Chapter Four
Her father's house smelled like dust and regret.
Laura stood in the doorway of the small ranch on the outskirts of Fayetteville, breathing in the stale air of a home that hadn't been lived in for six months. She'd meant to sell it—had even talked to a realtor about listing—but somehow she kept putting it off.
Now she understood why.
Some part of her had known there was more to find.
She started in the obvious places. His desk in the spare bedroom, cluttered with old bills and yellowing newspapers he'd never thrown away. The filing cabinet in the closet, stuffed with tax returns from the nineties and instruction manuals for appliances he no longer owned.
Nothing about gambling. Nothing about debts. Nothing that explained how a retired electrician had managed to owe forty thousand dollars to a man who broke bones for a living.
Laura moved to the kitchen, then the bedroom, then the hall closet where her father had kept Christmas decorations and boxes of her mother's things. Her mother had died when Laura was twelve—cancer, slow and terrible—and her father had never remarried, never even dated.
Too broken, he'd always said. Your mother was the only one for me.
Laura had believed him. Had admired him for it, even. The loyal widower, keeping his wife's memory alive in a house full of her photographs.
What a joke.
The garage was her last stop.
Her father's workbench still held his tools, organized with the precision of a man who'd spent forty years working with his hands. Wrenches hung on pegboard hooks. Screwdrivers stood in labeled holders. Everything in its place, just like he'd always insisted.
Laura ran her fingers along the workbench, remembering weekends as a kid when she'd handed him tools and watched him fix things. He'd been good at fixing things. Cars, appliances, broken cabinet hinges—if it could be repaired, her father could repair it.
Everything except himself, apparently.
She almost missed the box.
It was shoved behind a stack of paint cans in the corner, half-hidden under a drop cloth that had probably been there for years. Metal, about the size of a shoebox, with a combination lock rusted from humidity.
Laura pulled it out and set it on the workbench.
The lock didn't open to her birthday, her mother's birthday, or their anniversary. She tried random combinations for five frustrating minutes before grabbing a hammer from the pegboard and smashing the lock off with three hard swings.
The lid popped open.
Inside: hell.
IOUs written on bar napkins and scraps of paper. Betting slips from horse tracks and sports games. A pocket notebook filled with dates, amounts, and cryptic notations—Eagles +7, Under 42.5, Parlay 3-team.
And at the bottom, a single sheet of white paper with handwriting that wasn't her father's.
Thomas Simmons guarantees the below-listed debts with the deed to property located at 244 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC, currently operating as Petals & Stems flower shop. Total owed: $40,000. Failure to repay will result in transfer of property to Vincent Morrow.
No signature from her father. Just initials—TS—scrawled at the bottom in handwriting she recognized from a lifetime of birthday cards and permission slips.
Laura's hands started shaking.
He'd bet her shop.
Her father—the man who'd cried at her grand opening, who'd sent flowers to himself just so she'd have a sale her first week, who'd told everyone in his bowling league that his daughter was a real businesswoman now—had used her shop as collateral for his gambling debts.
Had he planned to tell her? Had he thought he'd win it back before she found out?
Or had he just not cared?
Laura photographed every document with shaking hands. The IOUs. The betting slips. The notebook. The handwritten note with Morrow's name and her shop's address.
Evidence. Proof. Ammunition.
She didn't know what she'd do with it yet. But she knew she needed it.
The originals went back in the metal box, which she carried to her delivery van and locked in the cargo area. Safer than the house. Safer than anywhere, probably, now that she knew the kind of man her father had really been.
The drive back to Fayetteville blurred past her window. Carolina pines and strip malls and the distant roar of C-130s banking toward Fort Liberty's drop zones. Laura barely registered any of it.
He bet my shop.
The words kept looping through her head, a broken record of betrayal she couldn't turn off.
He bet everything I built and never told me.
The funeral sprays were due Tuesday morning.
Laura stood at her workstation in the back of the shop, surrounded by white chrysanthemums and green filler, her hands moving through the motions of arrangement without conscious thought. Wire the stems. Position the blooms. Fill the gaps. Check the balance.
She'd been doing this for five years. Longer, if you counted the delivery driver days when the previous owner had let her help with simple arrangements during slow afternoons. Building something from stems and wire and foam was as natural to her as breathing.
Today it felt like drowning.
He bet my shop.
The first spray took shape under her hands—traditional oval, white flowers cascading downward, the kind of arrangement that said we're sorry for your loss without any actual words. Laura added ribbon and checked it against the order form.
Mr. and Mrs. Patterson. Deeply missed.
She started on the second spray.
He knew I'd inherit his debts. He knew they'd come for me.
Wire. Position. Fill. Check.
Did he think I could handle it? Or did he just not think at all?
The second spray joined the first in the cooler. Laura pulled more chrysanthemums for the third.
Forty thousand dollars. My shop as collateral. And he never said a word.
Her hands faltered. A stem snapped in her grip.
Laura stared at the broken flower, watching green sap ooze from the wound. Something cracked in her chest—grief and rage and betrayal all tangled together in a knot she couldn't untie.
She threw the broken stem in the trash and grabbed a fresh one.
Keep working. Keep moving. Fall apart later.
The third spray came together faster than the first two, her hands finding their rhythm again.
When she finished, she had three identical arrangements ready for Tuesday's service.
Someone's grandmother, probably. Someone's beloved mother.
Someone who'd left behind people who actually mourned them instead of debts and secrets and lies.
Laura cleaned her workstation with mechanical precision.
Then she walked to the register and pulled out the card Cipher had left.
Plain white. Black numbers. Nothing else.
She'd been staring at it off and on since yesterday, turning it over in her fingers like it might reveal something more. A name, maybe. An explanation for why a biker she barely knew was suddenly invested in her survival.
Because some things are worth protecting.
His words echoed in her head. She still didn't know what he meant by them. Didn't know what she was to him, or what he expected in return.
But she knew one thing: she had proof now. Proof of what her father had promised. Proof that Morrow's claim wasn't just threats and intimidation—there was paper, however informal, backing it up.
Cipher needed to see this.
Laura picked up the shop's landline and dialed the number on the card.
It rang twice before a voice answered. "Yeah."
Deep. Clipped. The same voice that had told her to lock up early, that had removed a tracker from her van, that had looked at her like she was worth saving.
"It's Laura." She gripped the phone tighter. "Laura Simmons. From the flower shop."
A pause. Then: "I know who you are. What happened?"
"I went to my father's house. Found a box he'd hidden in the garage."
"What was in it?"
"Everything." Laura closed her eyes. "Betting slips. IOUs. And a note—handwritten, not typed—from Morrow. It says my father guaranteed his debts with my shop's deed."
Silence on the other end of the line.
"He signed it," Laura continued. "His initials, at least. I photographed everything. The originals are locked in my van."
More silence. She could almost hear him thinking, processing, calculating.
"Where are you now?"
"At the shop."
"Stay there. Don't leave until I get there. Don't let anyone in you don't recognize."
"Cipher—"
"I mean it, Laura." His voice hardened. "Morrow's going to know you found those documents. Whether he's watching the house or has someone inside—he'll know. And he's going to escalate."
A chill ran down her spine.
"How long until you get here?"
"Twenty minutes. Lock the door. Keep the lights on. If anyone approaches before I arrive, you call me back immediately."
"Okay."
"Laura."
"What?"
Another pause. When he spoke again, his voice was different. Softer, somehow, despite the steel underneath.
"You did good. Finding those documents, photographing them, keeping the originals safe. That took guts."
The praise hit her harder than it should have. Her eyes stung.
"I just wanted to know the truth."
"Now you know. And now we can use it."
The line went dead.
Laura set down the phone and looked around her shop. The coolers humming. The displays waiting for customers who might never come. The funeral sprays in the back, ready for someone else's grief.
Her father had bet all of this. Every stem, every ribbon, every hand-painted sign she'd made during those first desperate months when she wasn't sure the business would survive.
He'd bet it and lost, and now she was paying the price.
But she wasn't paying alone anymore.
Laura walked to the front door, turned the lock, and waited for the sound of a motorcycle engine.