Chapter Eight
The delivery van started on the third try.
Laura made a mental note to check the battery—another expense she couldn't afford—and pulled out of the shop's small parking lot. The morning route stretched ahead: two hotel lobby arrangements, a hospital bouquet, and a birthday centerpiece on the north side.
Normal deliveries. Normal day.
Except nothing was normal anymore.
At the first red light, Laura caught herself scanning the rearview mirror for black sedans. At the second, she noticed a motorcycle two cars back and felt her pulse spike before realizing the rider wore a regular helmet, not a club cut.
Paranoid, she told herself. You're becoming paranoid.
But paranoid people didn't have gambling debts and dead collectors in their recent history.
The Marriott on Hay Street was her first stop. Laura parked in the loading zone and checked the van's undercarriage before going inside—a new habit, taught by a man who assumed every vehicle was compromised until proven otherwise.
Nothing. Clean.
She delivered the lobby arrangement to a bored front desk clerk who barely looked up from his phone. Back to the van. Check the undercarriage again.
Still clean.
The Holiday Inn on Bragg Boulevard took the second arrangement—tropical flowers for a conference room, bright and impersonal. Laura positioned the display, adjusted a bird of paradise that had shifted during transport, and headed back outside.
Check the van.
Clean.
She was starting to feel ridiculous. Crawling around parking lots in her work apron, peering at axles and wheel wells like she knew what she was looking for.
But Cipher had shown her exactly where to look, exactly what a tracker felt like, exactly how to spot the magnetic housing against dark metal.
His voice in her head: They'll try again. Count on it.
So she checked. Every stop. Every time.
The hospital was her third delivery—a room bouquet for a patient in the veterans' wing. Sunflowers, bright and cheerful, the kind of flowers that said get well soon even when everyone knew better.
Laura found the room on the fourth floor: 412B, semi-private with the curtain drawn between beds. The patient on the near side was asleep, oxygen tubes trailing to a machine that beeped softly. The patient on the far side—her delivery—was awake and watching her approach.
He was old. Maybe eighty, maybe older. The kind of weathered face that had seen decades of sun and hard work and the particular strain of military service. Dog tags hung around his neck, glinting against a faded hospital gown.
"You're the flower girl," he said. His voice was rough, sandpaper on wood.
"Laura Simmons. From Petals & Stems." She set the sunflowers on his bedside table. "Someone wanted you to have these."
The old man studied the arrangement with rheumy eyes. Something softened in his expression.
"Margaret used to grow sunflowers."
"Your wife?"
"Fifty-three years." He touched a petal with trembling fingers. "Passed two winters ago. I told her I'd be right behind her, but..." A dry laugh. "Here I am. Still hanging on."
Laura pulled the visitor's chair closer to the bed. "Tell me about Margaret's sunflowers."
She had other deliveries. A schedule to keep. Bills waiting at the shop.
But the old man was alone in a hospital room, touching flower petals like they were made of memory, and Laura had learned long ago that some moments mattered more than efficiency.
His name was Harold. He'd served in Vietnam—"Two tours, came back with pieces missing that don't show on the outside.
" Margaret had been his high school sweetheart.
They'd raised three kids in a little house on the edge of Fayetteville, the kind with a big backyard where she grew vegetables and flowers in equal measure.
"Sunflowers were her favorite," Harold said. "Planted them along the back fence every spring. Said they reminded her that good things grow toward the light."
"That's beautiful."
"She was beautiful." His eyes were wet now. "These flowers—they're from my grandson. He lives in California, can't make it out to visit. Sends flowers instead."
"He chose well."
"He remembered what his grandmother loved." Harold looked at Laura, really looked, like he was seeing something beyond her face. "You're good at this. The flowers, but also... the listening."
"People tell me things." Laura smiled. "I think it's the flowers. They make people remember."
"What do you remember? When you work with them?"
The question caught her off guard.
"My grandmother," she said after a moment. "She had a garden. Nothing fancy—just a patch of yard behind her apartment. But she grew the most incredible roses. Deep red, the color of wine. She taught me that patience was the only secret to growing anything."
"Smart woman."
"She was." Laura stood, adjusting the sunflowers one final time. "I should let you rest."
"Before you go—" Harold caught her wrist with surprising strength. "Whatever you're carrying, girl. Whatever's got those shadows under your eyes. Don't let it break you."
Laura stared at him.
"I've seen that look before," Harold continued. "Saw it in the mirror for twenty years after I came home. The look of someone fighting a war nobody else can see." His grip loosened. "But you're still here. Still bringing flowers. That means you're winning."
Her throat tightened. "Thank you, Harold."
"Come back and see me. If you get a chance."
"I will."
She didn't know if it was a promise she could keep. But she meant it when she said it.
The birthday centerpiece went to a house on the north side—cheerful yellow roses for someone's grandmother turning eighty.
Laura rang the doorbell, handed over the arrangement to a middle-aged woman who gushed about how beautiful it was, and drove back to the shop with Harold's words echoing in her head.
Whatever you're carrying. Don't let it break you.
The shop was quiet when she returned. No customers browsing. No deliveries waiting. Just the hum of coolers and the soft country music she kept playing because silence felt too heavy.
Laura locked the door behind her and headed for the walk-in cooler.
Organization was her therapy. When life felt chaotic, she reorganized. When problems seemed insurmountable, she alphabetized, categorized, and color-coded until her brain stopped screaming.
Today, the cooler needed attention.
She started with the funeral home's Saturday delivery—three arrangements that needed to be front and center, easily accessible when the pickup driver arrived.
Then the wedding stock for next weekend's ceremony—white roses and eucalyptus, safely stored in the back where they'd stay fresh until Friday's prep work.
Loose stems went into the discount bucket by the front door. Damaged blooms went into the compost bin. Everything else was rotated, repositioned, and relabeled with fresh date tags.
By the time she finished, two hours had passed and her back ached from bending.
But the cooler was perfect. Orderly. Under control.
Unlike everything else.
Laura retreated to the register and pulled out her invoices. Thursday was bookkeeping day—the day she reconciled what came in versus what went out and tried not to cry at the difference.
The numbers weren't kind.
Revenue for the week: $2,847. Solid, actually. Better than average.
Expenses: wholesale flowers ($1,200), utilities ($340), van maintenance ($180), rent ($800), insurance ($215), miscellaneous supplies ($78).
Total expenses: $2,813.
Profit: $34.
Laura stared at the number.
Thirty-four dollars. For a week of eighteen-hour days, countless deliveries, and arrangements that took years of skill to create. Thirty-four dollars to show for it.
And that was a good week.
She ran the numbers again, hoping she'd made a mistake. Then again, with growing despair.
The shop cleared less than three hundred dollars a month after expenses. Some months, less than two hundred. Some months—the slow ones between wedding season and funeral spikes—she didn't clear anything at all.
Without Morrow's debt, she could survive. Barely. The kind of survival that meant no savings, no cushion, no margin for error.
With Morrow's debt—forty thousand dollars, plus whatever interest had accumulated since her father's death—survival wasn't possible. Not through legitimate means. Not through any amount of hard work or clever bookkeeping.
The numbers didn't lie. They never did.
Laura closed her eyes and pressed her palms flat against the register counter.
She'd built this shop from nothing. Saved for five years as a delivery driver, bought the business when the previous owner retired, poured every ounce of herself into making it work. Petals & Stems was her proof that she could create something of her own. Something that lasted.
And now her dead father's gambling addiction was going to take it all away.
Unless Cipher and his brothers could stop it.
Unless violence really was the answer.
Laura opened her eyes and looked around her shop. The coolers humming. The ribbon racks neatly organized. The arrangements waiting for customers who might or might not come.
Three hundred dollars a month. That was her empire. Her legacy. Her everything.
It wasn't much.
But it was hers.
And she'd be damned if she let anyone take it without a fight.