Even after four years, he still noticed details like her handwriting. How carefully she formed each letter. How deliberately she crossed every t and dotted every i.
“Everything.” She rotated her wrist. Pain tugged at the bruises circling her skin. “He knew what he was after. No hesitation. No random searching. He went straight for the locket.”
“And you’re sure you’d never seen him before? Nothing familiar about his voice or the way he moved?”
She shook her head, though something stirred at the edge of her memory. The efficiency of his grip. The way he’d controlled her balance. But fear blurred the details, and adrenaline scattered them further.
“I need to get back to the shop.” She pushed up from the metal chair.
“Annie.”
His voice stopped her at the door.
She turned.
For a split second, she saw something in his eyes she remembered too well. Concern layered over restraint. The look he used to wear when they worked side by side and she believed she could trust him with anything.
“Be careful,” he said. “Lock your doors. And if anything else happens—anything at all—you call me.”
“I will.”
The words came out softer than she intended. The space between them thinned, fragile and dangerous. She squared her shoulders and left before he could say more.
The drive back to Main Street took only minutes, but she checked her mirrors the entire way. Every car that turned behind her sent a spike through her pulse.
Calm down.
She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. This wasn’t a movie. Not a thriller novel. Whoever broke into her shop knew the police stood between them now. They wouldn’t be reckless enough to try again so soon.
Yet her nerves refused to stand down.
The shop looked different in daylight. What had felt charming yesterday now felt exposed. Too many windows. Too many angles. Too many places for someone to watch.
She parked in the alley, keys already threaded between her fingers. The lock turned smoothly. She stepped inside and slid the deadbolt closed.
The shop still looked exactly as she had left it when the police finally cleared the scene in the early hours of morning. Nothing had been touched. Nothing restored. The intruder’s presence clung to every corner like a stain that refused to lift. Overturned boxes lay where they had been dropped. Papers were scattered across the floor in careless drifts. Drawers gaped open. Furniture stood crooked and displaced, pulled away from walls as if the space itself had been searched and violated.
Insurance could replace broken objects. It could not repair the feeling that someone had walked through her life without permission. Someone had entered her space. Her future. Her fresh start—and torn through it with deliberate hands.
Her grand opening was three days away. Three days to put everything back where it belonged. Three days to erase the visible damage before customers ever crossed the threshold. They wouldn’t care about fear or sleeplessness or the bruises still blooming beneath her sleeves. They would come looking for beauty. For history. For stories polished smooth by time. And somehow, no matter what it cost her, she intended to give them exactly that.
She climbed the narrow stairs toward her apartment, planning each step of the morning. Change clothes. Coffee. Start reclaiming control.
The apartment door stood open, and cold flooded her veins at the sight. She definitely remembered locking it. Her hand drifted instinctively toward her phone as a sound met her from inside—a low, broken groan that didn’t belong in an empty room.
“Uncle Eric?” she whispered, pushing the door open wider. He was the only other person who had a key. The apartment lay in ruins just like the shop downstairs. Cushions were split open, their stuffing scattered across the floor like snow. Books had been torn from shelves and flung aside. Cabinets gaped, and shattered dishes littered the linoleum. The violence of it stole the air from her lungs as she stepped inside, knowing before she fully understood what she was seeing that whatever had happened here had not been about theft.
And in the center of it—
“Uncle Eric!”
He lay face-down, unmoving. Blood matted his gray hair and pooled beneath his head. His shirt tore open across his back, soaked dark.
Annie dropped to her knees beside him.
“No. Please. No.” Her hands hovered, afraid to touch him, afraid not to.
His chest lifted. Fell. Shallow. Uneven.
