beneath a petal.
I thought it was a natural flaw until I found another.
Then a third.
Exactly three roses had been secretly marked in red.
My hands began to shake.
I had seen that pattern before.
Years earlier, my father, a homicide detective, had mentioned an unsolved case involving flowers. He never shared every detail, but I remembered him sitting on our porch late one night, staring into the darkness.
“Some monsters don’t leave fingerprints,” he had said. “They leave symbols.”
I grabbed my phone.
This time, I called
