Page 3 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

As I explain, I pick up each color so the light catches the petals, angling them toward him.

But he's not looking at the roses. He's looking at the front door again, his jaw tight, his weight shifting onto the balls of his feet like a man ready to move in any direction at a second's notice.

I can feel the nerves rolling off him in waves. His wife must carry a big stick or loaded weapon with the sweat beading off this guy’s brow. Yikes.

A muffled buzz vibrates from inside his coat pocket and he flinches hard enough that I take a half step back.

"You need to get that?"

"No." He pulls the phone out, kills the power without looking at the screen, and shoves it back into his pocket with shaky hands. "No, sorry ’bout that. The..uhh, reds. Yeah, gimme the reds. A dozen. I don’t know. Whatever a fifty will buy me."

I pull the stems and start wrapping them. "You sure you don't want to add some whites? Go big or go home, right?"

"Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever you think." He's not listening anymore. His eyes stay fixed on the front window and his fingers drum against the counter, fast and uneven. He gives off the vibes of a man whose nerves are cooking him from the inside out.

Poor guy. His wife must really be on the warpath.

I wrap the roses in tissue paper and tie them off. "That will be forty-two even."

He shoves a fifty into my hand before I finish the sentence. His fingers are warm and damp against my palm.

"Keep it." He tucks the roses under his arm and scans the shop behind me. "You got a back way outta here?"

I point toward the back door that opens onto the alley. "Through there. Takes you out to the side street and the nearby parking lot."

He's already moving, cutting past the counter and heading for the door without looking back. He drops a folded piece of paper on his way past and it hits the floor near my boot.

"Oh. Hey, wait. You dropped something." I bend down and pick it up.

The back door jingles as he pushes through it, and he's gone before I can get the words out a second time.

“Damn it.” I release a frustrated huff. Some people’s energy reeks and that man leaves a trail of bad juju anyone can follow.

I debate how much I really want to be a good samaritan. I stare at the folded paper in my hand. The fold is tight, deliberate, the crease sharp enough that whoever made it meant for it to stay closed.

That has to make it important and I’d rather he not come back. Thirty seconds and I can give it back to him and be done.

I push through the back door. Cars whizz by both exits of the alley. Chicago’s wintry evening air hits my face hard enough to make my eyes sting. After ten hours in a warm shop full of flower-sweetened air, the alley is a different world.

Damp concrete and the sour funk of the dumpster two doors down mix with the rain that came through earlier. Underneath all of it there's a metallic edge that pricks at the back of my nose, sharp and unfamiliar. Tension rolls through my muscles, tightening one by one. It starts at the base of my skull and works down my back and all the way to my calves.

I try to move but I can’t. The overhead light flickers in that stuttering yellow glow I've been begging my landlord to fix since March. It throws the alley into washed out shadows that seem to move.

I open my mouth to call out to him, but the sound comes first.

A crack. Sharp. Ear-shattering.

It punches through the alley, stealing my breath. It bounces off the narrow corridor of space between my building and the next.

The movies lie about gunshots. They make them big, booming and theatrical. This one is tight, contained and already gone by the time my brain catches up to what my ears just heard.

My eyes find the source and every blood cell in my body turns into ice cubes.

Two men the size of tanks stand at the head of the alley. I squint into the quickly fading light, unable to make out their faces from thirty feet away. The one on the left grips my customer by his coat collar, hauling his limp silhouette sideways. The other holds a gun with his arm still extended.

Tank Number One releases his hold and the guy with the roses folds. Knees first, then shoulders, then the side of his head hits the wet concrete with a dull, heavy thud.

I suck in harsh breath. Goosebumps swarm my entire body. Roses scatter across the ground around him, red and white petals on gray stone. Why my brain hooks on that detail right now, I don’t know. The burst of color on the dull cement is safer to think about than how close I am to getting whacked behind my flower shop of all locations, I guess.