CHAPTER 18: THE ONE WHO WATCHES

The house didn't just hold words anymore. It held him and it irritated Seraphina how much control this person had over her mood.

“Oh fuck no.” She whispered, Stephanie turned…confused.

“Sera?” But she was staring blankly at the picture.

“Fuck. No.”

Seraphina stared at the pictures spread across the book, stared at the picture that fell to the ground and remembered the “YOU LOOKED BEHIND YOU” written a night before like she was some sick joke.

And felt something crack inside her chest…not even break but crack. Like a fault line splitting through stone, slow and deep, releasing something she'd been holding back for days.

Fear curdled into something hotter and sharper.

Rage.

"Give me the bat," she said, still not looking at Stephanie. Stephanie, still frozen in the doorway with her phone halfway to her ear, blinked. "What?"

"The bat. Remember the one you brought to kill Adrian with? Give it to me."

Stephanie didn't argue. 

She grabbed the aluminum baseball bat from where she'd dropped it by the bedroom door and handed it over like she was passing a sacred relic. 

Seraphina gripped the handle so tightly her knuckles went white and walked to the bathroom mirror and swung.

CRACK.

The mirror shattered into a thousand jagged pieces, raining down like falling stars. Her reflection fractured into a dozen versions of herself. Each one tired.

Each one furious and each one was done.

Stephanie flinched and smiled.

"...Okay. That was very therapeutic."

"There are cameras," Seraphina said, her voice flat and steady in a way that surprised even her. 

"Oh that was from me?” She placed a hand on her mouth sheepishly.

“Gurl.” Stephanie smiled and Seraphina continued.

“So I'm saying he's been watching me. He's still watching me. I'm not going to sit here and wait for him to get bored." 

“But those men said there's no cameras…”

“We'll have to find out for ourselves.”

Then she turned, bat still in hand, and walked out of the bathroom.

*****

The next hour was a blur of destruction and discovery.

Seraphina tore through her own house like a woman possessed by what wouldn't be named. 

Stephanie followed behind her, less with a bat and more with a screwdriver she'd found in the kitchen drawer, opening vent covers and unscrewing light fixtures…if Seraphina thought there were cameras, then they were.

They found the first camera in the living room. A tiny, almost invisible lens embedded in the smoke detector. Seraphina stared at it for a long moment, her breathing shallow. 

She'd been sitting on that couch every night, crying, laughing, sleeping... and he'd seen all of it?

“I knew I wasn't fucking crazy!” She smashed it with the bat and continued the search.

The second camera was in the hallway, hidden inside the frame of a painting she'd hung herself and the third was in the bathroom…her bathroom, angled perfectly at the shower.

By the time they finished, there was a pile of shattered plastic and glass on the kitchen island. Seraphina's hands were shaking. Not from fear…but from fury.

"He's been inside my house," she whispered, her teeth closed. "Multiple times. Walking around, touching things, probably sitting his ass in my chair and drinking my coffee, then watching me sleep like it was a movie."

Stephanie was already dialing when Seraphina turned 

“What are you doing?”

“I'm calling Adrian."

"Steph—"

"He deserves to know his penthouse is probably rigged too and he has better security contacts than we do." Stephanie pressed the phone to her ear, her jaw tight. "Besides, he's the reason this started so he owes you."

Seraphina opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat because Stephanie was right.

****

The phone call was shorter than Seraphina expected. She didn't even hear Adrian's side. Stephanie had walked into the other room to talk but she heard him.

His voice slipped through the walls, sharp and alarmed, rising in a way she'd rarely heard from the composed CEO he claimed to be. When Stephanie returned, her expression was grim.

"He's coming over."

"The fuck?”

“He is.”

“Absolutely not."

"He's already in the car." Seraphina pressed her palms against the kitchen counter and exhaled slowly. She didn't want to see him. Not here at least and not like this.

Her house was torn apart, her eyes still swollen, her hair a mess, wearing a hoodie that still smelled like him because she hadn't been able to bring herself to take it off during her rage. But the doorbell rang twenty minutes later and there he stood.

Adrian Vale, dressed in a wrinkled shirt. Wrinkled. With dark circles under his eyes and eye bags that made him look older than thirty-two. He looked wrecked and ruined. Like he hadn't slept since the divorce, either.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Adrian's eyes drifted past her, into the house, where pieces of shattered camera littered the island and his jaw tightened.

"Sera..." His voice cracked on her name. "Tell me what happened." And something in Seraphina's chest…the part that had been frozen solid since the restaurant, thawed just a fraction.

She stepped aside and let him in.