The Golden Bond

Chapter 42

The last one to run into the bakery was Mr. Tom. Before he could join in with what was going on, he had to fight his way through the wildly gesticulating Julian and Bernard with his stone face and posture. "So what happened?" he asked in a soft but slightly nervous voice.

"Sofia called." Yvette's whole body jerked visibly when she said her name. She was still trembling. "Don't ask me to repeat what she told me." The baker's daughter hid her face in her hands, breathing roughly in order to suppress tears. She had a sensitive nature and this type of act from her best friend, well... probably best friend really unsettled her. Julian hugged her without saying anything. Yvette wasn't able to repeat it, so her father took the floor.

"She's supposed to be a spy. We'll never see her again, we should close down her shop and stop searching for her, otherwise she'll kill us." Adrian cackled at the end of the sentence. "I don't believe a word she said." His sarcasm floated around the room like the ever-present icing sugar.

Bernard just stood there in silence.

Mr. Tom shook his head. "That is impossible. We know our Sofie." His kind heart refused to believe something so terrible.

After a period of silence, the shrewd jeweller finally spoke up, too. "Everybody think for a moment. Her parents are dead, her grandparents too. She doesn't have strict working hours and sometimes Wanda is here for a whole week. Sometimes we didn't hear about her for a couple of days. Then that weird man suddenly appeared out of nowhere and she went to Rome with him without any objections. She avoided men quite obviously and then this? Doesn't it seem at all suspicious to you, not even a little, in this situation?!"

"Bernard, are you nuts?!" Julian asked him harshly.

The jeweller gave him an ugly stare.

"Come on, let's all calm down," Mr. Tom tried to calm the situation.

Then Adrian spoke. "The circumstances look odd and although I think that Bernard said what he said thanks to his skilled observant eye, let's all ask ourselves – would Sofia really do it? Could she bring herself to do it? If yes, then she's an Oscar winning actress in my eyes because of the way she's always behaved with me. She couldn't deny that not with ten phone calls and five guys coming to beat me up and scare us off."

All the others remained silent for a moment. Insecurity was getting the better of them and none of them knew what the truth was any more, but their intuition was clear.

"Bernard," the baker broke the silence, "call off the advocate as she requested us to do, but ask him to keep an eye on things from a distance and report anything new to us. Also please, keep buying that Italian newspaper you bought last time, every day. We must wait for a while."

Bernard nodded silently, then turned around and without saying a word walked off to his luxurious shop. Julian and Mr. Tom followed him, talking excitedly. Only Yvette was still sitting quietly in the corner and couldn't get over it.

"Come on, sweetie, everything will turn out fine, don't worry," her father comforted her. When he smiled at her, she stood up from her chair and snuggled up in his arms. He held her tightly in his bear hug and only let go when another of that day's customers came in.