Page 158 of Love Me Stalk Me
Because today, I feel a little bit more like myself.
The sunlight feels warmer on my skin. The aroma of fresh coffee brewing in my kitchen smells appealing for the first time in days. The weight of the blanket around my shoulders feels comforting rather than suffocating.
And maybe it's time to figure out what comes next. What life will be like for me without Evan weighing me down.
IF IT TAKES CAMERAS IN EVERY CORNER, SO BE IT.
CAL
If it were upto me, I would've taken the entire week off to be with Izzy.
I would've stayed at her apartment, cooked every meal, made sure she drank water, made sure she wasn't alone with her thoughts for too long. I sat outside her bedroom every single night, listening for signs of bad dreams, for the restless shifting of sheets, for the soft whimpers that might tell me she needed me. And even if she had told me she didn't want me there anymore, if she had tried to push me away, I wouldn't have left.
I would've slept outside her front door.
But every morning, I had to leave. Closing the door behind me felt brutal in a way I couldn’t shake. But with the security issues at the store getting worse, I didn’t have the luxury of staying.
The organized crime ring that I was hired to deal with? They'd been dormant for months. And now, suddenly, this week of all weeks, they'd decided to start making moves. So I had to be at the store.
But that didn't mean I wasn't watching her.
While Izzy slept in, exhausted, healing, I had installed cameras in every single corner of her apartment.
She only knew about the exterior ones, because those were the ones I told her about. But, every other corner of that apartment was visible to me, too, and that was a security measure I didn't explicitly tell her about. Mainly because I wasn't going to watch that feed unless there was an intruder alert. I wasn't going to violate her privacy to that extent, which, I guess isn't saying much considering. But, if a spider so much as sneezed in that apartment, I would know about it.
And I wouldn't change that for all the privacy lawsuits in the world.
Because what mattered to me more than her potential anger was her safety. Because I knew that Evan wasn't done with her yet. At least, that's what he thought.Because, he was very,verymuch done, and lucky to be alive in my book.
The first action I took—besides securing Izzy's safety—was to run a full background check on the douchebag.
In my position, I had access to databases that most people didn't. Criminal records, financial histories, even credit scores. And if information wasn't available in those systems, I had plenty of contacts who were more than willing to do a favor or two.
What I found?
Was disconcerting.
Somewhere during the first year he and Izzy were together, Evan had been fired from his finance job.
And never got a new one.
His employment history was a blank space after that. No applications, no records of new income. But he was still making money.
A lot of money.
It was being deposited into his accounts through an offshore LLC.
Where was it coming from?
What was he doing to earn it?
And that wasn't even the worst of it.
Since being fired, he'd upgraded his life. A brand-new BMW sedan, an extremely overpriced Manhattan apartment. Living well beyond what he should be able to afford with zero job history.
And then there were the women.
A constant rotation of them.
