Chapter 6 - The Blackmail Attempt
The storm broke on Tuesday.
I was at the shop with Clara, sitting at my desk doing invoicing with my left hand, when my cell phone rang. It was an unknown number with a downtown Minneapolis area code.
I put it on speaker. “Juniper & Rose, this is Audrey.”
“Audrey. It’s Chase.”
His voice was entirely different from the smug, mocking tone he’d used at Christmas. It was tight, strained, vibrating with a desperate, suppressed rage.
“I told you never to call this number, Chase,” I said coldly.
“Listen to me, you little hypocrite,” he hissed, dropping all pretense. “Tell your attack dog of a husband to pull that municipal filing. Tell him right now.”
I leaned back against my chair, glancing at Clara, who stopped arranging stems to listen. “I don’t tell Daniel how to do his engineering work, Chase. He reports structural flaws. That’s what engineers do.”
“It’s not a flaw! It was an administrative misunderstanding!” Chase’s voice cracked slightly. “Do you know what he did? He sent that report directly to the State Commissioner and cc’d my father’s entire executive board! They’ve halted construction! There are four city inspectors on my site right now drilling core samples!”
“Then I guess you’d better hope the concrete is solid,” I replied smoothly.
“If those inspectors fail that pour, the tear-out and repour will cost four point two million dollars,” Chase snarled. “My father will remove me from the company. Do you understand what that means? It means Brooke doesn’t get her house in Wayzata. It means your father’s consulting firm gets blacklisted across the entire Twin Cities metro area. My father will bury him!”
“My father made his own bed when he chose you over his daughter,” I said, surprised by how steady my voice remained.
“You think you’re untouchable?” Chase’s laugh was ugly, jagged. “Check your shop’s Google page, Audrey. Check your Yelp. Check the Twin Cities Brides Facebook group. Let’s see how many bouquets the ‘flower girl’ sells after today.”
The line went dead.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down my spine. I opened my browser with my left hand, typing frantically.
My heart sank.
Over the last two hours, forty-seven one-star reviews had flooded my business profiles:
*“Juniper & Rose took our five-thousand-dollar deposit and canceled two weeks before the wedding!”*
*“The owner, Audrey Collins, showed up drunk and destroyed our centerpieces!”*
*“Rude, unprofessional, and entirely unhinged. Avoid this shop at all costs!”*
On the Twin Cities Brides forum, an anonymous post featuring a photo of my storefront was gaining rapid traction: *BEWARE: Local florist Audrey Collins has a history of violent disputes and breaches of contract.*
A review bomb. Chase had hired a digital reputation mill or used his father’s marketing contacts to systematically destroy my business before the day was out.
The bell above the door chimed.
I looked up, expecting Daniel, but instead, it was my father.
Robert Reynolds looked older than his sixty-two years. His silver hair was disheveled, his overcoat unbuttoned against the January wind, his eyes hollowed out by dark circles.
“Audrey,” he said, stepping into the shop.
Clara took one look at my father’s face, whispered that she was going on her lunch break, and slipped out the back.
“Did you come to threaten me too, Dad?” I asked, keeping my hands resting on the desk.
Dad stopped in front of the counter. He looked down at the floor, then at my sling, then finally at my eyes.
“Chase’s father called me an hour ago,” Dad said, his voice flat, defeated. “He told me that if Daniel doesn’t retract the engineering report by five o’clock, my firm is cut from the subcontracting roster. Audrey... I owe three hundred thousand dollars on our credit lines. If this contract falls through, your mother and I will have to sell the house.”
I felt a sharp, hollow pang in the center of my chest. “Why did you do it, Dad?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you let him do it to me?”
Dad closed his eyes. “It was a joke, Audrey. It was just a stupid joke that went wrong—”
“He pulled a chair from under a grown woman on marble tile!” I slammed my left palm down onto the counter. The sound cracked like a whip. “I screamed in pain! I was on the floor at your feet! And you looked at Chase Holloway and said, *‘Robert gets it.’* You traded my safety for a commercial subcontract!”
Dad flinched as if I had struck him. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s the exact truth! You let him humiliate me, you let him break my arm, and then Mom demanded Daniel buy him a new suit because he’s rich and you wanted his father’s money!” Tears of pure, cleansing fury burned my eyes. “And now you come into my shop—while he is actively trying to destroy my life’s work with fake reviews—and you ask me to protect you?”
“Audrey, please,” my father choked out, his shoulders slumping. “We’re family.”
May you like
“Family protects each other, Dad,” I said, pointing toward the door with my left hand. “Daniel protects me. You protected your bank account. Now get out of my shop before I call the police.”
***
