Now she's ready for the next lesson.
I dress carefully, casually—dark jeans, a charcoal sweater, a coat that costs more than her monthly rent but doesn't look like it. I want to appear approachable. Normal. The kind of man she might meet at a party and find charming. Not the man she saw standing over a corpse with blood on his hands.
That man is still here, of course. He's always here. But he's not the one she's going to meet today.
The flower market occupies a converted warehouse on the edge of the arts district. High ceilings, industrial lighting, the smell of vegetation so thick it coats the back of your throat. Vendors crowd narrow aisles with buckets of blooms—roses, lilies, orchids, things I couldn't name and don't care to learn.
I've never been here before. I've never had reason to be.
Now I have a reason.
I arrive early, positioning myself near the entrance where I can watch without being seen. The market is busy at this hour, full of florists, event planners and restaurateurs stocking up for the weekend. I scan the crowd with practiced ease, cataloging faces, tracking movements, waiting.
She appears at 9:47, exactly on schedule.
She looks terrible. Dark circles under her eyes, her hair pulled back in a messy knot, her shoulders hunched as if bracing against a blow. She's wearing jeans and a gray sweater—the same sweater she wore to the estate, I realize, which sends an unexpected pulse of pleasure through my chest.
She moves through the market like a woman walking through a minefield. Her eyes dart constantly, scanning faces, checking corners. Every few steps, she glances behind her, a nervous tic she probably doesn't even notice.
She's looking for me.
She won't find me. Not until I want her to.
I follow her at a distance, weaving through the crowd, keeping other bodies between us. It's easy to be invisible when you know how. Most people move through the world without truly seeing it, their attention absorbed by phones and shoppinglists and the mundane concerns of their mundane lives. I've learned to exploit those blind spots, to exist in the spaces where no one thinks to look.
She stops at Georgios's stall. The old Greek greets her with a smile that fades when he sees her face.
"Poppy,koukla mou, you look tired. You sleeping?"
"Not much." Her voice carries to me, thin and strained. "Do you have any white roses? I need them for a funeral arrangement."
"For you, always the best." He moves to his buckets, selecting blooms with practiced care. "You want I should set aside the dahlias? Black ones coming next week. Very beautiful."
She flinches at the word. Dahlias. Black dahlias. The flower I left on her doorstep, the message she can't ignore.
"No," she says, too quickly. "No dahlias. Not for a while."
Georgios frowns but doesn't push. He wraps the roses in brown paper, takes her cash, pats her hand with grandfatherly concern. "You take care of yourself,koukla. Eat something. Sleep. Whatever it is, it passes."
She nods without conviction and moves on.
I watch her make her way through the rest of the market. She's mechanical, joyless, selecting flowers without any of the care I observed before the gala. Her hands shake slightly as she counts out cash. She drops a coin at one stall and nearly bumps into another customer reaching down to retrieve it.
She's coming apart. Slowly, quietly, in ways that only someone watching closely would notice.
I've been watching very closely.
Part of me wants to prolong this—to stay hidden, to let her paranoia build until she can't function at all. There's pleasure in watching someone unravel, in knowing you're the cause even if they can't see you. The anticipation is almost as satisfying as the act itself.
But I'm tired of waiting. I've been patient for five days, and patience is not what I feel when I look at her.
I want to see her face when she realizes I'm standing in front of her. I want to watch her try to reconcile the monster with the man. I want to feel her hand in mine and know that she can't pull away, can't scream, can't do anything but stand there and smile while her world collapses around her.
I want toplay.
I let her finish her shopping. Let her move toward the exit, her arms full of wrapped bouquets, her eyes still scanning. She's almost to the door when I step into her path.
"Excuse me—"
