Chapter 3
The flower shop looked like a crime scene because it was one.
Vincent stepped through the shattered front window frame, glass crunching under his shoes, and for one suspended second he simply stood there, taking in what was left. Roses crushed into the floorboards. A cash register gutted and thrown against the wall. A hand-painted sign — Elena’s Flowers — hanging by a single nail, swinging slightly in the draft from the broken glass.
And behind the counter, a woman.
Elena Martinez lay on her side, one arm flung out as if she’d been reaching for something when she went down. Her dark hair fanned across the wood in a way that would have looked almost peaceful if it hadn’t been pooling with blood at the roots. Her breathing came in short, uneven pulls, the kind of breathing Vincent had heard before, on other floors, in other rooms he tried very hard not to remember.
Sophie’s hand tightened around his like a vice.
“Mama,” she whispered.
Dr. Chen was already moving, dropping to his knees beside Elena with the brisk, wordless efficiency of a man who had been pulled out of bed for Vincent Torino more times than either of them cared to count. His fingers found her pulse. His penlight checked her eyes. His expression, when he looked up, told Vincent everything he needed to know before the words came.
“Severe head trauma. Possible internal bleeding.” Chen was already snapping his bag shut, already waving the two men behind him forward with the stretcher. “We need to move her. Now.”
“Do it,” Vincent said.
He didn’t remember crouching down again until he was already at Sophie’s eye level, his hands on her small shoulders, steadying her the way you’d steady something about to shatter.
“Sophie. Look at me.” Her eyes were glassy, fixed somewhere past him, on her mother’s still body being lifted onto the stretcher. “Sophie.”
She blinked. Focused.
“The doctor is going to take care of your mama. He’s the best there is — I promise you that.” Vincent’s voice was low, steady, the voice he used when a deal absolutely could not be allowed to fall apart. “But I need you to be brave a little longer. Can you do that?”
Sophie’s chin trembled. And then, in a voice so small it barely reached him, she asked the question that would sit in Vincent’s chest for the rest of that night, and every night after.
“Will she remember me? When she wakes up?”
Something in Vincent’s ribs cracked clean through.
He thought of Maria. He thought of a phone call thirty years ago that had ended with silence instead of an answer, of all the things he never got to say because violence didn’t wait for goodbyes. He thought of how easily this — right here, right now — could become another door he’d have to spend the rest of his life refusing to walk back through.
“She’ll remember you,” he said, and he made sure every word landed like a promise, because it was one. “She’ll remember exactly how brave you were tonight. I’ll make sure of it.”
The paramedics loaded Elena into the ambulance. Sophie rode with Vincent in the sedan behind it, her small body curled into the leather seat, one hand fisted in the fabric of his sleeve as if letting go might make the whole night collapse.
Halfway to General Hospital, his phone buzzed against his thigh.
Sal’s voice came through low and satisfied. “Boss. We found them. Carlos and Miguel — they were at a bar on Ashland, buying rounds, bragging to anybody who’d listen. Guys really thought they’d earned themselves a party.”
Vincent’s eyes flicked to Sophie, who had finally, mercifully, drifted into an exhausted half-sleep against his arm.
“They’re secured,” Sal went on. “Warehouse on Fifth. Whenever you’re ready.”
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“Good,” Vincent said, quiet enough not to wake her. “I’ll be there after I get her settled.”
He hung up. Outside the window, Chicago blurred past in smears of streetlight and neon, and Vincent Torino sat very still, feeling something in his chest that he hadn’t let himself feel in three decades — not rage, though the rage was there too, banked and waiting. Something closer to purpose.
