*CHAPTER 3: THE DIARY'S FIRST RIDDLE**
The smell hit Carter the moment Lila Hawthorne opened her apartment door—vodka, vanilla perfume, and something sharper underneath. Grief.
The living room looked like a warzone. A designer handbag lay upended near the doorway, its contents scattered across the hardwood floor like shrapnel. Makeup bottles crowded the coffee table, their caps missing, lipsticks melted into abstract wax sculptures atop unpaid bills. A half-empty bottle of Grey Goose stood sentinel beside a single smudged glass, its rim stained with the ghost of last night's lipstick.
Lila herself was curled into the corner of an overstuffed sofa, knees drawn to her chest. She clutched a wad of tissues in one hand, the other worrying at a loose thread in her cashmere sweater. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath them bruised purple from sleepless nights.
Julia stepped inside first, her boots avoiding the debris with practiced ease. "Lila," she said, softer than Carter had ever heard her speak to a witness. "We know this is painful. But Charlotte needs you right now."
Lila's laugh came out as a wet cough. "That's funny. Charlotte doesn't need anything anymore." She reached for the vodka bottle, then seemed to think better of it. "I already told the uniforms everything."
Carter leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. The apartment smelled like a college dorm after finals week—desperation and bad decisions. "Then tell us instead."
Lila's fingers tightened around the tissue. "You're not what I expected."
"Yeah?" Carter raised an eyebrow. "What'd you expect?"
"Someone older. Someone..." She waved a hand vaguely. "Less like a guy who'd card me at a liquor store."
Julia shot Carter a look that said *behave* before perching on the sofa's armrest. "Charlotte was scared," she prompted.
The change was instant. Lila's brittle bravado cracked like thin ice. She pressed a fist to her mouth, shoulders shaking. For a long moment, the only sounds were the hum of the refrigerator and the ragged pull of her breath.
"She kept finding them," Lila finally whispered. "White roses. In her locker. On her pillow. Once..." Her throat worked. "Once in her *shower*."
Julia's pen froze mid-scribble. "Did she see who left them?"
Lila shook her head. "Just notes. Always the same phrase—*'The Gardener prunes with love.'*" She reached for the vodka again, this time pouring a shaky finger into the glass. "At first we laughed about it. Some rich bitch's idea of a prank, you know?"
Carter pushed off the doorframe. "When did it stop being funny?"
"The night she woke up screaming." Lila's fingers trembled around the glass. "Said someone had been in her room. That they'd left a rose *in her mouth* while she slept."
A chill crawled down Carter's spine.
Julia leaned forward. "Did she report it?"
"To who? Campus security?" Lila knocked back the vodka with a grimace. "Her dad had her transferred to a single off-campus apartment. Private security. The whole nine yards." She traced the glass's rim. "Didn't matter. The roses kept coming."
Carter exchanged a glance with Julia. *Escalation. Control. Signature behavior.*
"Lila," Julia said carefully. "Did Charlotte mention anything unusual about her father's business?"
The girl's head snapped up. "You think this is about *roses*?" Her laugh was jagged. "She thought they were *engineering* them. Not just colors or whatever—she said they were making something *inside* the plants."
Carter's pulse kicked. "Like what?"
"I don't know! She wouldn't tell me!" Lila surged to her feet, pacing past a tower of unopened textbooks. "But she started carrying that damn diary everywhere. Said it was the only proof."
Julia stood, intercepting Lila's path. "Where is it now?"
For a heartbeat, Carter thought she'd refuse. Then Lila crossed to a Pottery Barn bookshelf, her fingers skipping over Austen and Fitzgerald until they found the gap behind *Wuthering Heights*.
The journal she pulled out was bound in blood-red leather, its cover embossed with a single rose.
"Be careful," Lila whispered, pressing it into Julia's hands. "She died for whatever's in there."
Julia opened it.
The first page bore a single line of elegant script:
***Sic parvis magna.***
Julia's breath caught. "Latin. 'Great things from small beginnings.'"
Carter peered over her shoulder. "Sir Francis Drake's motto. What, was our girl studying for pirate exams?"
Julia turned the page. The next spread was a chaos of sketches—roses with too many thorns, a greenhouse with shadowy figures, something that might have been a chemical formula half-scratched out. And in the bottom corner, barely visible:
"Sub rosa."
Carter's smirk died.
Because beneath the words, Charlotte had drawn something else—a single rose, its petals peeled back to reveal not stamens, but a tiny, perfect human skull.
Lila's vodka glass hit the floor.
"Told you," she said hoarsely. "Some secrets *bite*."
The room tilted on its axis. Outside, a car alarm wailed like a warning. Somewhere in the diary's pages, the ghost of a dead girl whispered secrets—and for the first time, Carter wondered if they were hunting a killer...
...or something much, much worse.