Chapter 5 - Poppy
I don't remember the walk home.
One moment I'm standing in the flower market with his business card burning through the fabric of my sweater, and the next I'm at my front door, fumbling with keys I don't remember taking out.
My arms are empty—the flowers, the roses, and greenery, and everything I spent an hour selecting—I must have dropped them somewhere.
Left them on the street. Abandoned them in my panic to get away.
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters except getting inside, getting the door closed, getting something solid between me and the rest of the world.
The lock clicks. The door opens. I stumble inside and slam it behind me, throwing the deadbolt, the chain, pressing my back against the wood like I could hold it shut with my body if he tried to come through.
He's not coming through. He doesn't need to. He's already proven he can get inside whenever he wants.
But the locks make me feel better, even though they shouldn't. Even though they're useless.
I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The business card is still in my pocket. I can feel it against my chest, that heavy cream stock, those embossed letters.
Gabriel Ambrose.
He touched me. His fingers brushed mine when he handed me the roses. His hand swallowed mine when I shook it, his grip firm and warm, his pulse steady while mine raced like a hunted animal's.
He touched me, and I let him. I stood there and smiled and said nice to meet you to the man I watched kill someone five days ago.
What else could I have done?
Screamed? Called for help? Pointed at him and shouted murderer in the middle of a crowded market?
No one would have believed me. They would have seen what everyone sees when they look at Gabriel Ambrose—the philanthropist, the patron of the arts, the man who funds children's hospitals and literacy programs and domestic violence shelters.
They would have seen my wild eyes and shaking hands and thought crazy woman, stay away.
He knows this. He's counting on it.
That's why he approached me in public. That's why he was so warm, so polite, so perfectly charming. He wanted me to understand that he can stand right in front of me, close enough to touch, and there's nothing I can do about it.
I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of each other, Poppy Rivers.
His voice echoes in my head, smooth and rich and terrifying. The way he said my name. Like he was tasting it. Like it belonged to him.
I pull the card from my pocket and stare at it.
Just his name and a phone number. No title, no company, no address. As if everyone who receives this card already knows who he is, what he does, how much power he holds.
I should tear it up. Burn it. Throw it away and pretend this never happened.
Instead, I set it on the floor beside me, wrap my arms around my knees, and try to remember how to breathe.
The morning passes in fragments. At some point, I get up from the floor. At some point, I make it to the couch, though I don't remember walking there. The dahlia is still on my kitchen table, dark petals gleaming in the gray light from the window, a silent accusation.
I like what you've done with the flowers.
He knew. When he mentioned the dahlias at the market, when he said they were perfect, he was telling me he knew. That he left the flower and watched me find it and saw me bring it inside.
He's been watching this whole time.
The thought should make me sick. It does make me sick—there's a constant nausea churning in my stomach, a taste like copper at the back of my throat. But underneath the sickness, there's something else. Something I don't want to name.
When I brought the dahlia inside, when I put it in water instead of throwing it away, what was I thinking? What part of me decided to keep a gift from a murderer?
I tell myself I wasn't thinking. That I was in shock, traumatized, not acting rationally. That's true, as far as it goes.
But it's not the whole truth.
The whole truth is darker. More shameful.
Some part of me wanted to keep it. Some part of me looked at that perfect black bloom and felt something other than fear.
Seen. I felt seen.
It's sick. I'm sick. There's something wrong with me, something broken, something that responds to a predator's attention like a flower turning toward poisoned light.
I curl up on the couch and close my eyes and try not to think about anything at all.
My phone buzzes. A text from Bea.
Hey stranger. You alive? Haven't heard from you in days.
I stare at the message for a long time. Bea doesn't know. She thinks the gala was just another job, that I've been quiet because I'm tired or busy or caught up in work. She has no idea that my life split in half five days ago and I'm still falling through the crack.
Sorry, I type back. Been under the weather. Talk soon.
Three dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.
You sure you're ok? You've been weird since the Ambrose thing. Did something happen?
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I could tell her. I could type out the whole story—the murder, the dahlia, the encounter at the market—and send it before I lose my nerve. Bea is my friend. She would believe me. She would help.
But help how? What could she possibly do against a man like Gabriel Ambrose?
And if I tell her, I put her in danger, too. If he's watching me, he might be watching anyone I talk to. Anyone I trust. Anyone who could be used against me.
Just tired, I type. Big job, you know? I'll call you this week.
The lie comes so easily. That's what frightens me most—how natural it feels to hide this, to carry it alone, to protect a secret that's slowly crushing me from the inside.
I put the phone face-down on the cushion and don't look at it again.
The afternoon crawls by. I should work—I have a funeral arrangement due Monday, a consultation scheduled for Tuesday—but I can't make myself move. Can't make myself care about flowers and ribbons and whether the lilies should be white or cream.
The funeral arrangement. White roses. The same roses I dropped somewhere between the market and my apartment, abandoned in my panic.
A client is depending on me. A grieving family is waiting for flowers to honor their dead.
And I can't do it. Can't make myself go back to the market, back to where he found me, back to the place where he might be waiting again.
I'll have to cancel. Or order online. Or find some other solution that doesn't involve leaving this apartment ever again.
This is what he wants, I think. He wants you trapped. Paralyzed. Waiting for him to make the next move.
The thought makes me angry. A small, hot spark in the cold fog of my fear.
I hold onto that anger. It's the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.
Instead of working, I open my laptop and type his name into the search bar again.
I've done this before, in the days since the gala. Scrolled through articles and photos, looking for cracks in his perfect image. Found nothing.
But I wasn't looking hard enough. I was skimming, half-hoping I wouldn't find anything, that I could convince myself I was wrong about what I saw.
Now I dig deeper.
I find the obvious things first. The philanthropy. The charity galas. The awards and accolades and glowing profiles in business magazines. Gabriel Ambrose, eldest of the three Ambrose brothers, heir to a fortune built over generations, steward of a family legacy dedicated to giving back.
The photos show a man who looks exactly like what he's supposed to be—handsome, polished, approachable. The smile that doesn't reach his eyes, my mother said. She was right. In every photo, there's something flat behind his expression. Something watching.
I find articles about his brothers, too. Josiah, the middle child, described as "the strategic mind behind the Ambrose business empire." Benedict, the youngest, rarely photographed, mentioned only in passing as "the private one" or "the family's wild card."
Three brothers. Three masks. I wonder what's behind the other two.
I scroll past the surface and look for older articles. Buried mentions. The kind of thing that gets published once and never referenced again.
It takes an hour, but I find something.
A society column from eight years ago, archived on a website that looks like it hasn't been updated since.
A brief mention of a party at the Ambrose estate, a gathering of "the city's most influential families.
" The columnist describes the event as "exclusive" and "mysterious," with guests wearing masks and "peculiar serpent imagery throughout. "
Then, a throwaway line: One attendee, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the evening as "more ritual than party," though he declined to elaborate on what that meant.
Rumors have long swirled about a private society associated with the Ambrose family, sometimes called the Serpent Brotherhood, though no concrete evidence of such an organization has ever surfaced.
Serpent Brotherhood.
I read the line three times, my heart pounding.
The serpent motifs at the estate. The masks at the gala. The way the staff moved like they were following a script no one else could see.
It's real. Whatever I stumbled into, it's not just one man's darkness. It's something bigger. Something organized.
I search for "Serpent Brotherhood" and find nothing. A few fantasy novels, a video game, a heavy metal band. Nothing that connects to the Ambroses, to the city, to anything real.
Whoever they are, they've scrubbed themselves from the internet. Or they were never there to begin with.
I try other searches. "Ambrose family scandal." "Ambrose brothers' investigation." "Ambrose criminal." Each one returns nothing but glowing press coverage and charitable foundations.
Then I try "Ambrose family death."
The results are different.
An obituary from fifteen years ago. Margaret Ambrose, wife of Edward Ambrose, mother of Gabriel, Josiah, and Benedict. Died of a sudden illness at forty-three. The funeral was private. Donations were requested for a children's literacy fund.
Another obituary, ten years ago. Edward Ambrose, patriarch of the family, dead of a heart attack at sixty-one. The article describes him as "a titan of industry" and "a devoted family man."
I stare at the screen, trying to read between the lines. Sudden illness. Heart attack. The euphemisms of wealthy families who don't want questions asked.
What really happened to Gabriel's parents?
I close the laptop and sit in the gathering dark, watching the shadows lengthen across my floor.
Serpent Brotherhood.
My mother's voice echoes in my head: If anyone seems interested in you, you'll tell me, won't you?
She knows something. She's always known something.
The way she tensed when I mentioned the Ambrose name.
The way she warned me about powerful people.
The way she's spent my whole life looking over her shoulder, jumping at shadows, moving us from place to place until I was old enough to ask questions she wouldn't answer.
What does she know? What is she so afraid of?
And does it have anything to do with the man who's been watching me?
I should call her. Should demand answers, push past her evasions, force her to tell me the truth.
But I'm tired. So tired. And some part of me is afraid of what I might learn.
Instead, I sit in the dark and watch the dahlia on my table, its petals black as a bruise, black as dried blood, black as the inside of a locked room where a man died five days ago.
You were always meant to be mine.
I don't know where the thought comes from. It doesn't feel like my own. It feels like his voice, whispering in my ear, patient and certain.
He's not going to stop. The flower, the encounter at the market, the card in my pocket—they're not endings. They're beginnings. He's courting me the way a spider courts a fly, spinning silk so fine I won't feel it until I'm already wrapped.
I should run. Pack a bag and get in my van and drive until I run out of road.
But where would I go? I have no money. No plan. No one I could trust to hide me.
And something tells me he would find me anyway.
The room is fully dark now. I haven't turned on any lights. Haven't moved from the couch. The business card is still on the floor where I left it, a pale rectangle in the shadows.
My phone rings.
The sound is so loud in the silence that I jerk upright, my heart slamming against my ribs. I stare at the screen, expecting Bea, expecting my mother, expecting anyone but—
Unknown number.
I don't answer unknown numbers. I never answer unknown numbers.
My hand reaches for the phone anyway.
It's still ringing when I pick it up. Still ringing when I bring it to my ear. Still ringing when I press the green button and hold my breath.
Silence.
Then his voice, warm and smooth and close enough to touch:
"Good evening, Poppy. I hope I'm not calling too late."
I can't speak. Can't breathe. The phone is pressed to my ear and his voice is inside my head and the walls are closing in.
"I wanted to follow up on our conversation this morning," he continues, as if we're colleagues, as if this is normal. "About the work I mentioned. Have you had time to consider my offer?"
My mouth opens. No sound comes out.
"Poppy? Are you there?"
"How did you get this number?" The words come out cracked, broken.
A soft laugh. "I'm a resourceful man. Surely you've realized that by now."
I should hang up. I should throw the phone across the room and never touch it again.
"What do you want?" I whisper.
A pause. When he speaks again, his voice is lower. More intimate. Like he's lying beside me in the dark, his lips brushing my ear.
"I think you know what I want."
The line goes dead.
I sit there for a long time, the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
On the table, the dahlia watches.