The Florist Delivered Roses Trembling — Mafia Boss Noticed Bruises: "Who The F*ck Did This To You?"

The Florist Delivered Roses Trembling — Mafia Boss Noticed Bruises: "Who The F*ck Did This To You?"

The late November wind cut through her thin coat as Elara Whitmore balanced the arrangement of blood red roses against her hip. One hand steadied the crystal vase while the other fumbled with the heavy brass door of the building. Her fingers ached beneath the leather gloves, not from the cold, but from something she had learned to hide behind careful layers of fabric and forced smiles. Ashford Tower rose forty five stories above Chicago's Gold Coast, its glass facade reflecting clouds that promised the first snow of winter. She had been making this delivery every Wednesday for four months now. Always the same arrangement, always the same penthouse suite on the forty fifth floor. Forty two roses, never forty one, never forty three, in shades of burgundy so deep they appeared almost black in certain light. The client had never left specific instructions beyond that number, but she had learned to read the silent language of flowers well enough to understand what this particular arrangement meant: power, obsession, and something darker she could not name. The brass interior of the elevator reflected her pale face back at her. Twenty seven years old but looking older today, exhaustion carved into the shadows beneath her gray eyes. She had covered the worst of the bruising on her throat with a silk scarf that morning, but the autumn light filtering through the elevator's glass panel was unforgiving. The cracked rib from last week still sent sharp pain through her chest with every breath. The painkillers she had swallowed before leaving her apartment were barely taking the edge off. Her auburn hair, normally worn loose around her shoulders, was pulled back in a severe bun that made her hollow cheekbones look sharper than they were. Professional, invisible, broken. The flower shop she had inherited from her mother two years ago was barely surviving. Whitmore Blooms occupied a cramped storefront in a neighborhood that straddled the line between revitalization and decay. Most days she worked alone, arranging bouquets for weddings she would never attend and funerals for people she would never meet. On nights when the shop's income was not enough, she worked the late shift at a bar downtown, pouring drinks for strangers while hiding her bruises beneath long sleeves. The two hundred thousand dollars in medical debt from her mother's cancer treatment hung over her head like a guillotine. And then there was Lily, her nineteen year old sister, counting on her for tuition, for rent, for everything. This weekly delivery to Ashford Tower was her most lucrative account. The client paid five times her normal rate and always left a cash tip in an envelope at the concierge desk. That money kept her lights on and her sister in college, even if it could not fix everything else that was shattered in her life.

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