The knife in Esme's hand was light. Familiar. The grip worn smooth by years of her mother's touch, then her own. It belonged in her palm the way a secret belongs to silence.
She moved down the hallway with no sound, no hesitation.
The greenhouse lights still glowed faintly behind her, casting long reflections on the polished tile. In the stillness of the shop's private corridor, her breath felt loud.
The private door had chimed.
But now?
Nothing.
No knock. No rustle. No retreating footsteps.
She approached the rear entrance. No one visible through the glass. Just the wind stirring the leaves of a creeping fig that curled up the side wall.
Her fingers closed around the doorknob.
Twist. Pull. Open.
Air rushed in—cool, damp with the scent of night blooming jasmine from the vines outside.
The alley was empty.
No one in sight.
But then—she looked down.
On the mat just outside the door sat a folded piece of parchment.
She crouched slowly, blade still in hand, and picked it up. No seal. No handwriting on the front.
But the inside—
A single pressed flower.
Not one of hers.
Viola odorata.
Sweet violet. Used for subtle sedatives and mourning rituals.
And a typed message beneath it, aligned perfectly center:
"Your mother's legacy has roots deeper than you think."
Esme stood motionless for several long moments.
Then, from somewhere behind her in the alley's shadows, a soft sound—barely audible.
The crush of gravel underfoot.
She spun, knife raised.
But nothing moved.
Only the wind. Only vines. Only the creeping sense that tonight, someone had trespassed not on her property—but on her history.
She stepped back inside and locked the door, double deadbolt. Then a third slide she rarely used. The sound echoed like gunfire in the stillness.
She returned to the greenhouse.
The dose was cold now.
The petals had settled. The compound had darkened.
Ruined.
She didn't remake it.
She poured it slowly down the sink, watching it swirl and vanish.
Then she moved to the back of the room, reached up behind the cabinet's false panel, and removed the old ledger. Her mother's.
Helena's handwriting filled every page. Precise, elegant, sharp as a thorn.
Esme flipped past dried petals and annotated charts until she reached a section she only opened when necessary. The part that wasn't organized by poison or plant family—but by names.
It was titled, simply: "Inherited Watchlist."
It had been a mystery for a long time. She once believed it was a paranoid list of enemies. The people her mother feared.
But what if it wasn't fear?
What if it was inheritance?
The names came back to her now. Keene. Vale. Delacroix.
People Esme had already crossed out.
And below those—
Five more.
The ones from the envelope.
Only now, a sixth had been added.
Her fingers froze over the name, recently typed in neat black ink and glued onto the page.
Liam Miller
Her pulse didn't jump.
It stopped.
She stared at the letters. At the crisp, impersonal font. At the monstrous implication.
She didn't put that name there.
She thought the list just consisted of people that the sender had problems with that just so happened to be in sync with the people she targeted.
The list didn't exactly add any new names. It just bumped those specific people up so they died faster.
And Liam's name had just appeared there.
Not in her mother's hand, and definitely not in hers.
Someone had added it while she was away.
Esme closed the book with a soft snap, holding it against her chest.
Outside, the city hummed. Sirens in the far distance. Wind curling like breath through the alley cracks.
She reached for her phone but didn't dial.
She thought of Liam. Of the way he had looked at her the last time they spoke—like he almost knew, but didn't want to know.
Then she remembered seeing a woman in the alley from the market.
The tremor in her hands.
The way her eyes had tracked Liam.
Was he being watched now?
Was he already marked?
Esme moved to the front of the shop, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and pulled down the metal security grate she rarely used.
Tonight, she would not sleep.
She would read every page of Helena's ledger. Every note. Every marginal scribble. Every underlined symptom.
Because someone had turned Liam Miller into a name on the list.
And whether he was a threat... or a warning...
Esme needed to know which side of the garden he stood on.