Chapter 1 - The Night Daniel Chose Vanessa
Adrian Moretti returned to Brooks Blooms three days later.
This time, he came without the charcoal suit.
He wore dark jeans, a plain black sweater, and a coat that looked expensive only because everything about him looked expensive. The black sedan still waited at the curb, though he had parked it farther down the street as if distance could make it less obvious.
Amelia saw him through the front window.
“You again,” she called as the bell above the door chimed.
Adrian’s mouth curved slightly.
“I need flowers.”
“For your mother?”
“For a business dinner.”
Amelia looked at him over a cluster of pale pink ranunculus.
“That is less romantic.”
“It was not intended to be romantic.”
“Then you need better business dinners.”
He watched her arrange stems into a glass vase.
Amelia did not know his name beyond Adrian. She did not ask for his company, his title, or why a man with a driver and expensive hands kept returning to a struggling flower shop on a side street in Chicago.
That was one of the reasons he kept coming back.
Most people met Adrian Moretti and immediately began calculating.
How much money did he have?
What could he give them?
Who might they impress by knowing him?
Amelia only looked at him and saw a man who seemed too tense to enjoy his own life.
“White roses?” she asked.
“Why those?”
“They say respect.”
“And the blue flowers?”
“Delphiniums. They say dignity.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You choose flowers based on what they say?”
“I choose them based on what people cannot say themselves.”
For the first time, he had no answer.
A customer entered—a tired-looking woman in a hospital uniform with a little boy holding her hand. The child could not have been older than six.
“Miss Amelia,” the boy said, “do you still have the yellow ones?”
Amelia’s entire face changed.
“Of course I do, Marcus.”
She walked around the counter and crouched in front of him.
“Is this for your grandma?”
He nodded.
“She’s scared.”
Amelia selected three sunflowers, wrapped them in brown paper, and tied them with a simple blue ribbon.
“Then tell her these are little pieces of sunshine,” Amelia said. “Sunshine can find people anywhere.”
The boy looked toward his mother.
“How much?”
Amelia shook her head.
“Today they’re free.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“I can pay next week.”
“You can pay me by letting Marcus tell his grandma that she is loved.”
After they left, Adrian stood silently near the counter.
“You give away flowers when you can barely pay rent,” he said.
Amelia returned to her work.
“People who are scared need kindness more than I need another ten dollars.”
“That is not how business works.”
“No,” she said. “That is how people work.”
Adrian’s phone buzzed.
He ignored it.
Then it buzzed again.
Amelia glanced at the screen and saw the name: Rafe.
“Your assistant is persistent.”
“He is not my assistant.”
“Then your very intense cousin?”
Adrian almost smiled.
“Something like that.”
He answered at last.
“What?”
Rafe’s voice was low, but Amelia could hear urgency in it.
“Mr. Moretti, we have a problem. Someone is asking questions about Brooks Blooms.”
Adrian’s expression changed.
The warmth disappeared.
Amelia noticed immediately.
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
She crossed her arms.
“That is never a comforting sentence.”
Adrian lowered the phone.
“A former employee of Vanessa Clark has been making calls. She claims you interfered with the boutique incident and humiliated management.”
Amelia frowned.
“I did interfere. An innocent woman was being hurt.”
“She is also claiming your shop has unpaid vendor accounts.”
Amelia’s face went still.
“That is private.”
“It will not remain private if someone intends to hurt you.”
“You had someone looking into my business?”
Adrian knew at once that he had made a mistake.
Not because Amelia raised her voice.
Because she did not.
She simply looked disappointed.
“I asked for basic security information,” he said.
“You investigated me.”
“I wanted to make sure no one could threaten you.”
“I did not ask you to do that.”
“No.”
“You do not get to enter my life and start deciding what needs protecting.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“I was trying to help.”
“My mother used to say help that arrives without respect is just another form of control.”
The words struck deeper than she knew.
Adrian had built his entire life around control.
Control was how he kept rivals away from Isabella. It was how he protected his employees, his businesses, and the people he considered family.
But Amelia was right.
Protection meant nothing if it made the person being protected feel smaller.
He took a step back.
“You’re right,” he said.
Amelia blinked.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“That was fast.”
“I have been told I learn slowly. I am attempting to improve.”
For a second, she looked as though she wanted to laugh.
Then she sighed.
“Please don’t investigate me again.”
“I will not.”
“And do not send someone to solve my bills.”
“I will not.”
“And do not buy my building.”
Adrian paused.
Amelia narrowed her eyes.
“You were thinking about it.”
“No.”
“You were absolutely thinking about it.”
“Perhaps briefly.”
She shook her head, but there was warmth in her expression now.
“Adrian, I do not need a hero.”
He looked at her carefully.
“What do you need?”
Amelia’s hands rested on the flower stems.
“Someone who listens the first time I say no.”
The bell above the shop door chimed before he could answer.
Isabella Moretti entered wearing a navy wool coat and a bright smile.
“Amelia, darling.”
Amelia’s face lit up.
“Isabella.”
Adrian stepped aside as Isabella crossed the shop and hugged Amelia tightly.
For a moment, he watched them.
His mother looked happy.
Not polite happy.
Not the controlled smile she wore at charity dinners and family events.
She looked genuinely happy.
“You did not tell me your son was your mysterious flower customer,” Isabella said.
Amelia looked from Isabella to Adrian.
“Your son?”
The room became quiet.
Adrian met Amelia’s eyes.
There were a dozen ways he could have answered.
He could have said he owned a company.
He could have said he was in finance.
He could have told a partial truth and waited until later to reveal the rest.
Instead, he remembered her words.
Someone who listens the first time I say no.
“Isabella is my mother,” he said. “And my full name is Adrian Moretti.”
Amelia stared at him.
The name landed slowly.
Then her expression changed.
She knew it.
Everyone in Chicago knew it.
“You’re Adrian Moretti,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“The Adrian Moretti?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze shifted to the black sedan down the street. Then back to him.
“So the security men outside weren’t your cousins.”
“No.”
“And you weren’t just buying flowers for business dinners.”
“No.”
“And when you said someone was asking questions about my shop…”
“I should have told you who I was sooner.”
Amelia’s cheeks flushed.
Not with excitement.
With anger.
“You let me think you were just some rich man who forgot anniversaries.”
“I wanted you to know me without the name.”
“You did not give me the chance to choose whether I wanted to know you at all.”
Adrian had faced armed men without blinking.
But Amelia’s disappointment made him feel something far more dangerous than fear.
Regret.
“I am sorry,” he said.
She looked at Isabella, then at the flowers between them.
“I need you to leave.”
Adrian’s throat tightened.
“Amelia—”
“Please.”
His mother watched him silently.
For once, Isabella did not rescue him.
She did not soften the moment.
She only looked at her son as if to say: This is what honesty costs when it comes too late.
Adrian nodded.
“I will leave.”
He walked toward the door.
Then Amelia spoke behind him.
“Adrian.”
He turned.
Her eyes were steady.
“Do not send flowers. Do not send gifts. Do not send someone to apologize for you.”
“I understand.”
“If you want to apologize, do it yourself. And only when I’m ready to hear it.”
Adrian nodded once.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Then he stepped out into the cold Chicago afternoon.
Inside the sedan, Rafe looked at him carefully.
“Should we put additional security on the shop?”
Adrian stared through the window at Brooks Blooms.
Amelia stood beside his mother, her shoulders tense but unbroken.
“No,” Adrian said.
Rafe looked surprised.
“No?”
“Not without her permission.”
For the first time in years, Adrian Moretti understood that wanting someone close did not give him the right to pull them closer.
And across the street, Amelia looked at the flowers she had arranged for him.
White roses.
Blue delphiniums.
Respect.
Dignity.
She wondered whether a man with a name like Moretti could ever truly understand either one.
Neither of them knew that Vanessa Clark’s anger was no longer the greatest danger approaching Brooks Blooms.
May you like
Someone else had noticed Amelia.
Someone who knew exactly what it meant to threaten Adrian Moretti through the woman he could not stop thinking about.
