I was shaking so badly I couldn’t say anything. He stood there glaring into my eyes, his rough hand now wrapped around my throat.
“You’ve been running around for how long? An hour or two since the end of the workday? I’ve called you. You haven’t returned my calls, so that means you’ve been ignoring me. Or are you out with someone else?” he gritted.
“Yes, it’s been two hours, but...” I tried to form the words to explain I had been late because I needed to mail some stuff for work, but my head ached and I was seeing stars.
“No buts. Now I also find out you won’t introduce me to your family yet again, as you promised. You say you’re not ashamed of me, but it’s seriously making me wonder. You say you don’t ignore problems. This is a problem,” he said smashing his fist into the wall beside my head, putting a significant dent in the drywall.
Never in my entire life had I ever felt the need to use my family to protect me, but I needed help. I mustered up every bit of courage I had left in me before I spoke. “Jace, do I need to remind you I come from a long line of law enforcement? My brother is ATF, my sister is DEA, and my father was FBI,” I said with a shaky but calm voice.
Jace just glared at me, and then ever so slowly he let me go, straightening his shirt as he stepped back. As soon as his hands were off me, I did my best to step away and not freak out. “I think it’s time you leave.”
It surprised me he didn’t put up a fight. Instead, he nodded, hanging his head and, without argument, grabbed his jacket and walked out of the apartment. I ran and locked the door the second I heard it shut. That had been a week ago, and aside from the constant text messaging, I hadn’t seen or heard from him.
I jumped as I felt someone pull on my arm, and I turned to see Jan, the valet manager, looking down at me. “Everything okay, Becca?” she asked, concern lining her face.
I glanced around, noticing that everyone had already packed up their notes, and aside from a few stragglers, the boardroom was almost empty.
“Yes,” I said, scrambling to grab the mess of papers in front of me and put them in an unorganized pile. “I just remembered I have to do something before I leave.” I practically ran towards my office, leaving Jan behind.
Sweat dripped from my forehead as I finished that last ten minutes of my elliptical routine. I’d needed to chase the thoughts of Jace from my memory, and the gym normally did the trick. I grabbed my towel and wiped my forehead and headed into the changing room. I quickly changed into my sweats and then headed upstairs to the wine shop to pick up my favourite bottle of Moscatto before heading home.
I now stood outside my apartment door struggling with the bottle of wine, my laptop bag, and my key. Finally, I got the key in the lock, pushed the door open, and dropped everything just inside the door. I slipped out of my sneakers and made my way into the kitchen, shoving the bottle of wine into the fridge. I grabbed a strawberry and shoved it into my mouth, then headed down the hall to the bathroom for a hot shower. Seconds later, I stood under the warm water, letting it soothe my tired, aching muscles.
When the water ran cold, I shut the taps off and reached out to grab a towel from the towel rack. Wrapping it around my body, I opened the curtain and instantly, all the tension that had left my body over the last twenty minutes was back and higher than ever as I read what was written in the condensation across the mirror. “Not Over You.”
I glanced around the small bathroom, the door still closed. I felt a chill run over me. Was Jace here? How did he get into my apartment? He didn’t have a key. I rushed to dry off and opened the bathroom door, poking my head out in the hallway to look around.
“Hello?” I called out. “Jace, are you here?” Silence was all that greeted me. “This isn’t funny, Jace. If you are here, say something, please.”
I felt like an idiot. Of course he wasn’t here. The door had been locked when I had come home, and I knew I had locked the dead bolt before I had showered. Still, another chill ran through me. I slipped across the hall into my bedroom and grabbed the phone from my nightstand. I held it in my hand for a moment, my finger tracing the number I didn’t want to have to call. Yet I knew I didn’t have a choice, and I dialed my brother anyway.
The phone had barely rung when his voice came across the line.
“Chris here.”
“Hey, big bro. You busy?”
“Just at work. Why?”
“I need some help. Can you come over?” I knew the tremor in my voice would let him know something was wrong, and like usual, he didn’t hesitate one bit.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
He hadn’t been kidding because within five minutes he was already banging on my door. I looked out the peephole before opening just to be sure that it was him. As soon as I saw his concerned face, I pulled the door open, and there stood my brother in all his gear.
“What’s goin’ on, sis? What you need my help with?” he asked, stepping into the apartment.
“Come with me,” I said, pulling him in the bathroom’s direction.
I pointed to the mirror as we walked into the bathroom, but the message had already disappeared as if it had never been there. “No, no, no,” I cried, turning on the shower again, trying to steam up the room, but it did little good. The water was cold.
“Dammit. Why did everyone in the building have to shower now?” I mumbled.
“What is it?” he asked, frowning.
“The message. It—it’s gone.”
“What message? Becca, what are you talking about?” Chris looked at me with deep concern.
I blew out a breath, deciding if I should tell my brother or not. I had kept Jace a secret from my family for a reason I never knew, and I was seeing that this might have been it.
“Becca, what is it?” he asked again.
I blew out a breath and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, putting my head in my hands. “Oh, man. I started seeing this guy, Jace, six, maybe seven months ago. Things were going fine, until a week ago. He got a little violent with me in the kitchen, and I haven’t heard from him since. Over the past few days, I’ve noticed things. He’s been messaging me like crazy. I never respond, but not only that, on a number of occasions I’ve felt like I’m being followed. Things are being moved around my office, and today when I got out of the shower, the words ‘not over you’ were written on the mirror,” I cried.
“Does he have a key?”
I shook my head. “No, I never gave him a key. I didn’t trust him enough. Chris, what do I do?” I cried, the panic rising in me.
“Okay, well, first thing, don’t panic. Did it look like anything else had been disturbed when you came home?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I never really paid any attention.”
Chris looked around the apartment—my bedroom, the kitchen where he ran his hand over the dent in the drywall, and in closets before he took a seat on the couch. “All right, get in touch with the building’s super and have the locks changed immediately, just in case he got hold of one of your keys and had a copy made.”
I nodded, making a mental note to do that in the morning as my brother started checking windows and the sliding door to the balcony in both the living room and my bedroom. “You keep these doors locked all the time, right?”