I cross to the window at the front of the apartment and pull the curtain back just enough to see the street below.
For a second, nothing looks unusual. Then I notice them.
A dark sedan parked across from my building. Another farther down the block. And in the first one, just visible through the windshield under the streetlamp glow, two men in suits.
Not random men. Not neighbors.
His men.
I stare. The realization settles in with a thud.
Security. For me.
Permanent or temporary, I have no idea, but definitely there.
“Well,” I say out loud to my empty apartment. Then, because there is really nothing else to say at this point, I let the curtain fall and mutter, “Well, shit.”
I stare at the parked cars for another ten seconds, just to make sure I’m not hallucinating from exhaustion and whatever chemical cocktail my body is still running on.
Nope. Still there. Still very much real.
I grab my phone and call him before I can talk myself out of it.
He answers on the first ring. “Yes.”
No hello. No explanation. Just that same calm, impossible tone like posting armed men outside my apartment is the most reasonable thing in the world.
“This is excessive,” I say.
“No.”
I actually laugh. “No?”
“No.”
“That is not a proper defense.”
“It doesn’t need one.” I pace away from the window and then back again, because apparently my body has forgotten how to sit still tonight. “You have two cars outside my building.”
“Yes.”
“With men in them.”
“Yes.”
“Do they… live there now?”
A pause. “Don’t be dramatic.”
I stop pacing. “I am not being dramatic. I am trying to understand if your security detail is going to follow me into the grocery store.”
“If necessary.”
“Oh my God.”
His silence on the line feels suspiciously amused.
I lower my voice, though there is no one here to overhear me. “Are they going to follow me into work, too?”
