someone will make sure I break.
Someone Is Listening
The last corner of the photograph folds in on itself, curling into blackened ash. I watch it fall—quiet, fragile—like a piece of me collapsing with it. Everything I used to be, everything I’ve spent years trying to bury, crumbles at my feet.
The candle flame wavers.A thin, trembling bend of gold.
That’s when I hear it.
A sound so soft it feels imagined — but my body reacts before my mind does.
A creak.Barely there.A whisper of weight on old wood.
My breath stops.The sound came from behind me.From the window.
I force myself to move with practiced calm, wiping the wet from my cheeks, smoothing my face into something blank. Controlled. Unreadable. I push every raw edge back into its box and turn slowly.
The window is closed.Latched.Exactly as I left it.
My pulse punches upward, sharp and violent.
I rise without a sound. My steps don’t disturb the ash at my feet; my breathing thins to near silence. My hand drifts casually toward the bed—slow, deliberate—until my fingers slip beneath the pillow.
Cold metal meets my palm.
The knife.
I curl my hand around the grip and slide it up my sleeve.
Someone was in my room.
Someone who moved carefully — carefully enough to avoid the floorboards…
Until they didn’t.
Someone watched me burn my father’s face.Listened to every word I whispered.Heard every truth I let slip.
Someone who now knows I’m getting close.Closer than I should be.
The candle flickers behind me, stretching my shadow across the wall. The ruined photograph lies at my feet, a small pile of gray dust—my father’s memory reduced to a whisper.
I keep my eyes on the window.Not blinking.Not breathing too deeply.Waiting.
Another creak.Another shift.Another sign someone is still here.
But nothing comes.
The silence feels wrong.Heavy.I slowly look around the room, and nothing is out of place. No window cracked open. No footprints in the dust.
Whoever was here knew how to leave, leaving nothing behind.
Except the curtains.
A warning.Or a mistake.
I step back until the edge of the bed touches my calves, the knife hidden, my heartbeat sharp enough to bruise bone.
Santino thinks he saved me tonight.
