Page 66 of Hot Momosa

Dahlia

How? How is this possible? How did the stalker get inside the building and leave these on the doorstep?

I couldn’t bring myself to read the stalker’s letter again. Nor could I look at the images of me and Leo together on the rooftop deck—or worse, the photos of us naked on the couch after dinner. The colorful lights on the Christmas tree illuminating our skin gave the images an artsy-porno quality that made my stomach turn.

Did Harrison do this, or did he pay someone to do it for him?

Whoever it was had taken the pictures from outside the glass door. He’d been feet away from us, and we hadn’t noticed. We hadn’t heard a sound or seen a shadow. The dogs hadn’t barked. Nothing.

Determined to put an end to the nightmare, I grabbed my phone and dialed Harry’s number.

“Good morning, Dahlia.” His sleep-thickened voice made my skin crawl.

“I know you’re the stalker, and I want it to stop. Now.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I second-guessed myself. What had I thought would happen? He sure as hell wouldn’t admit to fake stalking me.

“What are you talking about?” The accusation seemed to have woken him.

My fear and anger took over. “I know it’s you. The letters, the gifts, the break in. The pictures last night were the final straw. Was it some sick joke to make me fall for you?”

He drew a deep breath. “After a year of being inseparable, I’m surprised you think so little of me. But this isn’t you, is it? Marchionni has gotten into your head.”

Maybe Leo had planted the seed, but we had proof of the kind of man Harrison Meriwether was. “Are you going to deny you have a history of domestic abuse and hurting women?”

“No.” Harry lowered his voice. “I can never excuse my behavior, but those things happened a long time ago. I had a…problem with alcohol.”

I don’t know how I’d expected him to react, but contrition wasn’t his style. I thought back to the various events we’d attended together. It never occurred to me that he’d refused wine with dinner, bourbon with my father, and all the rest because he was an alcoholic.

“Dahlia, I was the one holding your hand while you cried this past year.” His voice cracked. “I saw what you went through. How can you think I’m the one who wrote those letters?”

Doubt crept in. Were Leo and I wrong, or was I a really shitty judge of character? “Why did you tell my dad we were living together?”

He barked out a laugh. “To get him off my back.”

“Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to me my father would push Harry into a relationship, too.

“You’re in danger, but you might want to look a little closer to home before you start pointing fingers again.”

“Please, if you know something…anything…”

“I’m done with you and your father’s schemes.”

“What is my father up to now?”

“You’ll figure it out soon enough. Don’t call me again.” He disconnected.

Is he telling the truth? Is someone else behind this? And what schemes?

My head throbbed in time with my racing pulse and my stomach turned. I rushed to the bathroom and hugged the toilet, but I’d gotten rid of everything I’d eaten the first four times I’d puked since seeing the photos. Dry heaving with a migraine ranked on the pain scale next to childbirth and root canals, but it gave me something to think about other than the psychopath determined to…

To what? Kill me? Scare me? Ruin my life?

He’d accomplished two out of the three. How long before he pulled the trigger and hit the trifecta? Right about then, I might have welcomed death. My head pounded so hard my vision blurred.

“Mamma!” Gunnar shrieked in a pitch that put nails on chalkboards to shame. “Mamma! Need you!”

I rested my head against the cool white porcelain. Gross, I know, but I didn’t have the strength to stand, nor the mental capacity to answer my child.

“I’ll get him.” Stuart called from the hall.

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