Chapter 1 - The Bouquet She Thought Was Free

“Ma’am, you haven’t paid for those.”

Rosa Alvarez’s voice cut through the bright downtown sidewalk just as Celeste Whitmore reached the open door of a black luxury SUV.

Celeste stopped with an enormous bouquet of deep red roses pressed against her ivory blazer dress. She turned slowly, lowering her dark sunglasses just enough to look at Rosa as if Rosa were a stain on the pavement.

“Do you know who I am?” Celeste asked.

Rosa was sixty-one, tired from standing since six that morning, and still had dirt under one thumbnail from trimming stems. She had learned long ago that rich people often asked that question when they were about to do something cheap.

“I know you’re holding a two-hundred-dollar custom bouquet,” Rosa said. “And I know you didn’t pay for it.”

A younger woman standing beside the flower cart went still. Her name was Naomi Reyes. She had been choosing sunflowers, but now her phone was half raised in her hand.

Celeste gave a short laugh. “Two hundred? For flowers that’ll be dead in a week?”

“Then give them back.”

The sidewalk seemed to quiet around them.

Celeste’s jaw tightened. “Excuse me?”

Rosa stepped closer, not enough to threaten, just enough to make it clear she was not moving. “You heard me.”

The SUV driver glanced over his shoulder. Pedestrians slowed. Naomi’s thumb touched her screen.

Celeste looked at the bouquet, then at Rosa. “Send an invoice to Whitmore Development.”

“No.”

Celeste blinked.

“You picked them up,” Rosa said. “You pay now, or you put them back.”

The wealthy woman’s face changed. Not much. Just enough.

Then she pulled one rose from the bouquet, let it fall to the sidewalk, and crushed the stem under her white heel.

Naomi inhaled sharply.

Rosa stared down at the broken flower. For one second, anger flashed across her weathered face. Then she looked at Celeste and said quietly, “Your mother used to buy roses from me every Friday.”

Celeste froze.

The color left her lips.

“My mother is dead,” she said.

“I know,” Rosa replied. “I was there the night she found out what your father had done.”

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And for the first time, Celeste stopped looking arrogant.

She looked afraid.