Rocco’s mother, before she’d been raped and murdered at the tender age of twenty-nine, liked to garden. Mom had a heroin habit but he got the sense, in retrospect, that she’d had a happy childhood. Someone had taught her how to nurture plants, how to splice, how to fertilize. Maybe she’d had a kind mother. When he was young and very alone Rocco liked to think he might have a grandma out there somewhere, and she’d take him in and tuck him into bed, teach him how to garden, but it had never happened. He’d instead ended up in foster care.

Mom grew flowers and she grew weed. For her personal consumption. One time his father had friends over and they got drunk and chopped up her young plant and tried to smoke it. Made them sick. She’d freaked out in the morning. Could picture it in his head like it had happened last week. Eating no-name Cheerios with water because they were out of milk. Mom cleaning the soil off the dirty linoleum floor, sweeping it onto a newspaper with her bare hand. Pop came down in his undershirt and sagging dirty briefs. He laughed at the mess, remembering his fine evening, and she’d gone after him. Pop was scrawny from malnutrition, drugs, and booze but he had heavy hands. One hit, not much windup, a jab really, but he caught her right in her open mouth. Rocco could remember her words extinguished with that punch, could hear the wet smack of her lips against her teeth, her grunt. Pop split her lips, a vertical hack that went up the center of both her bottom lip and her top lip. One line of bright red watery blood had squirted up her cheek on a forty-five degree angle. She sat down. Rocco did nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d witnessed his father hitting his mother. He was seven. He knew by seven not to cry. Sat and ate his cereal while his mother was on the floor, sobbing without making a sound, remembered her softly shaking shoulders and the red between her fingers clamped over her mouth. Pop turned his back to them and filled a dirty glass with water from the tap. Drank it, looking out the window over the colorless decaying neighborhood.

Rocco stood under an overhanging sign that had been fixed to its brick wall since the fifties. Probably as big as him, held out from the brick by criss crossing angle iron, two-sided so you could read it from whichever end of the busy city street you were coming from. Written across the top in a brush script it read, Prima, and then in vertical all caps below it read, Flowers. Rocco remembered this sign from when he was a kid, passing through the nice part of town, some of his friends trying to gather the courage to swipe some rich lady’s purse.

There was another thing Rocco remembered growing next to mom’s weed in the cheap plastic containers that lined the metal railings along the veranda. Yellow roses. It was a tiny memory, one gleaming jewel in a rubble of tragedy. Bright yellow roses that bloomed every two months. Mom put them on the porch when the weather was nice and had them in the window when it was cold. One time, when her addiction had eased its grip on her, she told him she liked yellow roses because they meant something to her. He said, What? She said, New beginnings.

Maybe mom’s new beginning was just around the corner. If those men hadn’t hit her over the head, stripped her and raped her, carved her up...maybe she would’ve got what she wanted some day. Got away from Pop, away from the drugs. He wasn’t sure she would have brought him. Wasn’t sure what she would have done if she wasn’t trapped. She was his mom but he hardly knew her. He knew she liked roses.

Below the old sign, on his right hand side, were three separate buildings, flat-faced red brick with curved arches over the windows of the apartments above. All three buildings knocked through at the sidewalls on the ground floor so you could wander the displays and the wholesale bulk bouquets in white buckets filled with yellowing water. He went in, parted the crowds with his intimidating bulk, stepping over hoses twisting along the concrete floor. Made his way to the back where there was a counter with a handful of employees putting together orders for customers. When it was his turn he ordered a dozen yellow roses.

Eyes were on him, other customers waiting, looking him up and down out of the sides of their heads. Big guy, leather jacket, mean-looking...buying flowers. He was in love. So what?

“Make it two dozen,” Rocco said. He nodded at a woman looking up at him. She grinned.

Guy in his green apron, tied in a dangling bow at the small of his back said, Yes, sir, with a professional smile. Doubled up the bouquet of bursting yellow roses meant for his Daniella. Wound the stems together with frizzy twine, then a silk ribbon. Lay it on a battered metal worktable littered with the short green cut stems. Rolled the roses in two layers of unbleached Kraft paper printed with faint gray paisley. More twine. More ribbon. Guy with the apron proudly presented the bouquet to Rocco with both hands. He paid cash, left a tip and worked his way out of the busy shop.

He should pick up breakfast. He was out anyway, the weather was nice. He’d bought supplies but Daniella would love a macchiatta. Maybe a couple of cornetto ripienos, pick up some Nutella. There was a bakery out by Garibaldi Park, wondered if it was still there. Old couple had it since the sixties. Came from Bari. Hardly spoke English. Would they still be alive? Maybe, it was only four years ago. It wasn’t that far, he’d drive southwest, head to Little Italy... He stopped. He was being stupid. Drive to Little Italy? A city full of killers, all of them mafia, he’s going to go to Little Italy, show his face? For a guy that made it this far surviving on wits he was being a real asshole these days. Supposed to be out finding who wanted Daniella dead, he’s holed up with her the whole time, doing nothing about it. Just eating and fucking and playing.

He wasn’t moving forward. He always liked to be moving forward. Or was he not? Was it moving forward but on a different angle? He smiled. Smelled his flowers. Like a gut punch that smell. One whiff and he’s on that patio with its potted plants, he’s in the kitchen as his mother cups her hand under her chin to collect her blood, he’s in the hall closet and watching her live her last moments—

New beginnings. This was about new beginnings. That smell would not be about the past anymore. These flowers were about what was next. The one gift he took from that poor young woman who bore him. The one thing she gave him was the concept of hope.

He crossed the busy street, a two-lane with parking on both sides. Hit the fob for the truck and its headlights winked at him. A young woman across the street, behind the truck, looked at him strangely. She looked much like his mother but well-dressed and groomed, the fresh skin of a girl who never got hooked on heroin. She had a baby in an old style carriage.

The paper of his bouquet ruffled stiffly, made a crackle. A yellow petal fluttered by his chin and he waved his hand at it to knock it away like it was a fly buzzing at his mouth. The woman’s face made to scream but no sound emerged. Her hands thrust into her baby carriage and his heart froze. She had a gun in there. His windshield suddenly sparkled and its gleaming reflective surface went to hazy crystal fragments, held in place by a white jagged spiderweb. He dropped the flowers. The woman rose. She had a baby. She clutched it to her chest.

He turned, drawing his pistol from the small of his back as he did. He was seared, lanced with white hot sizzling pain. One stab through his side. Above his hip by four inches, below his ribs. God, please not my spine, he thought. His leg was stabbed too, a bolt of heat dead center in the muscle between his knee and his hip. He laughed on the way down. Not at his predicament. He laughed at Daniella yesterday morning saying, You’re not going to wear your vest? and he said, I’m just making phone calls. His head hit the asphalt and he saw winter sky and snow. Fucking today he was buying flowers. Living this life meant you were never safe.

He raised his chin so he could see his killer, one that shot him in the back. Scrawny punk with sunglasses, watching for a break in the traffic, pistol held slackly at his side. A Glock with a six-inch suppressor. Professional gun, but he didn’t seem professional. Dangerous yes, psychopathic, most likely. Rocco’s gun was stuck and it wouldn’t move. The hitman got his break, gave a friendly wave to the driver of a Fedex truck oblivious to the shooting on the street. Rocco tugged the gun harder, angled his head to look down his body, between his boots, watch this guy coming for him. Rocco was on his gun, it was stuck under him. His heart pounded in his chest, he felt his neck swollen with adrenalin.

The scrawny guy was smiling. He had a set of uneven teeth that looked too small for his face. Dolphin teeth. His dolphin mouth was going to come over here and he was going to use it to ask him where Daniella was. When Rocco told him to go fuck himself he would stick something in the bullet hole. His finger. The hot barrel of the suppressor. His right knee came up with great effort. He let the knee fall to his left. It was enough. His gun hand and his gun were free.

Dolphin teeth stopped smiling, eyebrows raised above his glasses. Rocco shot him three times. Center mass, all hits, he went down while he was moving forward, one knee first then flat on his face.

Then Rocco was up. He was unsteady. He wouldn’t have long. The impact of the hits had stunned him but that was wearing off. Now he was bleeding but he would be jacked on adrenalin. That wouldn’t last long.

The hitman’s quiet silenced gun had brought no panic. Only the woman with the baby had fled. Her vintage carriage sat empty on the sidewalk on the far side of the pickup. Three shots from his Glock, however, had delivered the news that there was trouble in Printer’s Row. There were screams, yelling, fading now as pedestrians cleared the street. Traffic had stopped.

He stood bleeding in the street. He felt it pumping from him. Felt his back warm and wet. Wondered where that bullet might have went. Hit something, angled up and sat now precariously close to an artery, an organ? His leg was through and through. He could see that. Blood on both sides, pulp and flesh hanging out the tattered hole in his jeans where it had ripped through.

Think, Rocco, think. His ears rang.

Home in the truck? He could die before he got there. Or he could get there and have a team of killers right behind him, following his blood trail and right to Daniella. Daniella. They could be going for her right now. How did they know where he was? How did they find him?

Footsteps beat on the stone across the street. Two heads, bobbing along above the parked cars on the other side. No police hats, which was a relief. Didn’t need a tussle with Chicago’s baddest gang right now. He sidestepped to the door of the truck, his bouquet of yellow roses scattered around his boots.

Grabbed the door handle and yanked it open, turned and put two bullets into the grill of a car on the other side of the street. Bullets wouldn’t ricochet or bounce around, hit someone not looking for trouble. It sent the two bobbing heads scattering to the ground. He saw them pop up again, but now he had the key in the ignition of the big Chevy. It clanked and rattled to diesel life. His side window shattered but stayed in place, a jagged shape the size of a deck of cards fell into the cabin. Then his rearview mirror exploded. It jumped off the shattered windshield, spun a circle. Small jacks of glass went into his ear canal and down the collar of his shirt.

Put a fist in his windshield, punched a view-hole, hit the pedal with his heavy boot and the truck roared, lunged. He jagged a slash across the street at a wild angle. He drove over the body of the hitman face down on the center line and the truck barely bounced. He swiped the car the two heads had used for cover. Knocked the compact Kia on an angle right up onto the sidewalk. He heard a scream but it grew distant as he roared down the now vacant street. Oncoming traffic had disappeared, backed up and got the fuck out of Dodge. His steering was unsteady but his thoughts were clear and he was breathing and his heart was beating. All good things. His fingers and toes wiggled. Another good thing. He gripped the wheel tight. It wasn’t time yet for new beginnings. There were men he had to murder. But first there was a woman who needed him...