Chapter 4 - THE LAST BOUQUET SOFIA DUCA EVER ORDERED
The flash drive required a password.
Of course it did.
Sofia Duca had spent years married to a man who treated security like religion.
She knew better than to leave an unencrypted confession lying inside a flower ledger.
Dante tried six obvious possibilities.
The twins’ names.
Their birthdays.
Gabriel’s birthday.
Sofia’s maiden name.
Nothing.
Gabriel stood behind him in the security office.
“Again.”
Dante glanced back.
“That is not how encryption works.”
“Try harder.”
I leaned against the door.
“Excellent technical strategy.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“You have an idea?”
“Maybe.”
I thought about Sofia.
Mrs. Morelli.
White garden roses.
Always rosemary.
Never baby’s breath.
She ordered the same thing every time.
I remembered one conversation.
Four years ago.
She had stood at the counter while I trimmed stems.
“Why rosemary?” I had asked.
She smiled.
“Remembrance.”
“And white roses?”
“For truth.”
I laughed then.
“That sounds heavy for flowers.”
She looked at me strangely.
“Sometimes flowers are safer than saying something out loud.”
At the time, I assumed she meant marriage.
Grief.
An apology.
Now the memory made my skin cold.
I told Dante:
“Try remembrance.”
No.
“White roses.”
No.
Then:
“Rosemary.”
No.
Gabriel asked:
“What exactly did she order?”
“Fourteen white garden roses.”
Dante typed FOURTEEN.
Nothing.
I frowned.
“Fourteen white roses and one red.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“One red?”
“Yes.”
“She hated red roses.”
“That’s why I remember.”
“Why did she order it?”
“She said it was for someone who needed to understand the difference.”
Gabriel became still.
“Fourteen and one.”
Dante typed 14AND1.
The drive opened.
No one spoke.
Folders appeared.
WHITMORE.
HALE.
FOUNDATION.
WATERFRONT.
CARUSO.
Then:
IF YOU ARE READING THIS.
Gabriel clicked.
A video.
Sofia appeared.
Alive.
I had only known her as the quiet woman buying flowers.
Now she sat in what looked like a hotel room wearing a dark sweater.
Her hair was tied back.
No makeup.
She looked tired.
“Gabriel.”
His face changed.
Emma and Ella were upstairs asleep.
Thank God.
Sofia continued:
“If you’re seeing this, either I finally found enough courage to show you myself, or something went wrong.”
Gabriel sat slowly.
I had never seen him sit because his body could no longer hold what he was feeling.
Sofia looked directly into the camera.
“I think Richard Hale is taking money through Duca Foundation vendors.”
Gabriel stopped breathing.
“He’s working with Whitmore Development.”
Sofia held up a spreadsheet.
“They’re inflating charity-event expenses, moving money through small businesses, then routing payments into consultants tied to zoning approvals.”
Dante whispered:
“Bribery.”
Sofia continued:
“I confronted Steven Caruso.”
“He lied.”
“I checked again.”
“I found Brooks & Bloom.”
I closed my eyes.
My shop.
“Olivia Brooks doesn’t know.”
My eyes flew open.
“She is not involved.”
My throat tightened.
Sofia knew my name.
“She’s a florist.”
A faint smile.
“She makes beautiful arrangements.”
I started crying.
I could not help it.
Daniel had turned my business into a laundering vehicle.
Sofia had known enough to separate me from his actions.
Four years before I even knew she existed.
Sofia’s face became serious again.
“Her husband, Daniel, knows more.”
Daniel stood against the wall behind us, pale.
“I think Vanessa recruited him.”
Sofia continued.
“I don’t know how deep.”
Then:
“There’s something else.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“Hale isn’t only buying zoning votes.”
“He wants the East River redevelopment parcel.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
The project from City Hall.
The one he had been fighting over.
Sofia continued:
“If the city rejects Duca Holdings as lead developer due to corruption concerns, the parcel automatically moves to the secondary consortium.”
I looked at Gabriel.
“Whitmore?”
He nodded.
On screen, Sofia answered anyway.
“Whitmore Development.”
There it was.
“They are creating corruption around us so they can later claim Gabriel created it.”
A classic trap.
Use Duca Foundation’s own name.
Fake vendors.
Political payments.
Then expose the scandal when useful.
Gabriel would become the villain who lost the project.
Sofia’s voice softened.
“Gabriel, I know you.”
A sad smile.
“If somebody hurt me, your first instinct would be to destroy them.”
He closed his eyes.
“Don’t.”
One word.
The feared mafia boss’s dead wife telling him from four years away not to become the version of himself everybody expected.
“Find proof.”
“Take it into daylight.”
“Protect the girls.”
“And for once in your life, trust someone outside the walls you control.”
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
Gabriel sat staring at the blank screen.
I wanted to touch him.
Didn’t.
Not yet.
Then Daniel whispered:
“There’s another file.”
Gabriel looked up.
Daniel pointed toward a folder.
DELIVERY.
Inside was an order form.
Brooks & Bloom.
My handwriting.
Fourteen white roses.
One red.
Delivery address:
128 MERCER STREET, APARTMENT 6B.
I remembered.
“I delivered this myself.”
Gabriel turned.
“When?”
“The afternoon before Sofia died.”
His face changed.
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“No one answered.”
I remembered standing in the hallway.
Expensive building.
Apartment door painted black.
Sofia had insisted I leave the arrangement outside if nobody answered.
“She prepaid cash.”
“What was on the card?”
I thought.
Then remembered.
No sentimental message.
Just numbers.
“17-4-22.”
Dante frowned.
“Date?”
“No. Delivery was October.”
Gabriel stood.
“Could be a code.”
We went to Mercer Street the next morning with Detective Lena Russo, an NYPD investigator Gabriel had apparently trusted for years despite pretending he trusted no one.
Apartment 6B was now empty.
The building superintendent checked old records.
Four years earlier, it had been leased through a shell company.
Morelli Consulting.
Sofia.
Inside, nothing remained.
Except a wall safe hidden behind a removable panel in the bedroom closet.
Detective Russo obtained proper legal authorization before opening it.
Gabriel looked annoyed by the delay.
I reminded him of Sofia’s instruction.
Daylight.
He stopped complaining.
Inside the safe was one envelope.
No cash.
No gun.
No dramatic stack of files.
A bank deposit key.
Number:
17-4-22.
The bouquet card.
Sofia had used my flowers to deliver herself a reminder only she expected Gabriel might eventually understand.
The key belonged to a private safe-deposit service.
The bank required court documentation.
Again, Gabriel hated waiting.
Again, he waited.
Two days later, we opened the box.
Original invoices.
Foundation bank records.
Emails between Hale and Whitmore executives.
A photograph of Steven Caruso meeting Vanessa.
And a mechanic’s report.
Gabriel picked it up.
His face changed.
“What?”
I asked.
He handed it to Detective Russo.
Sofia’s vehicle.
Inspection conducted six days before her death.
No significant mechanical concerns.
Then another report after the crash.
Catastrophic steering and braking failure.
Detective Russo frowned.
“This wasn’t in the case file.”
Gabriel stared.
“No.”
“Who wrote the first report?”
A mechanic named Luis Mendoza.
Russo searched.
“He left New York three weeks after the crash.”
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“Where?”
“Last known address in New Jersey.”
Then Dante’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“Our people found Mendoza.”
Gabriel stood.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Newark.”
Relief lasted one second.
Dante continued:
“He says he’ll talk.”
Then:
“But only if Olivia Brooks is there.”
I stared.
“Me?”
Gabriel’s expression became instantly opposed.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“My rule.”
His jaw tightened.
I almost smiled.
Ask before deciding.
Gabriel exhaled.
“Fine.”
Then Dante added:
“Mendoza says Sofia told him if anything happened to her car, the flower woman would be the one person nobody inside the Duca organization had paid to lie.”
Every eye in the room came to me.
May you like
Four years earlier, I had thought I was simply selling flowers.
Apparently Sofia Duca had been quietly placing pieces of her survival plan into the hands of a florist she barely knew.
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