Page 12 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
I undo the deadbolt. The chain. The flimsy lock that wouldn't stop anyone determined to get in.
I open the door.
And there it is.
A single black dahlia, placed precisely in the center of my doormat. The petals are dark and perfect, the stem cut at an angle I recognize. My angle. My technique.
It's one of mine.
I stand there for a long moment, staring at it. The hallway is empty. The building is quiet, that early-morning stillness before the rest of the world wakes up. There's no sign of who left it or when. It's just sitting there, innocent and impossible, a flower on a doorstep.
He was here.
While I sat in the dark, terrified, jumping at shadows—he washere. Climbing the stairs to my floor. Walking down my hallway. Standing exactly where I'm standing now, looking at my door, knowing I was on the other side.
He could have knocked. Could have broken in. Could have done anything he wanted.
Instead, he left a flower.
I should call the police. This is evidence—proof that he knows where I live, proof that he's stalking me, proof that I'm not safe. I should take a picture, preserve the scene, do all the things they tell you to do on crime shows.
I pick up the dahlia.
I don't know why. My hand moves before my brain can stop it, and then it's in my fingers, the stem cool and damp, the petals brushing against my skin. It smells like my workroom. Like the hours I spent preparing for the gala, carefully selectingeach bloom, arranging and rearranging until everything was perfect.
He took this from my work. He kept it. He brought it here.
Why?
I step back inside and close the door. Lock it. Chain it. Stand there with the dahlia in my hand, breathing too fast, trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense.
A gift. That's what this is. A gift from a murderer.
I should throw it away. Burn it. Stuff it in the garbage and pretend it never existed.
I fill a glass with water and put the dahlia in it. Set it on my kitchen table, where the morning light catches the dark petals and makes them gleam like silk.
I sit down across from it and wait for the shaking to stop.
It doesn't stop.
The morning crawls by in fragments. I try to eat—toast, half a banana—but everything tastes like cardboard and fear. I try to work, pulling out supplies for an arrangement I'm supposed to deliver next week, but my hands won't cooperate. I cut a stem too short, then another. Ruin a rose by gripping it too hard, crushing the petals.
I give up and sit at my laptop instead, typing his name into the search bar.
Gabriel Ambrose.
The results are endless. Charity galas, society pages, business journals, philanthropic foundations. His face appears over and over—that sharp jaw, those dark eyes, that smile that looks so warm in photographs. He's shaking hands withpoliticians, cutting ribbons at hospital openings, accepting awards for his contributions to arts education.
Ambrose Foundation donates $10 million to children's literacy program.
Gabriel Ambrose named Philanthropist of the Year by Metropolitan Charity Council.
The Ambrose brothers: Inside the family reshaping the city's cultural landscape.
I scroll through article after article, looking for something—anything—that hints at what I saw last night. A scandal buried in the business section. A rumor whispered in a gossip column. Some crack in the perfect facade.
There's nothing.
