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“—video evidence of this man, Maxim Loughty, abusing his position as apartment superintendent by entering apartments when renters weren’t home and tampering with their personal belongings.”
The image flipped to my old apartment, to Maxim climbing through my broken window.
“I knew it! I knew he was in there!” I pointed to the screen and turned to Gabriel.
“I’m so sorry you had to endure those conditions,” he said, his hand on my knee.
“I’m not. I survived on my own, and I taught myself to thrive because of it.”
He smiled at me.
I smiled back, then returned my attention to the screen. The image changed to someone else’s apartment, where Maxim rolled naked on someone’s bed, tossing M&Ms at his mouth andmissing. Thankfully the worst parts were blurred out, but the idea on its own was revolting.
“Eww.” I had never been gladder that I hadn’t had a bed in that place.
“I should take this,” Gabriel said. He turned his phone screen toward me. It was buzzing in his hand. The screen saidPamela.
I nodded and watched more shots of Maxim rifling through peoples’ drawers, eating ice cream out of the tubs in their freezers and putting it back that way.Gross.
Gabriel stood and walked into the kitchen. I could still hear him, and everything sounded pleasant enough, so I focused on the drama unfolding before me.
“Also included on Daniella Marchesca’s laptop was video from a drone as it crashed into a man’s back outside a small science museum downtown. Sources say this man was billionaire scientist Gabriel Stryker, a recluse best known for his stiff public interviews.”
Heshouldbe best known for his amazing work, reducing the city’s dump fill volume by a whopping twenty-one-point-three percent, a number that would keep going up with every new breakthrough.
Also, what the actual what? Daniella Marchesca had to be Dani. And that meant she’d not only been the one to hit Gabriel with a drone, but she’d also put cameras throughout my apartment complex. That must have been how she’s gotten my password. She’d watched me type it.
“Ms. Marchesca attended the same graduate program as Mr. Stryker, but according to her manifesto, began believing they had worked together after seeing a news interview about him years later on television, a narrative that according to all accounts is entirely false.”
A shiver carried over my spine. I was so glad she was out of our lives for good.
The story changed to the weather, so I closed the app.
Since Valentine’s Day, the police had returned my laptop. I’d moved in with Gabriel, gotten my blog back on track, and started writing amostlynonfiction account of the last few months. Maybe one day it would be made into a movie, but for now, I’d already received a couple of offers to publish it as a book.
Better still, Gabriel was in total support. Of course I’d run everything by him again before calling the manuscript complete, because as my forever, his character played a large role in my story.
Gabriel rejoined me on the sofa, apparently done with his phone call.
“What’s up with Pamela? Is she looking for a recommendation?” I asked.
“No.”
He seemed kinda shellshocked, staring off into the middle distance, like there was something floating in the center of the room that he couldn’t look away from.
“Are you all right?” I asked, climbing onto him and straddling his lap.
He tilted his chin up so our eyes met and rested his hands on my hips.
“She recommended me,” he said.
That didn’t sound like a bad thing. “For what?”
“A merger with her newest employer. They’re based out of Germany and have twice the reach of Biotabloom Dynamics. They’re interested in a collaboration.”
“With what strings?”
“None. No galas, no retreats, no pretending.”
