Duke looked over his shoulder at me with a calm that somehow made it more unsettling.
"Then they're going to wish they had broken in somewhere else."
I opened my mouth and then closed it. I had seen Duke handle things before, but something about the absolute stillness in his voice in that moment made every other thought leave my head. I crossed my legs and looked out the window to collect myself.
He shook his head lightly, then glanced toward the driver.
"Call the police. Let them know there's been a break-in at this address," he said, then stepped out of the SUV without another word.
I couldn't help myself. I rolled the window down and watched as he reached around to the back of his pants and produced a gun I hadn't even noticed he was carrying. He moved toward the front door with a measured calm that somehow made it scarier to watch than if he had been running. He nudged the door the rest of the way open with his foot and disappeared inside.
The minutes that followed felt stretched out. The driver was on the phone with dispatch. I sat with my hands in my lap and my eyes fixed on that door. Ten minutes passed before Duke reappeared in the doorway and walked back to the car, tucking the gun away as the sound of sirens cut through the distance.
"Nobody's in there," he said, his jaw tight. "But I think you need to see it before you decide what you want to do. A deranged muthafucka did that."
He didn't say anything else. He didn't have to.
Two police cars rolled in behind us before I could respond. I looked up as the officers stepped out, and something stopped me cold. One of them was the officer who had told me about Rose Haven. The same one who had handed me that small piece of hope when I had nothing left to hold onto.
He spotted Duke first, and his entire face changed.
He walked over and extended his hand. "Duke, man. It's been forever."
Duke dapped him up with a half smile. "What's up. You know it's not much that drags me out of the Haven. But this one did."
The officer nodded, then glanced over at me. "We've met. I've responded to this address before on similar incidents. I never thought I'd see you back out here." He paused and lowered his voice. "That manager of yours has kept this department busier than you'd think. You'd almost assume he had a personal stake in your whereabouts."
I looked over at Duke, whose head was tilted slightly, his expression reading exactly like what I told you.
"I don't know why he was doing all of that. Money has a strange way of making people act outside of themselves," I said.
The officer nodded, then gripped his hips. "I went through the inside when we first pulled in. Nobody is in there. If you want to take a walk through, you're welcome to. But I want to prepare you for what you're going to see. Whoever it was spent time in there," he said carefully.
Duke spoke up before he could go further. "Furniture's destroyed. Spray paint on every wall. She couldn't stay here even if she wanted to."
The officers exchanged a look, then headed inside to do a full sweep. Ten to fifteen minutes passed before they reappeared in the doorway with tight expressions that told me everything before they said a word.
"What would you like to do, Ms. Amore?" the officer asked.
I looked back at the house for a long moment. The facade was still beautiful from the outside. Manicured stonework, tall windows, the arched front door I had loved the moment I first saw it. None of that mattered now.
"Nothing," I said finally. "This isn't my home anymore. I just want to go inside and take whatever isn't completely destroyed so I can donate it. After that, I want someone to gut the place, clean it top to bottom, and then I'm putting it on the market."
The officer nodded. "We'll stay posted out here until you're ready to go."
Duke intertwined his fingers with mine as we turned toward the door. "You sure?" he asked quietly.
I nodded and we walked in together.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I stopped.
Red paint was splattered across the couches and walls in wide, frantic arcs. The curtains had been torn from the rods and ripped apart. The refrigerator was covered in black spray paint. Every surface that had once felt carefully chosen and lived-in now looked like the inside of someone's breaking point.
I forced myself to keep walking.
The walls were covered in the same word repeated over and over in jagged letters. Mine. And then further down the hallway, in a different hand or a different moment, the messages changed. I will find you. Forever. The repetition of it was more disturbing than the damage itself. This wasn't impulsive. This had been deliberate.
I took the wooden staircase slowly, stepping around the places where the treads had been cracked, some of them nearly split through like something heavy had been brought down on them repeatedly. A few of the walls on the way up had holes punched or kicked through them, the drywall crumbling at the edges.
