Chapter 22: INSIDE

Chapter 22: INSIDE
The first thing I noticed was what wasn’t wrong.

No drawers pulled open. No couch cushions tossed. No signs of someone tearing the place apart looking for something.

It was almost worse.

Because if someone had broken in and flipped my apartment upside down, I could’ve at least told myself it was a robbery gone weird. But this? The door slightly ajar. Everything exactly where I’d left it. It meant someone had been in here, moved through my space, touched my air… and cared enough to put it all back like they were folding hospital corners on my reality.

I stood there a beat too long, waiting for my heartbeat to decide between sprinting and stopping entirely.

Then I grabbed my phone.

“Two knocks and I’m here,” Dante said after the first ring, like I’d just asked for a pizza delivery.

“I didn’t knock.”

“Yet.”

“Dante...”

“On my way.” Click.

The line went dead.

I didn’t even try to guess how he got here in under four minutes. The man could’ve been hiding in my utility closet for all I knew. One second it was me alone in my apartment, the next the door was swinging open (all the way this time) and Dante was stepping in like my living room owed him money.

“Stay there,” he said.

Fine by me.

He moved through the space without sound, eyes cutting into corners like they could peel back drywall. He checked behind the couch, under the couch, around the windows, in my bedroom, the tiny hallway closet. Each pass was methodical, his expression the same one you see on chess players before they destroy someone in three moves.

When he reappeared in the living room, his gloved hand was holding something small, black, and ugly.

“What is that?”

“Your new roommate.”

I stepped closer, squinting. “Is that....”

“A listening device.” He turned it between his fingers like he was judging its manners. “Nothing fancy. But small enough to miss if you weren’t looking.”

My skin prickled. “Where was it?”

“Under your coffee table. Right on the support beam. Whoever put it there wanted to hear everything that happened in this room. Probably the TV, too, if they’re into soap operas.”

I folded my arms, partly to keep from snatching the thing and stomping it to death. “So what now? You torch it? Eat it? Throw it in the river?”

His mouth twitched. “Better. We feed it lies.”

I watched as he pulled something out of his jacket, a tiny replacement that looked almost identical, except the wire had that clean, unused gleam of new tech. He knelt, slid under the coffee table, and swapped them with the same precision you’d use defusing a bomb in a movie.

“This one’s ours,” he said, tapping the fake. “It’ll broadcast whatever we want. Music. White noise. Random conversations about nothing. Hell, we could narrate a cooking show.”

“So basically you’re turning my living room into an off-Broadway improv stage.”

“Exactly.”

I didn’t ask who we was.

I didn’t want to know how many other apartments had fake feeds humming away in the background while people lived their lives.

When he stood, I realized his eyes weren’t on me anymore—they were aimed past my shoulder.

I turned.

Steve Freeman was in my doorway.

Not in the tailored armor of a CEO. Not even in his “casual” billion-dollar-suit disguise. Just a dark sweater, black jeans, hair slightly mussed like he’d run a hand through it on the way over. But his eyes—those were the same. Sharp. Calculating. Not missing a single detail.

For some reason, that made the room feel smaller.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, because apparently my survival instinct also liked to test boundaries.

“I could say the same,” he replied, stepping inside. He didn’t glance at Dante, didn’t ask about the bug. He just scanned my apartment like the walls might talk to him if he stared long enough.

“Find anything else?” he asked Dante.

“No. Just the one.”

Steve’s jaw shifted, subtle but there. He took another step in, and the air between us tightened.

“Pack a bag,” he said.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not sleeping here anymore.”