Chapter 4

As soon as Robert heard that he had to pay such a large sum of money, he immediately backed down.

I demanded legal action. The compensation I was entitled to was absolutely going to be received.

After handling everything at the police station, I returned to the shop. I looked at the mess all over the floor and felt incredibly frustrated.

This flower shop... I had spent five years building it up, little by little, into what it was today.

The small chandelier hanging from the ceiling was something I had installed with my own hands. The fabric on the sofa was cut and sewn by me, piece by piece.

The flowers and plants in the shop had been taken care of by me for a long time as well.

In past years, I would usually make a little extra money on Valentine's Day. But today, with the mess that Robert had caused, I couldn't even make a profit—forget about earning money; I was losing everything.

This couldn't go on. I had to pull myself together. So, I began cleaning up the mess.

I sold off the remaining fresh flowers at a low price.

The next day, I noticed that there were noticeably fewer customers in my shop.

But a few days later, a large order suddenly came in.

The customer said it was for a birthday party.

I couldn't help but feel a little relieved, thinking that the loss caused by Robert might finally be recovered through this big order.

I took a quick look at the recipient's name—Jameson Cox.

Robert's incident had made me extra cautious.

I decided to call the customer to confirm everything.

It was a big order, and if the customer canceled at the last minute, I'd lose a huge amount of money again.

The customer replied politely, so I felt a bit more at ease.

Robert had been detained, so I assumed he would have learned his lesson.

But I still felt a little uneasy inside.

When I finally delivered and set up all the flowers, my previous unease turned into reality.

Robert appeared with a group of people, grinning lecherously at me.

"Hey, isn't this the owner of Daily Blossom?" he mocked.

I quickly realized that he was nothing but a thug—how could he possibly let this go so easily?

"What do you want?" I asked, feeling both frustrated and unwilling to back down.

I had worked so hard to run this flower shop. What did I do to deserve this? Was it just because I didn't let him take advantage that he wanted to get back at me?

Seeing my furious expression, Robert laughed loudly, but then his face turned dark.

"I was locked up for ten days because of your call to the police, and I had to pay thousands of dollars in compensation. How could I just let you off the hook? No way!"

He spat, spreading his hands wide.

"One hundred thousand dollars in compensation, not a penny less. Otherwise, you'll regret it!"

To my surprise, just a few days later, even the amount of the compensation had gone up.

One hundred thousand dollars—this was almost half a year's profit from my flower shop. How could I possibly pay him that much?

"That's impossible! I won't give you a single penny!" I said firmly.

I dropped the flowers and walked out. He had a lot of people with him, and I was afraid of what they might do to me, so I left quickly, my palms sweating. I kept my guard up, thinking I would call the police if anything went wrong.

But they didn't do anything.

Fortunately, they had already paid in advance. And since I believed there was nothing wrong with the flowers, I thought that even if they came up with all kinds of excuses, I was confident they couldn't just get a refund.

I kept reassuring myself.

But when I got home and checked the messages on DoorDash, I was stunned.