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The Stalker Writes Back

مؤلف: ETHAN-QUILL
last update تاريخ النشر: 2026-04-28 15:52:35

Seraphina's phone buzzed at 3:17 a.m.

She was not asleep. She had been lying on her back, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Damien in her kitchen and Luna climbing into his lap uninvited. She turned her head to look at the screen.

A message from the unknown number.

She picked up the phone.

"You let him into your house. I watched him leave this morning. Were you thinking about me when he kissed you?"

The phone nearly slipped out of her hand.

Someone had been watching her house. This morning. From outside. Close enough to see Damien leave.

She sat up.

She called security. The same man answered who had come when she had pressed the panic button two nights ago.

"I need you here. Now. Tell me you have made progress on the trace."

"Ma'am. We are still working on it. The number is routing through a VPN in Estonia. Whoever is sending these knows what they are doing."

"They are outside my house. Right now."

A pause on the other end.

"Stay where you are. Lock the nursery door. We have a unit on its way. Two minutes."

She got out of bed. Walked to the nursery. Locked the door from inside. Luna was asleep. A small mountain of blanket and stuffed rabbit and soft breathing. Seraphina sat on the edge of her daughter's bed with her phone in her hand and waited.

She did not cry.

She did not panic.

She thought.

Whoever was sending these messages knew who she was. Knew she had been Mrs. Cross. Knew she had a daughter. Knew Damien was coming to the house. Was watching her closely enough to know what time Damien had left this morning. Had implied that Damien had kissed her, which he had not, which meant the person was close enough to see through windows but not close enough to hear words.

That was useful information.

She wrote it down in her head like a business plan.

Her phone buzzed again.

Security. Outside. They had swept the perimeter of the house. They had found something in the garden. A half smoked cigarette under the yew tree on the south side. Pink lipstick on the filter.

Pink lipstick.

The stalker was a woman.

Seraphina sat in her daughter's nursery with that information turning over in her mind, and something shifted.

She had been assuming Vanessa. In the back of her mind, without letting herself name it, she had been assuming that Vanessa had hired someone or had come herself to London.

But Vanessa was in Queens. Elena had traced her there. Vanessa had not been on a plane in six weeks.

This was not Vanessa.

This was someone else.

Someone who had been angry with her for long enough to find her in London. Who had been watching her for long enough to know her schedule. Who wanted her afraid.

Someone she had not identified yet.

Seraphina looked down at Luna. Her daughter had turned over in her sleep and put one small fist under her cheek.

"Nobody is going to hurt you," Seraphina whispered. "Nobody is going to hurt you ever. I will die first. Do you understand me? I will die first."

Luna did not wake up.

Seraphina stayed on the edge of the bed until the sun came up. She did not sleep. She did not move.

At 7 a.m., she picked up her phone and wrote a message to Damien.

"I need you to come back. Not for breakfast. For this. Someone has been watching my house. I have been getting texts. I need your help."

He replied in under a minute.

"On my way."

She set the phone down.

For the first time in three years, she had asked him for something.

She was not sure what it meant that she had done it.

She was not sure she wanted to know.

She sat on Luna's bed until the sun rose fully over the city. The nursery was painted a soft green. A mobile of paper stars hung over the crib. Luna had grown out of the crib six months ago but Seraphina had not been able to bring herself to take it down yet. The crib was the last baby thing left in the room. Once it was gone, Luna would officially be a child. No longer a baby. And Seraphina was not ready to stop having a baby.

She looked down at her daughter.

Two years old. Almost three. Missing a tooth. Talking in full sentences about cow weddings and pigeons named Geoffrey.

Time had not been slow for Seraphina. It had not been kind. But it had been moving, and it was going to keep moving, and one day this child would be grown and Seraphina would look back on this morning, this nursery, this stalker, this fear, and it would be a thing she had survived.

She pressed her lips to Luna's forehead.

"Nobody is going to take this from us," she whispered. "Do you hear me, baby? Nobody."

Luna did not wake up.

But she smiled in her sleep.

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