirloom squash, peppers, whatever you have that didn't make the cut. I can pay cash."

Elias didn't say yes.

I heard the scuff of a boot against packed dirt on his end, followed by a heavy sigh.

"Sienna, I run a farm, not a charity. If my truck shows up at your event, Marcus will hear about it before I get back to the farm. We rely on that volume to keep things running."

"I'm not asking you to risk the account, Elias," I said, leaning my forehead against the cold steering wheel.

"And I'm not asking for a favor. I know you always have surplus that doesn't fit the uniform standards. The stuff you usually discount or clear out."

Another silence, longer this time.

"Drive out to the packing shed around four this afternoon," Elias muttered, his voice neither warm nor hostile.

"Come through the back gate so you don't block the lane. Bring cash. I've got some B-grade peppers and leftover blue corn in the back shed that Marcus's buyers wouldn't look twice at. If you want to sort through them yourself and take them off my hands, we can talk price."

"I'll be there at four," I said.

"And Sienna?" Elias added before I could hang up.

"You stopped coming by."

"Marcus found somebody cheaper," I said.

Elias was quiet for a second.

"That what he told you?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

The line went dead.

The click echoed in the quiet car, leaving a small, sharp sting behind.

I stared at the phone screen for a moment, letting the weight of it settle, before putting the car in drive and heading out toward the county highway.

By four o'clock, the sun was dipping low over the Oakhaven fields, casting long, bruised shadows across the gravel lot.

I parked my sedan near the back gate, out of sight of the main loading bay.

Elias was waiting by the sliding door of a secondary shed, wiping his hands on a burlap rag.

He didn't offer a greeting.

He just pointed a thumb toward the dim interior.

"In the back. Leftover crates from the Tuesday harvest. They're bruised, uneven, and half of them are misshapen, but the flavor is right," Elias said, tossing the rag onto a workbench.

"Cash up front. Twenty dollars a crate, take what fits in your car."

I walked into the cool, damp dark of the shed.

The air smelled of damp earth, sweet decay, and sharp green capsicum.

I pulled a pair of cheap, rubber-dipped work gloves from my back pocket and slipped them on.

The left thumb was already worn through, but it would have to do.

There were no pristine, uniformly waxed peppers here.

The crates were filled with heirloom varieties twisted into odd shapes, speckled with sun-scars, and varying wildly in size.

The blue corn was caked in dried husks and dust.

I didn't hesitate.

I went to work.

Even with the gloves, the cold moisture from the damp wood soaked through.

When a stray edge of a wooden crate caught the back of my hand, it scraped right over my healing oil burn, sending a sharp, familiar jolt of pain up my wrist.

I winced, shook it off, and kept going.

I lifted, sorted, and inspected every single pepper, separating the usable yield from the rot, packing them tightly into plastic bins I'd scavenged from my trunk.

By the time I carried the last crate out to my car, my palms were stained green and yellow, my lower back ached with a deep, grinding fatigue, and my pants were streaked with dry mud from the shed floor.

I popped the trunk and squeezed the boxes in.

They didn't fit neatly; I had to fold down the back passenger seat and wedge a crate of blue corn awkwardly against the door frame.

The sedan immediately filled with a heavy, earthy scent of raw capsicum and dust.

Elias walked out, leaning against the doorframe of the shed, watching me slam the trunk shut.

He handed me my change from a worn leather wallet, counting it out in exact bills.

No discount.

No freebies.

"Driving back into the city with all that?" Elias asked, eyeing my overloaded, dusty sedan.

"I am," I said, wiping a streak of dirt off my forehead with the back of my forearm.

"Good luck with your pop-up, Sienna," he said, and for the first time, there was a faint, genuine respect in his voice.

"Thanks, Elias."

I got into the car, turned the ignition, and drove back toward the city limits as the evening traffic began to clog the highway.

My arms were sore, my hands throbbed where the oil burn had rubbed raw, and my car smelled like an agricultural warehouse.

But as I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the crates of misshapen, beautiful peppers piled high in the back seat, a strange, quiet calm settled over my chest.

It wasn't a multi-thousand-dollar supply chain.

It was just thirty pounds of peppers, a sack of dusty corn, and a trunk full of dirt.

My phone buzzed on the passenger seat.

I glanced down at the screen.

A text from Maya.

Maya: Are we actually doing Tuesday?

I looked at the rearview mirror, at the crates of unwashed produce.

Sienna: Yes.

Maya: How many?

Sienna: Thirty.

A brief pause.

Maya: Please tell me you have plates.

I stared at the screen.

I didn't.

I didn't have plates, I didn't have a commercial grinder, and I didn't have a team.

I locked my phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat.

When I pulled into my apartment complex, I hauled the first heavy crate up the concrete stairs, kicked my door open, and set it down on the kitchen counter.

I reached for my notebook, flipping to the rough menu draft I'd sketched out for Tuesday.

I needed to grind the blue corn for the tortillas.

I needed to mill the dry kernels down to a fine, uniform flour.

Then my hand froze over the page.

I stood there in the quiet apartment, looking down at the unground corn.

I had a small, cheap food processor in my pantry—the kind meant for chopping onions or making small batches of salsa.

It could handle a cup at a time, maybe two if I forced the motor.

But trying to process thirty portions of fresh masa in a residential kitchen appliance would burn out the motor before I finished the first crate.

The heavy-duty stone mill and industrial grain-crusher weren't here.

They were bolted to the stainless-steel prep counters of the commissary kitchen—the ones Marcus controlled.

I stood in the dim kitchen, the smell of farm dust thick around me.

I had the ingredients.

But my home setup couldn't scale to a thirty-seat service.

I wiped my dirty hands on a dishtowel, pulled out my phone, and opened my contacts.

I scrolled past the suppliers, past the old festival organizers, and stopped on a name I hadn't dialed in two years.

Mateo.

Hearth & Grain.

I stared at his number, remembering the last time we spoke—right after Marcus restructured the business and quietly cut ties with every independent artisan baker in the district, leaving me to handle the fallout without a word of explanation.

My thumb hovered over the screen.

It was late, and I had no right to ask him for a favor.

I pressed call.