PART 1 — THE ROSES WITHOUT A NAME
The bouquet arrived shortly after noon.
One hundred yellow roses.
I had just finished rinsing my coffee cup when the doorbell echoed through the quiet house. My husband, Daniel, was supposedly away on a week-long business trip, so I was not expecting anyone.
When I opened the door, a deliveryman stood behind an enormous wall of golden flowers.
“Amber?”
“Yes.”
“These are for you.”
The bouquet was so heavy that I had to grip it with both arms. The roses were flawless, their petals glowing beneath the afternoon light.
“Someone must really want to impress you,” the deliveryman said.
I searched between the flowers for a card.
There was none.
“No message?”
He checked the small florist label.
“Only your name.”
At first, I smiled.
Daniel had never been good with romantic notes. Once, he sent me a necklace without a card and later claimed the jewellery explained itself. After eighteen years of marriage, I knew his quiet way of showing affection.
I carried the roses into the dining room and placed them in the centre of the table. For a few moments, they seemed to transform the entire house.
Then uneasiness crept in.
Daniel knew I loved white roses.
I had carried white roses at our wedding. He bought them after my mother died. They decorated our table on our fifteenth anniversary.
He would never have chosen yellow.
Then I noticed the number printed on the florist’s tag.
Exactly one hundred.
Not ninety-nine.
Not one hundred and one.
Daniel was thoughtful, but he was not extravagant. There was no birthday, anniversary, or special occasion.
I called him.
The phone rang until voicemail answered.
I sent a message.
“Did you send me flowers?”
No reply.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
The bouquet no longer looked romantic. It appeared strangely deliberate, almost as though it had been placed in my home for a reason.
I walked around the table, studying the arrangement. The roses had been organised into ten precise rows of ten.
Near the centre, several flowers sat lower than the others.
I leaned closer.
One rose had a tiny red stain hidden 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 the police.
The dispatcher asked whether I was in immediate danger.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But the bouquet has one hundred yellow roses and three of them are marked.”
Two officers arrived within an hour. They examined the flowers politely, clearly wondering whether I was frightened by an innocent mistake.
Then a dark sedan pulled into the driveway.
A silver-haired detective named Kellan entered the house. When I mentioned my father’s name, his expression changed.
“I worked with him,” he said.
Kellan approached the bouquet.
The instant he saw the three red marks, the colour disappeared from his face.
“Secure the house,” he ordered.
One officer looked confused.
“Sir?”
“Do it now.”
I gripped the back of a chair.
“You recognise them.”
Kellan looked directly at me.
“Twenty-two years ago, three women vanished. Before each disappearance, the victim received exactly one hundred yellow roses.”
“And the red marks?”
“Three marked flowers every time.”
My stomach turned.
Kellan explained that my father believed the number represented completion—a final cycle, a final goodbye.
The flowers were not a gift.
They were a warning.
