The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 197

"Wow." Sophia's eyes lit up. "That's incredibly romantic. Who's the deeply devoted client? Are they trying to win someone over?"

"Win someone over." Annelise repeated the words, a faint, almost mocking curve touching the corners of her lips. "I suppose you could say that."

"Then why did you refund it?" Sophia looked confused. "That's a huge sum of money."

"Because the person sending them," Annelise said flatly, "thinks that if they just buy enough flowers, they can bring something dead back to life."

Sophia looked completely bewildered.

She scratched her head, not entirely grasping the underlying meaning.

But she was sharp enough to notice that her boss's mood was vastly different from usual.

It wasn't anger, and it wasn't sadness.

It was a bone-chilling, absolute calmness she had never seen on Annelise before.

"Alright," Sophia tactfully dropped the subject. "Whatever you decide is always the right call anyway."

She turned around to reorganize the display shelves.

Annelise sat alone behind the counter, staring out the window.

People hurried back and forth on the street, but the figure that had been standing under the tree was nowhere to be seen.

She knew Hackett had been discharged from the hospital.

He was still in the city.

The fact that he had placed this order using Felix's account proved he hadn't given up. He was still probing, searching for any crack to wedge himself back into her life.

But there were no cracks left.

She had long since shut all the doors and welded them closed. Not even a sliver of light could get through.

He could keep standing in the rain, keep making himself sick, keep lying in a hospital bed whispering her name.

He could keep throwing money around, keep hiding his identity, and keep using ninety-nine bouquets of daisies to weave an impossible fantasy.

But she would not respond.

Not with a single word.

The refund notification should have hit the domestic account by now.

Annelise could picture Hackett's expression the moment he saw the words "Refunded to original payment method."

Maybe shock.

Maybe utter disbelief.

Maybe another wave of irretrievable despair as reality viciously shattered him once again.

But she didn't care.

She found even the act of imagining it entirely unnecessary.

That man's joy, anger, grief, illness, regret, and resentment had absolutely nothing to do with her anymore.

It was as if they were separated by an impossibly wide river.

She suddenly felt that perhaps she was just a daisy herself.

Washed out and eroded by the violent rapids of the Lehman family for four years, all her edges ground away until she was practically dead.

But the moment she left that toxic soil and breathed in the crisp, clean Scandinavian air...

She had come back to life.

And she was blooming better than ever before.

As for the man still trying to send her ninety-nine bouquets.

He would probably never understand.

She never wanted flowers.

She wanted a patch of earth where she could grow freely on her own terms.

And that earth was something he could never give her.

He never could.

Annelise pulled her hand back and headed up the stairs.

The sound of hammering and Emma's crisp voice drifted down from the studio.

It was the sound of her new world taking root.

She quickened her pace toward that sound, never looking back at the potted daisy, and never sparing a single second of her gaze for that long-rotted old dream ever again.