Chapter 3 - Blood on the Sugar Flowers
The silence in Adrian’s study lasted until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed midnight.
The single, resonant bong seemed to wake me from a nightmare, only to remind me that the waking world was far more dangerous.
“You want to destroy Daniel,” I said, repeating his words slowly.
“Daniel is nobody. He’s an accountant with expensive suits and an inferiority complex.”
“Why would a man like you care about him?”
Adrian walked over to a side table and poured two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal tumbler.
He didn’t offer me one.
He knew I didn’t drink bourbon.
“Daniel Whitmore is nobody on his own,” Adrian conceded, taking a slow sip.
“A flea clinging to the coat of Richard Harrington.”
“But Harrington was a key node in the municipal contracts for the new transit lines running through the eastern corridor.”
“Fourteen months ago, three of my cargo shipments through the Cumberland River were seized by state regulators.”
“The tip came from an anonymous source inside the state treasurer’s office.”
He set the glass down with a soft, ominous click.
“That source was given documentation prepared by your former boyfriend.”
I shook my head, trying to piece together the labyrinth of Daniel’s scheming.
“Daniel worked in commercial real estate acquisitions. He didn’t have state contacts.”
“He didn’t,” Adrian agreed.
“Sophia Harrington’s uncle is the presiding commissioner on that transport board.”
“Daniel traded my logistical routes to Harrington’s family in exchange for Sophia’s hand and a twenty-percent partnership in Harrington Development.”
“He used my blood to buy his ticket into high society.”
Adrian stepped closer, his dark eyes narrowing like a predator measuring its prey.
“And he used your name to clean the money that paid for the wedding you spent four days decorating.”
The horror settled deep into my bones.
The ivory sugar petals.
The gold leaf I had spent hours applying with tweezers while my fingers cramped.
Daniel had watched me exhaust myself to feed the monster that had already laid a trap for my family.
“What happens to the bakery?” I asked, my throat tight.
“Patrice has run that shop for thirty years. Her name isn’t on Daniel’s paperwork.”
“Not yet,” Adrian said.
“Daniel filed a fictitious business lien against Monroe Street Bakery four weeks ago.”
“Claiming your partnership in Bennett Holdings owned a sixty-percent silent equity stake.”
“If the Harrington creditors file their default notices tomorrow morning at nine, the marshals will padlock Patrice’s doors by noon.”
“No!”
The word tore out of me before I could stop it.
I lunged forward, closing the distance between us, my hands balling into fists at my sides.
“Patrice took me in when my father died! She taught me everything I know!”
“She doesn’t have twenty dollars to spare, let alone millions!”
“You have the power to stop this, don’t you?”
Adrian looked down at me, entirely unmoved by my outburst.
Yet, there was something attentive in his gaze, an intense curiosity that felt like heat against skin.
“I have the power to do many things, Miss Bennett.”
“The question is why I should spend that capital on a baker from East Nashville.”
“Because you want Daniel,” I fired back, my voice vibrating with raw fury.
“And you don’t know where he hides his real books.”
Adrian’s eyebrows rose an imperceptible fraction.
“Go on.”
“Daniel was obsessive,” I said, pacing across the dark Persian rug.
“He never trusted anyone. Not even Sophia.”
“For three years, he kept a blue leather ledger in our apartment.”
“He said it was his private tax journal.”
“Every night before he went to sleep, he wrote in it with a specific green fountain pen.”
“When he moved out, he told me he had lost it during the move.”
I stopped pacing and turned back to Adrian.
“He didn’t lose it.”
“He left it behind a false vent in my pantry because he thought my apartment was the safest place in Nashville.”
“He knew the police would never raid a girl making sixteen dollars an hour.”
Adrian stared at me in complete silence.
The grandfather clock ticked once.
Twice.
“You knew about the vent?” he asked quietly.
“I clean my own apartment, Mr. Moretti,” I said coldly.
“I found it eight months ago when I was scrubbing the exhaust hood.”
“I didn’t open it because I didn’t want to look at anything that belonged to him.”
“Is it still there?”
“Yes.”
Adrian turned his head toward the double doors of the study.
“Vincenzo.”
The door opened instantly.
A broad-shouldered man with a scar slicing through his left eyebrow stepped in, bowing slightly.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Take a unit to Miss Bennett’s apartment on Fourth Avenue.”
“Boss,” Vincenzo hesitated, glancing at me.
“Daniel Whitmore’s associates just left the Callaway grounds twenty minutes ago.”
“Our scouts report two vehicles heading toward East Nashville right now.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Daniel knew.
The moment Adrian told him I was in this house, Daniel realized his safety deposit box had been compromised.
He was sending his new in-laws’ thugs to scrub my apartment before anyone else could get there.
“My cat is in that apartment,” I said, panic finally breaking through my anger.
“My mother’s wedding album is in that trunk under the bed!”
“If they burn that place—”
Adrian didn’t wait for me to finish.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a heavy black phone, and entered a three-digit speed dial.
“This is Moretti,” he said into the receiver.
“Close the perimeter around 1422 Fourth Avenue.”
“Anyone not wearing my colors who steps past the sidewalk doesn’t leave on their feet.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer and looked back at Vincenzo.
“Bring the car around to the front.”
“Boss?” Vincenzo asked, surprise clear in his rough voice.
“You’re going yourself?”
“I am.”
Adrian turned to me, his presence dominating the entire room.
“Get your coat, Grace.”
“You’re going to show me what your former lover thought was worth trading your life for.”
Twenty minutes later, we were tearing back toward East Nashville through the sheeting rain.
This time, there were three black SUVs escorting our sedan, forming a tight, armored spearhead through the empty city avenues.
The city lights reflected off the wet black asphalt like spilled oil.
My old neighborhood was quiet, worn down by decades of industrial neglect and slowly encroaching gentrification.
When we turned onto Fourth Avenue, the red and blue flashes of emergency lights were absent, replaced instead by the harsh, blinding beams of high-powered spotlights.
Two dark sedans were already pinned against the curb by massive black trucks bearing the crest of Moretti’s logistics firm.
Three men in drenched designer suits were kneeling on the cracked pavement with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
One of them was Sophia Harrington’s younger brother, Julian.
His face was bloody, his expensive tie shredded.
Daniel Whitmore stood pinned against the brick wall of my apartment building, held by the throat by one of Adrian’s heaviest enforcers.
Daniel’s tuxedo jacket was torn at the shoulder, revealing his white shirt covered in mud and grease.
When our car came to a halt, the enforcers backed away, clearing a path.
Adrian stepped out into the rain first, holding a massive black umbrella open.
He turned and offered his hand to help me down into the puddles.
The moment Daniel saw me step into the glare of the headlights beside Adrian Moretti, his face drained of every ounce of color.
“Grace?” he gasped, choking against the grip on his collar.
“Grace, what did you do?”
“What did I do?” I repeated, walking toward him through the downpour, ignoring the water soaking through my consignment dress.
“You put my name on stolen millions, Daniel.”
“You tried to steal Patrice’s bakery.”
“You tried to take my mother’s home.”
Daniel struggled against the guard’s arm, his eyes wide with frantic desperation.
“They forced me, Grace! Richard Harrington threatened to ruin my career!”
“I did it to protect us! We were going to get back together once the money cleared!”
“You’re lying,” I said, stopping three feet away from him.
“You told me love wasn’t enough.”
“You told me I wasn’t worth building a future with.”
“And while you were feeding your bride that six-tier cake tonight, you were already planning to let me rot in prison.”
Daniel looked past me, his eyes landing on Adrian, who stood just behind my shoulder like an executioner waiting for the signal.
“Adrian, please!” Daniel screamed over the sound of the rain.
“Harrington is the one with the offshore accounts! I was just the paper pusher!”
“The ledger,” Adrian said softly, his voice cutting through the storm with chilling clarity.
“Where is it?”
Daniel’s gaze darted toward the second-floor window of my apartment.
The glass was intact.
The front door of the building hung slightly open, its cheap aluminum lock kicked clean off the frame.
“It’s not here,” Daniel lied, his voice cracking.
“I took it two months ago. It’s in a safe deposit box at SunTrust.”
I looked up at Adrian.
“He’s lying.”
“The third kitchen cabinet from the window.”
“Behind the bag of bread flour.”
Daniel’s face collapsed into absolute horror.
“Grace, no! Don’t do this!”
“If he gets that book, they’ll kill Sophia’s father! They’ll kill me!”
Adrian didn’t even look at Daniel.
He nodded to Vincenzo, who disappeared into the building’s stairwell like a shadow.
Two minutes later, Vincenzo returned down the rain-slick steps.
In his gloved hand was a battered, water-stained blue leather journal, tied shut with an elastic band.
A specific green fountain pen was clipped into the spine.
Vincenzo handed the book to Adrian.
Adrian flipped through the first few pages under the umbrella, the dim streetlamp catching the neat, compulsive columns of figures, offshore account numbers, and political kickbacks.
A cold, terrifying smile finally touched Adrian’s mouth.
“Every state contract since 2022,” Adrian murmured.
“Every payoff to the transport commission.”
“Every penny Harrington diverted from the workers’ healthcare fund.”
He closed the book with a heavy thump.
Then he looked down at Daniel Whitmore, who was now trembling so violently his knees buckled, leaving him dangling by his collar in the guard’s fist.
“You were right, Daniel,” Adrian said softly.
“Grace wasn’t the kind of woman a man like you could build a future with.”
“Because she has courage.”
“And you are nothing more than a thief who choked on his own sugar.”
Adrian gestured to his men.
“Throw him in the van with Harrington’s boy.”
“Take them to the Cumberland docks.”
“Let them watch the sunrise over the river they tried to steal from me.”
Daniel began to shriek, kicking wildly as two guards dragged him backward across the asphalt toward the idling trucks.
“Grace! Grace, tell him to stop! Please! We were together for three years!”
I didn’t look back.
I stood in the rain, watching the mud wash over the cracked sidewalk where I had walked every morning to catch the early bus to the bakery.
Adrian stepped beside me, holding the umbrella over my head, keeping the cold rain from my face.
“It’s done,” he said quietly.
“No,” I replied, staring at my front door hanging off its hinges.
“He ruined my home.”
“He tried to ruin Patrice.”
I turned to face the most dangerous man in Tennessee.
“You have the ledger.”
“You have what you need to destroy them.”
“What happens to me now, Adrian?”
Adrian looked down at me, his dark eyes burning with an intensity that made the cold night disappear entirely.
May you like
“Tomorrow morning, the Harrington empire falls,” he said, his voice deep and deliberate.
“And you, Grace Bennett, are going to take their place.”
