Chapter 2 - The Photograph Taken Before We Were Us
Detliff wanted me back in the penthouse immediately.
I refused.
Not because I wanted to stay in the diner.
Because I needed him to understand that fear did not give him ownership.
“I am going home,” I said.
“You live in the penthouse.”
“No. You moved me into the penthouse.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Because your apartment was unsafe.”
“You decided that.”
“It was true.”
“That does not make every decision yours.”
Marco found something fascinating near the ketchup bottles and studied it intensely.
Detliff lowered his voice.
“Nissa, someone has photographs of you outside an illegal fight operation.”
“I know.”
“They just threatened you.”
“I know.”
“You are carrying my child.”
There it was.
The sentence I hated.
Not because the baby was his.
Because he used that fact like a legal instrument.
I leaned closer.
“Say that again as if it means I belong to you and I will take a cab to Wisconsin just to annoy you.”
Marco coughed.
Detliff stared at me.
Then, unexpectedly, he sat back.
“What do you want?”
The question stopped me.
“What?”
“What do you want to do?”
I looked at him carefully.
No trap.
No command hiding inside it.
“I want to see my old apartment.”
“No.”
I raised an eyebrow.
He closed his eyes.
Then corrected himself.
“Why?”
“Because if somebody photographed me before I knew you, they may have followed me home.”
“They did.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
“And Boston had access to the apartment for four years.”
Detliff’s face tightened.
“Fine.”
“I choose who goes inside.”
“Nissa.”
“Marco and me.”
“No.”
I stared.
He exhaled.
“Marco, you, and me.”
“Compromise.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
My old apartment looked smaller than I remembered.
The building manager recognized me and immediately started talking about the security deposit Boston had tried to claim after I moved out.
I had forgotten that.
“Claim?”
“He said he paid the lease.”
“He didn’t.”
“I know. Your checks did.”
Detliff looked at me.
I ignored him.
Inside, the apartment belonged to a graduate student now.
She let us look around because Marco offered to pay for a hotel night while we checked the place.
I made him reduce the amount twice.
Detliff looked offended by my negotiating his generosity.
The old bedroom had been repainted.
The kitchen cabinet where Boston hid unpaid parking tickets was gone.
Nothing.
Then I remembered the vent.
Boston once installed a cheap indoor camera because he claimed packages were disappearing.
He mounted the receiver behind an air-return grille.
I knelt.
Detliff immediately said, “Don’t.”
I looked back.
“Pregnant women can kneel.”
“I know.”
“Then let me.”
He held up both hands.
Progress.
The receiver was gone.
But behind the grille, taped to the duct, was a black memory card.
Marco swore.
I stared.
“That was not there when I lived here.”
“How do you know?”
“I cleaned this vent after Boston burned bacon for two hours and filled the apartment with smoke.”
Detliff almost smiled.
Marco placed the card into an evidence pouch.
“We image it. Nobody plugs it into anything connected.”
I looked at him.
“Finally, a man in this family with normal instincts.”
Detliff gave me a look.
The memory card contained months of footage.
Not from inside the apartment.
From a camera pointed toward the building entrance.
Someone had used the old receiver housing to store copies.
Dates began six weeks after I left Boston.
There I was.
Leaving in scrubs.
Returning exhausted.
Carrying groceries.
Then Detliff began appearing.
First in a black sedan.
Then on foot.
Sometimes alone.
Sometimes with Marco.
The recordings included timestamps and notes.
NG DEPARTS 6:12.
STEWART ARRIVES 22:44.
UNKNOWN MALE SECURITY, PLATE PARTIAL.
Then one line three days before the warehouse attack:
PATTERN CONFIRMED. REPORT SENT TO CV.
“CV,” I said.
Detliff’s eyes went cold.
“Caleb Vane.”
Marco nodded.
Another file contained a payment ledger.
Boston Powell received six transfers from Marrow Risk Solutions labeled “consulting.”
The amounts doubled after Detliff first appeared at my apartment.
I sat very still.
“He sold my address.”
Marco said nothing.
Detliff did not try to comfort me.
Good.
I did not want comfort yet.
I wanted clarity.
“Did Boston know the warehouse would be attacked?”
“We don’t know,” Detliff said.
“Could the surveillance have led them there?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“Your men died because someone followed you from me.”
His face changed.
“No.”
“It is possible.”
“It is not your fault.”
“I did not say it was.”
He stopped.
That mattered too.
I continued.
“But Boston may have turned my life into a map.”
Detliff nodded once.
“That I agree with.”
The last file was audio.
A conversation recorded in my old hallway.
Boston’s voice.
Then Caleb Vane’s.
Vane said, “She’s useful because Stewart keeps going back.”
Boston replied, “I told you. She has a savior problem. Make somebody bleed and she’ll open the door.”
My stomach turned.
Detliff’s hand closed into a fist.
Then Boston said something worse.
“Just don’t hurt her. I want her scared enough to come back when this is over.”
I laughed.
A terrible sound.
Even while selling my movements, he still thought the ending belonged to him.
Detliff stood.
“I am going to speak with him.”
“No.”
“Nissa.”
“You are going to let law enforcement handle stalking and illegal surveillance.”
He looked at me as if I had proposed ballet lessons.
“Law enforcement?”
“Yes.”
“My world does not usually—”
“I know what your world usually does.”
I put my hand over my stomach.
“That world is exactly what I am trying not to raise a child inside.”
Silence.
Detliff looked at the grainy image of Boston on the screen.
Then at me.
“What are you asking me to become?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing.”
His jaw tightened.
May you like
“I am asking you to decide who you want to be when she starts watching you.”
For the first time since I met him, Detliff Stewart looked frightened by a question he could not solve with money, violence, or men at doors.
