MasukSERENAGoing back to the bakery felt like stepping onto a stage.Everyone was watching. I could feel it in the way Lily kept glancing at me from the mixer, the way Arya stopped midsentence whenever I walked into a room, the way the new hires whispered to each other when they thought I couldn't hear. They knew something was wrong. They didn't know what. But they could see it in my face, in the way I checked the windows, in the way I held my phone like a lifeline.Lily cornered me in the back office an hour into my shift."Talk," she said, closing the door behind her."About what?""About whatever has you looking like you haven't slept in a week. About the security cameras Aiden installed on your porch. About the way you flinch every time your phone buzzes." She crossed her arms. "I'm not stupid, Serena. Something is going on."I wanted to lie. Wanted to protect her from the mess that was swallowing my life. But she was my best friend. She'd followed me to Miami, helped me build this bu
SERENAThree days passed with nothing.No notes, no texts, no shadows at the edge of the property. The house settled back into its familiar rhythm, but the quiet felt different now. It wasn't peace. It was waiting. The kind of waiting that happened before a storm, when the air got heavy and the sky turned green and every animal on the street went silent.Marcus called every evening with updates that weren't updates. Charles Whitmore's last known address was a condo in Manhattan that had been sold six months ago. His phone was disconnected. His email bounced back. He had withdrawn a significant amount of cash from his accounts before disappearing, enough to live on for months without leaving a trail."He's gone underground," Marcus said. "Which means he's planning something. Someone who just wanted to scare you wouldn't go to this much trouble."Aiden paced the living room while Marcus talked, his phone pressed to his ear, his face tight. I sat on the couch with Hope in my lap, a book
SERENAThe police came and went within an hour.Two officers, a man and a woman, both young, both trying hard to look like they'd seen worse than a typed note on a suburban front door. They took the note, asked their questions, typed their reports. They told us to be careful, to call if anything else happened, to consider installing security cameras. Then they left, and the house felt emptier than before.Marcus Webb arrived forty minutes later. He'd flown back to Miami the night before, a fact that made me wonder how much Eleanor was paying him and how much of our lives she now had access to. He examined the door, the note, the surveillance footage from our neighbor across the street, which showed nothing useful. A figure in a hoodie, face obscured, approaching the house at 3am, leaving something on the door, disappearing into the dark."Professional," Marcus said. "Or someone who's done this before."Aiden stood by the window, his arms crossed, his face hard. "Professional what? Thi
SERENAThe text message sat on my phone like a threat I couldn't look away from.I read it again on the couch after Hope was asleep, after Aiden had made calls I couldn't hear, after the house had settled into its usual evening quiet. I saw you at the park. With the old woman. I know who she is. You should be careful. The words hadn't changed since the first time I'd read them, but they felt heavier now. More deliberate.Aiden came back from the kitchen with two glasses of wine, even though neither of us really wanted to drink. He set them on the coffee table and sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched."The number is a burner," he said. "Untraceable. Probably bought with cash somewhere, used once, already disconnected.""So whoever sent this planned ahead. They didn't want to be found.""Or they're careful. Either way, it's not good."I turned the phone over in my hands. "What do they want? If they wanted to hurt us, they wouldn't have sent a warning. They would have j
SERENAThe park was crowded for a Tuesday morning.I hadn't expected that. I'd thought we would have the place mostly to ourselves, just a few nannies and young mothers, the usual midweek quiet. But there was a school field trip happening, dozens of children in matching yellow shirts swarming the playground like locusts, their teachers trailing behind them with harried expressions and overstuffed backpacks.Eleanor stood at the edge of the chaos, holding Hope's hand, looking utterly lost.Aiden and I sat on a bench a respectful distance away, close enough to intervene, far enough to give the illusion of privacy. We'd agreed to this the night before, after a long conversation about boundaries and trust and what we were willing to risk. An hour at the park. Eleanor and Hope. Us watching from the sidelines. A test, of sorts. A chance for Eleanor to prove she could be trusted with our daughter, even in a crowded public space where nothing could really go wrong.But watching her now, stand
SERENAEleanor stayed for three hours that first day.She sat on the floor with Hope longer than anyone's knees should reasonably endure, building block towers and knocking them down, making silly noises that seemed entirely out of character for a woman who had once made me feel like an insect under a magnifying glass. Aiden made coffee, and I sat in the armchair across from them, watching, waiting for the other shoe to drop.It didn't.She asked questions about the house, the neighborhood, the bakery. She asked about Lily and Arya, about Carmen, about the new neighbors with the twins. She asked about everything except the past, except New York, except the night she'd come to my apartment and told me I didn't belong.I answered her questions politely but briefly. I wasn't ready to give her more than that. I wasn't sure I ever would be.When she finally stood up to leave, her knees creaking, her face tired, she looked at Aiden with an expression I couldn't quite read."Thank you," she
SERENAThe ride back to my apartment was so quiet that you could hear the pulsing of blood in my veins. I kept staring out the window, pretending to be interested in the streetlights and billboards, even though my mind was spinning.I hadn't said a single word since we left the theater. Not one. My
SERENAI clocked out a few minutes late that day because the system refused to sync my last report, and by the time I finally got downstairs, the building was mostly empty. The evening light was hitting the glass lobby walls at a very steep angle, tinting everything a soft shade of gold. Almost ev
ADRIANMilan was supposed to be fun, but after 48 hours, I was ready to bang my head against a brick wall. I sat at the head of the long marble table, pretending to listen as another board member droned on about "proactive sustainability measures" like he'd just invented the damn concept. Half the
SERENAThe next morning, I made it my mission to stay out of Adrian Knight's path like my life depended on it. I got to the office earlier than usual, skipped my morning coffee run, and practically hid behind my computer screen. Every time I heard the elevator ding, my stomach tightened. Every time







