Chapter 1 - Thirty-Six Long-Stemmed Consequences
The rain in Chicago always made the cut-flower business feel heavier than it actually was. By five in the afternoon, the humidity from Michigan Avenue had seeped through the ill-fitted window frames of Sullivan’s Flowers, filling the narrow shop with the thick, wet scent of bruised mint, peat moss, and green stems cut on a forty-five-degree bias.
Maggie Sullivan was thirty-one, wore canvas aprons with four distinct pockets, and knew precisely how much pressure a stem could take before the water-vascular system collapsed. She was currently holding a heavy pair of Japanese pruning shears in her right hand, her thumb calloused from six years of trimming thorns off high-grade South American imports.
The man standing on the other side of her oak counter did not look like he belonged near wet stems.
Vincent Moretti was six-foot-two, thirty-eight years old, and wore a charcoal three-piece suit cut from wool so heavy it barely creaked when he shifted his weight. His hair was dark, trimmed sharp against his temples, and his face possessed the cold, stationary symmetry of a marble bust commissioned by someone who had survived three separate municipal indictments.
In the River North neighborhood, people referred to him as the head of the Moretti Holdings Group. In the rest of the city, particularly in the dark-paneled back rooms of the Fifth Ward, they simply called him Vincent, and they lowered their eyes when he walked into the room.
His phone, resting on the glass top of the display counter, hummed twice on vibrate.
Vincent picked it up, swiped the screen with a thumb that bore a faint white scar across the knuckle, and held it to his ear.
"I'm at the shop now, Clara," he said. His voice was a low, resonant baritone, clipped at the edges—the voice of a man who rarely had to repeat a command. "The arrangement is almost finished. I’ll be at the restaurant by six."
A woman’s voice came through the speaker. It was loud, crisp, and high-pitched enough to slice through the quiet hum of the floral refrigeration unit behind the counter.
"Don't send the roses, Vincent. We're finished."
Maggie stopped wrapping the bouquet.
The tissue paper—a soft, unbleached brown kraft paper—crinkled once under her knuckles and then went completely still.
"Clara," Vincent said. His expression didn't change. Not a single muscle around his eyes twitched. "You're on speaker in a public establishment."
"I don't care where you are," the voice shot back, sharp as a broken vase. "I called your house three times. Your man Daniel told me you were getting flowers. Don't bother. I’m packing my bags, I’m taking the Mercedes, and I’m leaving for Miami with Gregory before your dinner reservation starts. Don't call me again."
The line went dead with a dry, metallic click.
For several seconds, the only sound in Sullivan’s Flowers was the low, rhythmic hum of the compressor in the walk-in cooler at the back of the shop.
Maggie stayed perfectly still. She kept her eyes focused on the lower leaves of a white hydrangea sitting in a bucket near her boots.
Vincent slowly lowered his phone. He set it face-down on the glass counter.
Maggie looked at Vincent.
Vincent looked at the roses.
Thirty-six of them.
They were Grand Prix Ecuadorians—deep, velvety crimson, four inches across the bloom, long-stemmed, completely stripped of lower thorns, and exceedingly expensive. Maggie had personally called her broker in Miami three days ago to ensure the shipment arrived without frost damage.
And they were, apparently, no longer needed.
"I'm sorry," Maggie said quietly.
Vincent gave a single, rigid nod. His dark eyes remained fixed on the bundle of red petals sitting on the green cutting mat between them. His hands slid into his trouser pockets, pulling his coat back just enough to reveal the subtle, tailored bulge of a shoulder holster hidden against his ribcage.
Maggie glanced down at the paper receipt sitting beside the brass register.
Sympathy was a fine human emotion. She had felt it plenty of times—when old Mr. Henderson ordered wreaths for his wife of fifty years, or when frantic nineteen-year-old college kids came in trying to buy single carnations with loose quarters.
But sympathy was one thing.
Business was another.
The wholesale bill for thirty-six Ecuadorian Grand Prix roses, freight charges included, was four hundred and twelve dollars.
Maggie picked up the receipt. She slid it smoothly across the glass counter, stopping it precisely three inches from his phone.
"You still have to pay for the roses."
Vincent slowly raised his eyes.
They were dark brown, almost black under the warm track lighting of the shop, shadowed by heavy brows and a faint line between his eyes that looked like it had been carved with a chisel. He looked at her the way a man might look at an unfamiliar species of insect that had just dropped out of a light fixture onto his dinner plate.
For one long, highly uncomfortable second, Maggie wondered whether she had finally crossed a line with a man whose surname made city council members reschedule their zoning meetings.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't a polite laugh. It wasn't the careful, practiced chuckle he probably used at political fundraisers or sit-down dinners in Little Italy.
It escaped him like something heavy had cracked under sudden pressure—a sharp, genuine, gravelly sound that rumbled from the middle of his chest and cut through the artificial quiet of the room.
Maggie allowed her shoulders to drop half an inch. She relaxed her hold on the Japanese shears.
"Good," she said.
His amusement faded slightly, replaced by a sudden, sharp curiosity. "Good?"
"You looked like you were deciding whether to disappear or murder the flowers," she said calmly, leaning her forearms against the wood edge of the counter.
One of his dark eyebrows rose. "The flowers are innocent."
"Exactly. I was worried about them."
Vincent pulled a leather wallet from his inner coat pocket, extracted five hundred-dollar bills without counting them, and laid them neatly beside the receipt.
He picked up the enormous, heavy bundle of thirty-six long-stemmed roses. The kraft paper rustled loudly under his arm. He stood there in his three-piece suit, holding four hundred dollars' worth of romantic floral architecture, looking utterly absurd against the backdrop of potted ferns and galvanized zinc buckets.
"What am I supposed to do with them?" he asked.
"Your problem."
Maggie held his gaze for three seconds. The rain rattled against the front display window, heavy and persistent.
"Fine," Maggie sighed, reaching for a spray bottle of water to mist a tray of succulents. "Take them to a nursing home."
Vincent studied her, his hand tightening slightly on the stems. "A nursing home."
"There's St. Martha's three blocks down on Grand," she said, without looking up from her succulents. "There are probably women over seventy in there who haven't received flowers in twenty years. They’ll survive your heartbreak."
May you like
Vincent didn't answer. He stared at her for a long moment—taking in the mud smudge on her canvas apron, the silver ring on her thumb, and the total absence of panic in her grey eyes.
Then he turned, pushing the shop door open. The brass bell above the frame gave a bright, cheery ring as the damp evening wind swept inside, bringing with it the smell of cold asphalt and city bus diesel.
