Chapter 7 - Ten Thousand Flowers
Six months later, a black SUV stopped outside Ellis Flowers & Garden.
My customers barely noticed anymore.
Dante walked inside carrying two coffees.
Murphy abandoned me immediately.
“You have corrupted my dog.”
“He appreciates loyalty.”
“He appreciates the steak you bring him.”
Dante handed me a cup.
“Same thing.”
The shop had changed.
The shattered window had been replaced.
The greenhouse restored.
The hanging baskets rebuilt with a significantly safer emergency-release system.
Dante had offered to pay.
I refused.
He paid the contractor anyway.
I sent the invoice back.
He bought the building.
I threatened him with pruning shears.
He transferred ownership to me.
That argument lasted three weeks.
“Where’s Sofia?” I asked.
“College tour with Mom.”
“She’s sixteen.”
“Apparently people prepare early.”
“You’re worried.”
“No.”
“You ran background checks on the admissions officers.”
“Basic responsibility.”
I stared at him.
“Dante.”
“Fine. Twelve background checks.”
The bell rang again.
Julian entered.
Dante groaned.
“Why are you here?”
“Mara invited me.”
“Why?”
I answered, “Because normal adults can be in the same room.”
Julian smiled.
“Still working on that, apparently.”
The war between the Moretti and Mercer organizations had ended.
Julian had cooperated in the Hale investigation. Dante had spent months separating his legitimate companies from the criminal machinery inherited from his father.
It wasn’t instant redemption.
It was work.
Messy, expensive, dangerous work.
But he did it.
Isabella testified.
Thomas Ellis testified.
Vincent Hale received enough charges to guarantee he would grow old behind bars.
And Gabriel Moretti’s name was finally cleared.
My father came through the greenhouse carrying a wooden crate.
“Found another one.”
Dante frowned.
“Another what?”
Dad opened it.
Old photographs.
Isabella entered behind him with Sofia.
Sofia immediately pointed at Dante.
“You owe me fifty dollars.”
“For what?”
“You said Mom wouldn’t find another embarrassing childhood picture.”
Isabella held one up.
Eight-year-old Dante wearing a flower crown.
I stared.
Julian burst out laughing.
Dante looked at his mother.
“Why did you keep that?”
“Because Evelyn made it.”
I took the photograph.
My mother stood beside young Dante.
Suddenly, all the pieces connected differently.
Our families had known each other long before violence separated them.
Sofia leaned over my shoulder.
“You should frame it.”
Dante said, “Absolutely not.”
I said, “Already decided.”
“Mara.”
“Front window.”
“No.”
“Beside the register?”
“No.”
“Billboard?”
He stared at me.
“You enjoy this too much.”
“Immensely.”
That evening, everyone left except Dante.
I locked the door.
Rain had begun outside.
Almost exactly like the night we met.
Dante stood beneath the hanging baskets.
“Do those still fall?”
“Why?”
“Professional curiosity.”
“Stand underneath them and find out.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“I brought you something.”
“If it’s flowers, leave.”
“Interesting thing for a florist to say.”
“You ruined chrysanthemums for me.”
He reached into his coat.
A small box.
I stared at him.
“No.”
“You haven’t opened it.”
“I know what boxes that size mean.”
“Do you?”
“Dante.”
He opened it.
Inside wasn’t a ring.
It was a tiny silver key.
I blinked.
“What is that?”
“My house.”
“You already gave me a key.”
“Different house.”
“What?”
“I sold the mansion.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“Too many ghosts.”
He looked around my little shop.
“I bought a place outside the city.”
“Without telling me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Dangerous strategy.”
“There’s a greenhouse.”
That weakened my resistance considerably.
“How large?”
“Very.”
“Define very.”
“Large enough that you’ll yell at me for spending too much money.”
“Promising.”
“And a garden.”
“What kind?”
“Whatever kind you want.”
I looked at the key.
Then at him.
“What are you asking?”
Dante was quiet for a moment.
Not a mafia boss.
Not the feared Dante Moretti.
Just the man Murphy trusted before I did.
“I spent most of my life protecting territory,” he said. “Businesses. Reputation. People.”
He placed the key in my palm.
“I never understood that protecting something isn’t the same as having a home.”
I swallowed.
“Until?”
“Until a florist walked between ten armed men because they were blocking her drainage pipe.”
“That was a legitimate drainage issue.”
“I know.”
“You were bleeding on my chrysanthemums.”
“I apologized.”
“You sent four thousand eight hundred replacements.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
Dante took my hand.
“I’m asking whether you’d like to make that house a home with me.”
“No ten-thousand-rose proposal?”
“I was specifically advised against it.”
“By whom?”
“Everyone.”
I laughed.
Then looked down at the key.
“Yes.”
Dante went still.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
His smile came slowly.
Rarely.
The smile nobody in Boston’s newspapers ever photographed.
He kissed me.
Murphy barked.
We separated.
“Really?” Dante asked him.
Murphy barked again.
“He wants dinner.”
“He always wants dinner.”
“So do I.”
Dante glanced outside.
“Restaurant?”
“No.”
“Takeout?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
I picked up my coat.
“Your new house.”
“Our new house,” he corrected.
I stopped.
He was right.
“Our house.”
One year later, we married there.
Not in a cathedral.
Not at one of Dante’s hotels.
In the garden.
Sofia stood beside Isabella.
My father walked me down the aisle.
Julian attended despite Dante insisting several times that his invitation had been a clerical error.
And Murphy carried the rings.
Badly.
When I reached Dante, I noticed the flower pinned to his jacket.
A white chrysanthemum.
“You’re kidding.”
“You said no roses.”
I laughed.
Some things never changed.
Others changed completely.
Dante eventually left behind the empire his father had built on fear and kept the legitimate businesses that employed thousands of people.
Sofia grew up with a mother and a brother she had once believed were gone forever.
Isabella finally lived without hiding.
Julian stopped chasing revenge.
My father stopped carrying a secret that had haunted him for sixteen years.
And Ellis Flowers & Garden remained exactly where it had always been.
Well, almost exactly.
Above the register hung an old photograph of eight-year-old Dante Moretti wearing a flower crown.
He complained about it every single day.
I never removed it.
Sometimes customers would ask how we met.
Dante always gave them the short version.
“She saved my life.”
I preferred the accurate version.
“He was bleeding on my flowers.”
Years later, the Saint Michael medal still hung around my neck.
Not because I needed protection from Dante’s world anymore.
That world was gone.
I kept it because it reminded me of the night ten dangerous men surrounded one injured man and believed they controlled what happened next.
They had guns.
They had numbers.
They had fear.
I had muddy boots, pruning shears, eight hundred pounds of hanging plants—
and absolutely no intention of letting them destroy my flower shop.
They expected Dante Moretti to beg.
They expected me to run.
They were wrong about both of us.
And sometimes, when rain turned the streets of South Boston into black mirrors, Dante would stand beneath the awning with two coffees while I locked the shop.
“Ready?” he would ask.
I would look at the man I once should have been terrified of.
Then at Murphy waiting impatiently beside him.
And I would smile.
“Take me home.”
Because the strangest thing about the night I saved Boston’s most feared man wasn’t that I survived it.
It was that somewhere between shattered glass, ruined chrysanthemums, an old silver medal, and sixteen years of buried secrets—
May you like
we found our family.
THE END
