The front door was closed, but not quite right. The latch sat crooked, like it hadn’t settled properly.
Connor noticed instantly. His posture changed—not visibly aggressive, but alert in a way that made my skin prickle.
“Stay here,” he said quietly.
“I’m coming with you.”
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Behind me.”
The stairwell felt wrong. Too quiet. The air heavy with disturbance.
My door was unlocked.
I knew it before I touched it.
Connor pushed it open slowly, scanning the room with quick, precise movements. I stepped in behind him—and my breath caught painfully in my chest.
Everything was wrong.
Drawers pulled out. Cushions overturned. Papers scattered like confetti. My desk lamp lay on its side, bulb shattered. The place didn’t look ransacked so much as violated. Deliberate. Careful.
Not a theft.
A message.
My stomach dropped.
“It doesn’t look like they took anything,” I whispered.
Connor’s jaw tightened. “That’s the point.”
I walked farther into the apartment, my heart thudding, cataloging the damage with the same detached precision I used when framing a shot. The bedroom. The closet. The bathroom. Drawers left open. Objects shifted just enough to feel intentional. Not chaos—communication.
And through it all, my camera was still slung across my body, the familiar weight pressing against my hip.
I felt an unexpected swell of gratitude for it—irrational, maybe, but real. For the way I’d started carrying it everywhere without thinking, like a second set of lungs. For how it anchored me when the world tilted. When my mind threatened to scatter, the camera gave me a task: observe, record, survive.
It wasn’t just a tool. It was proof that I existed outside of fear. That even when something was meant to unsettle me, I could still choose how to see it. Frame it. Claim it.
I lifted it instinctively, not to shoot—yet—but because looking through the lens steadied me. Turned panic into geometry. Light and shadow. Evidence instead of violation.
That was when I saw it.
My corkboard.
The one above my desk, where I’d pinned early prints from Paris—contact sheets, test shots, imperfect things I loved because they showed me growing. Faces. Light experiments. Moments I hadn’t shown anyone yet.
The board had been ripped down.
Photos torn in half. Some sliced cleanly, others crumpled. One of my favorite prints—the first image I’d taken that felt true—lay shredded on the floor.
Something inside me cracked.
I sank down slowly, pressing my palm to the floor, breath shaking.
“They knew,” I said hoarsely. “They knew what mattered.”
Connor crossed the room in three strides and crouched beside me.
