Chapter 151 Escalation

Chapter 151 Escalation
Anya's POV

My mom's voice is the first thing that tells me something's wrong, even before I see it, thin and tight over the phone, trying too hard to sound calm.

"Anya, honey, I need you to come home. Now. Don't panic, but" A pause that says more than words could. "Someone's been in the apartment."

I don't remember the walk from school. I remember Levi's hand gripping mine so hard it almost hurts, remember him telling the driver to go faster like sheer will could bend traffic, remember my own heartbeat roaring louder than anything else in the world. By the time we reach my building, two police officers are already standing in the hallway outside our door, and my mom is sitting on the stairs with her arms wrapped around herself like she's trying to hold her own body together.

"Nothing's stolen," one of the officers tells me gently, like that's supposed to be reassuring. "TV's still here. Jewelry, laptop, all untouched. Whoever did this wasn't after anything."

"Then why" My voice cracks. "Why would someone break in and not take anything?"

The officer's expression shifts, careful in a way that makes my stomach drop before he even answers. "You should probably see it yourself."

My room looks the same at first glance, bed made, desk cluttered the way I left it that morning, curtains still drawn the way I like them. It takes a second for my eyes to catch what's wrong, and when they do, the floor seems to tilt beneath me.

Every photo of me and Levi, every printed picture I'd tucked into the frame of my mirror, has been turned face-down. Not torn. Not destroyed. Just deliberately, carefully turned around, like someone stood in my room and flipped each one over with methodical, patient hands.

And on my desk, centered perfectly on a blank sheet of paper, sits a single word written in careful, unhurried handwriting.

SOON.

I don't remember making a sound, but Levi's arms are around me before I fully register that I'm shaking, that my knees have gone weak enough that I might actually fall.

"I've got you," he says against my hair, voice rough with barely-contained fury. "I've got you, I'm right here."

"He was in my room, Levi." My voice comes out small, nothing like the girl who wrote that article two weeks ago, nothing like the girl who stood in a parking garage and refused to back down. "He touched my things. He stood right here and"

"I know." His hold tightens. "I know, and I swear to you, this ends now."

The police take photos, dust for prints, ask questions I answer in a voice that doesn't sound like mine. My mom hovers in the doorway, pale, her hand pressed over her mouth like she's holding back something enormous. When the officers finally leave, with a promise to "increase patrols in the area," which feels like nothing, feels like paper armor against a man who's already proven he can walk into my life whenever he chooses, the apartment falls into a silence so heavy I can barely breathe through it.

"I want to go to the police with everything," Levi says, pacing my living room like it might help him outrun the anger radiating off him. "The messages, Marcus's logs, the parking garage, all of it. Right now."

"They already have the note. They already know"

"They know about a break-in. They don't know about Voss." He stops pacing, turns to me, and the desperation in his face nearly breaks something open in my chest. "Anya, I should have gone straight to the police the second he threatened you in that garage. I hesitated because I was trying to figure out how to do this without blowing up my father's business relationship, and look what that hesitation cost you."

"You didn't do this," I say, quiet but firm, even though my hands are still trembling. "He did. Don't you dare stand there and take the blame for a man who broke into my home."

"I brought him into your life the second I said your name at that gala."

"You gave me something real." My voice shakes, but I don't back down from it. "I don't regret that. I won't let you make me regret that."

He crosses the room and pulls me against his chest again, and I let myself stay there, listening to his heartbeat hammering as hard as mine, both of us scared in a way neither of us knows how to fully say out loud.

"I'm not leaving you alone," he says into my hair. "Not for a second. Not until this is over."

"You can't stand guard outside my door forever, Levi."

"Watch me."

I want to laugh, but it comes out as something closer to a sob, and he holds me tighter, like he can physically shield me from a threat that's already proven it doesn't need to be in the room to terrify me.

"He knows things about me," I whisper. "My schedule. My apartment. What I keep on my mirror. That's not a business associate protecting a deal anymore, Levi. That's, that's obsession. That's something else."

Levi goes very still against me, and I feel the exact moment the same realization lands in him too, cold, sharp, undeniable.

"Marcus needs to dig deeper," he says slowly. "Not just into what Voss has done. Into why. Fourteen years of loyalty doesn't explain someone breaking into your bedroom to turn photos face-down like some kind of." He stops himself, jaw tight, like he can't finish the sentence without making it more real than either of us can handle right now.

I pull back just enough to look at him, my hands fisted in the front of his shirt, my whole body still trembling from the adrenaline and fear tangled together.

"Promise me something," I say.

"Anything."

"Promise me we find out exactly what this is before it gets worse. Because that note didn't feel like a warning to back off." My voice cracks on the last word, the one I've been avoiding since I first saw it on my desk. "It felt like a promise."

Levi's expression hardens into something I've never seen on him before, not anger exactly, but resolve, cold and absolute.

"Then we make sure it's a promise he never gets to keep," he says, and for the first time since we walked into my apartment, I let myself believe him.