Chapter Seven
Laura signed for forty bundles of mixed flowers—roses, lilies, carnations, eucalyptus, and baby's breath—and started hauling them into the shop before Terry's truck had fully pulled away.
The morning routine was muscle memory by now: sort by type, trim stems at angles, rotate cold storage so the oldest blooms moved to the front.
Normal. Ordinary. Exactly what she needed after a sleepless night spent staring at her phone.
Henley's done.
Two words that meant a man was dead. Two words that should have horrified her. Instead, she'd felt something closer to relief—dark and complicated and nothing she wanted to examine too closely.
The bell over the door chimed.
Laura looked up, hands full of rose stems, and felt her breath catch.
Cipher walked in carrying a duffel bag and something that looked like a military radio. He moved through her shop like he belonged there—comfortable, unhurried, his eyes doing that sweep she'd noticed before. Checking exits. Counting threats.
Finding none, apparently, because his shoulders relaxed a fraction.
"Morning," he said.
"You're early."
"Couldn't sleep." He set the duffel on her back counter like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Thought I'd check on the protection detail."
"Protection detail?"
"Two brothers outside. Been there since 4 AM." He pulled a radio from the bag and started doing something technical to it. "Rotating shifts until we're sure Morrow's not planning immediate retaliation."
Laura set down the roses. "You have men watching my shop."
"I have brothers watching you." His eyes met hers. "There's a difference."
She should argue. Should point out that she hadn't asked for bodyguards, hadn't agreed to being watched, hadn't consented to any of this.
But the fear that had lived in her chest for the past week was quieter this morning. Smaller. Like someone had taken the volume knob and turned it down.
Because Henley was dead. Because men were watching. Because Cipher was standing in her shop at 6:45 AM, replacing batteries in radios like it was his job to keep her safe.
"Thank you," she said instead.
Something shifted in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Like he'd expected the argument and didn't know what to do with gratitude.
"Don't thank me yet. Morrow still has teeth."
"But fewer than he did yesterday."
"Yeah." His mouth curved slightly. "Fewer than yesterday."
Laura went back to her roses, letting the familiar work steady her hands. Trim, sort, check for damage. The rhythm was soothing, predictable—unlike everything else in her life right now.
Behind her, she heard Cipher settle into a chair, the soft clicks and beeps of whatever he was doing with the radios providing odd background music to her morning routine.
They worked in parallel silence for nearly an hour.
Laura processed the entire wholesale order—forty bundles sorted, trimmed, and stored. She pulled stock for the funeral home's standing order and started building the first of six sympathy arrangements. White roses, wired into foam bases, wrapped in cellophane with pale blue ribbon.
Cipher's radio work seemed to be done. When she glanced over, he was watching her hands.
"You're fast," he observed.
"Practice." She twisted wire around a stem, securing it to the foam. "I've made thousands of these."
"Sympathy arrangements?"
"All kinds. But sympathy pays the bills." She added another rose, adjusting the angle. "Weddings are seasonal. Birthdays are unpredictable. But people die every day."
"Morbid."
"Realistic." She reached for the eucalyptus. "When I bought this place, the previous owner told me to focus on funerals. 'Death is recession-proof,' she said. Turns out she was right."
Cipher was quiet for a moment. Then: "Show me."
Laura looked up. "Show you what?"
"How to do that." He nodded at the arrangement taking shape under her hands. "The wiring."
"You want to learn flower arrangement?"
"I want to understand what you do."
It wasn't what she'd expected. Not from a man who'd killed someone twelve hours ago. But his eyes were serious, curious—the same focused attention he'd given to the radios and the exits and everything else he deemed worth examining.
"Okay." She grabbed an extra foam base and a handful of roses. "Come here."
He crossed the shop and stood beside her—close enough that she could smell leather and something sharper underneath. Gun oil, maybe. The scent of violence she was learning to associate with safety.
"Start with the wire." She demonstrated, threading it through the base of a rose stem. "You want to go through the calyx—that's the green part where the petals connect. It gives you a secure anchor point."
Cipher took a rose and mimicked her movement. His first attempt was clumsy, the wire going too deep.
"Gentler," Laura said. "You're not trying to impale it. Just support it."
His second attempt was better. By the third rose, he had it—the wire sliding through cleanly, the stem holding steady when he released it.
"Good." She couldn't hide her surprise. "Most people take longer to get that."
"I'm good with my hands."
The words hung between them, suddenly charged with meaning neither of them had intended. Laura felt heat rise to her cheeks and focused intently on her own arrangement.
"Position the rose in the foam," she continued, her voice slightly unsteady. "Angle it toward the viewer. You want the face of the bloom visible, not buried."
Cipher followed her instructions precisely, placing each rose with careful deliberation. His hands were steady—no tremor, no hesitation. Hands that had done terrible things in the name of protection.
Hands that were currently wiring white roses into a sympathy arrangement.
"You're a quick learner," she said.
"I have to be. In my line of work, slow learners don't last long."
"What exactly is your line of work?"
He glanced at her sideways. "You really want to know?"
"I want to know who's protecting me. What you do when you're not killing debt collectors."
The bluntness of her own words surprised her. But Cipher didn't flinch—just nodded slowly, like she'd asked a fair question.
"I handle communications. Make sure the club can talk to each other without being overheard.
Sweep for bugs, trackers, monitoring software.
" He added another rose to his arrangement.
"I spent nine years doing the same thing in Special Forces.
Keeping teams connected in places where signals meant survival or compromise. "
"And now?"
"Now I do it for brothers instead of squadmates." His hands stilled on the foam. "Same skills. Different mission."
Laura studied his profile—the strong jaw, the faint scars she hadn't noticed before, the way his eyes seemed to carry weight even when his hands were occupied with flowers.
"The memorial arrangements," she said quietly. "The ones you order every month."
Cipher's fingers tightened on the stem he was holding.
"Three arrangements. Same order. Same flowers." Laura set down her own work. "You've been coming here for eight months, and you've never told me who they're for."
Silence stretched between them.
"You don't have to answer," she added. "I just—I've wondered."
"Vasquez. Wilson. Carter."
Three names, spoken like a confession.
"They were operators. My team." Cipher's voice was flat, controlled—the voice of a man who'd said these words before, maybe only to himself. "We were in a place I can't name, doing things that didn't officially happen. I sent an encrypted burst to relay our position to command."
He set down the rose. His hands weren't shaking, but something in them had changed—tension coiled beneath the stillness.
"The encryption was perfect. My encryption is always perfect. But the enemy had technology we didn't know about. They triangulated the signal. Not because I made a mistake—because they could."
"They found your team."
"They found my signal. My team was just standing next to it."
Laura's chest ached. She understood now—the monthly visits, the precise orders, the cash payments with no name on the cards.
Penance. Every arrangement was penance.
"That's why you order three."
"One for each man who died because I did my job correctly." Cipher met her eyes, and she saw something raw there—guilt that time hadn't touched, grief that lived in the marrow. "The Army said it wasn't my fault. Technology failure. Enemy capabilities. Nothing I could have controlled."
"But you don't believe that."
"I believe I sent the signal that killed them. Everything else is just words."
Laura reached out without thinking and covered his hand with hers.
He went completely still.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry that happened. And I'm sorry you carry it alone."
For a long moment, neither of them moved. His hand was warm beneath hers, rough with calluses, steady despite everything.
Then he turned his palm up and laced his fingers through hers.
"I don't carry it alone," he said quietly. "Not anymore."
The shop was silent around them—just the hum of coolers and the soft tick of the old clock above the register. Morning light streamed through the front windows, catching dust motes in the air.
Laura looked at their joined hands. At the roses waiting to be wired. At the man who'd walked into her shop to buy memorial flowers and ended up killing people to keep her safe.
"Vasquez, Wilson, and Carter," she repeated. "Three names I won't find on any official record."
"No." Cipher's thumb traced a slow circle on the back of her hand. "You won't find them anywhere. That's why I come here. So someone else knows they existed. So someone else says their names."
"Then I'll say them." Laura squeezed his hand. "Every time I make those arrangements. I'll say their names and remember they mattered."
Something cracked behind his eyes—wall coming down, armor shifting. He didn't speak, but he didn't need to.
His grip tightened on her hand.
And Laura understood, finally, why a man like Cipher had decided she was worth protecting.
Because he knew what it meant to lose something you couldn't get back. And he'd be damned if he let it happen to her.