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The room was mostly dark except for a weak line of streetlight at the window and the dim blue square of his phone screen before he finally set it face down on the nightstand. He would make sure to get string lights to wrap around his window. Not that he needed a nightlight. Never that. But it was something. Again, just in case.

He listened.

At first, there was nothing except the usual old-house language that homes of this age spoke at night. Outside, there was a far-off mechanical sigh. Then, after long enough for his body to unclench, he heard it.

Movement.

Not downstairs, but not upstairs either. He heard movement through the house. A pattern too deliberate to belong to settling wood.

A step.

Then another.

Soft.

Not soft in the ordinary sense, where old houses still tattled on you, no matter how gently you tried to move. Soft in a practiced way. As if Antonio knew the exact width of each board, the precise dead center to avoid, the one place where weight wouldn’t make the frame answer back.

Hakeem held his breath without meaning to.

The sound passed the landing. Stopped. Then resumed, quieter.

He could not tell where Antonio was going. Bathroom, maybe? Or the kitchen. Possibly back downstairs. It should have been obvious, but it wasn’t. The silence between the sounds was what made it bad, the way it suggested intention even when none was clear.

He lay there, eyes open to the dark, every part of him alert and ridiculous and alive.

Nothing happened. He was braced, every muscle in his body taut, blood and adrenaline coursing through him. And yet—no hand on the knob, and no voice in the hallway. No hint of a sharpened threat finally stepping into the open.

Just the old house, and somewhere inside it, Antonio moving through the dark with impossible care.

That was the worst part. Not that anything had happened, but that nothing had. He had no proof, no event, no clean bright reason to panic or relax.

Only this:

Antonio moved like a man who knew exactly how not to be heard—Hakeem stared into the dark and filed that away too.

Chapter Three

Paper Trail

Nothing about the morning suggested imminent danger.

Which, predictably, was exactly how danger worked in movies right before somebody found a tooth in the sink.

The mail slot snapped open with a violent metallic clack that made Hakeem jump hard enough to hate himself.

From the other room, he heard something thud loudly on the floor and Antonio curse in Spanish.

Antonio appeared in the doorway a second later in a dark green V-neck t-shirt and black jeans. Hakeem noticed how flattering the color was against his warm brown skin and how his chest slightly stretched the clinging fabric. Antonio glanced at Hakeem, then at the mail on the floor.

“Rough start?” Hakeem asked.

Antonio looked down at the scattered envelopes and a padded mailer on the floor, then bent to scoop them up.

“Apparently, the house has declared war on me,” he said.

His voice was rough with sleep. Hakeem hated how much a pretty man’s rasp could do for him at this hour.

Antonio sorted through the stack with quick, absent efficiency. Then he folded the padded mailer beneath the rest of the mail, set the other envelopes on the table, and kept that one in hand.