in thick black marker, someone had written: delay until she moves.

For a moment, the apartment seemed to tilt.

“What does that mean?” I whispered.

Derek did not answer right away.

Then someone pounded on my door.

Three hard knocks.

Caleb jumped.

Derek’s body went still.

The knock came again, and then Mr.

Voss’s voice pushed through the wood.

“Marissa? Open up.

I know someone’s in there.”

I looked at Derek.

All the color had drained from his face.

“You know him,” I said.

Derek’s jaw tightened.

“I used to work for him.”

The words landed softly, but they changed the room.

Mr.

Voss knocked a third time, harder.

He owned the building and liked to remind tenants of it by entering hallways like a man inspecting property instead of homes.

He was broad, red-faced, always wearing a fleece vest with his company logo over the chest.

The kind of man who called himself reasonable right before threatening you.

I opened the door but kept the chain on.

Mr.

Voss looked past me immediately.

His eyes found Derek.

The confident irritation on his face flickered into recognition.

Then disgust.

“Well,” he said.

“That explains the unauthorized repair work.”

My hand tightened on the door.

“What are you doing here?”

“A neighbor called.” His eyes stayed on Derek.

“Said you brought a vagrant into the building.”

Caleb pressed against my hip.

“He has a name,” I said.

Mr.

Voss smiled without warmth.

“He has a history.”

Derek stepped forward, slow because of the brace, but steady enough that Mr.

Voss’s smile thinned.

“Hello, Martin,” Derek said.

Nobody had called my landlord by his first name in my hearing.

It sounded wrong in the hallway, like hearing a school principal called by a childhood nickname.

Mr.

Voss’s face hardened.

“You need to leave this property.”

“I was going to,” Derek said.

“Then I saw the door you ignored.

The leak you ignored.

The paperwork you hid.”

Mr.

Voss’s eyes snapped to the table behind me.

That was when I knew the note was real.

I unlatched the chain and opened the door wider, though every nerve in me screamed not to.

“You wrote that?”

Mr.

Voss’s gaze shifted back to me.

“You need to be careful who you believe.”

“Did you write it?”

He stepped inside without being invited.

Derek moved between him and the kitchen table.

Not aggressively.

Just enough to make the boundary clear.

Mr.

Voss noticed.

His mouth curled.

“You still playing handyman, Derek? Thought you learned your lesson.”

Derek flinched.

It was small, but I saw it.

So did Caleb.

“What lesson?” I asked.

Derek spoke before Mr.

Voss could.

“I worked maintenance for his properties for nine years.”

I stared at him.

The man on my couch, the man I had locked away from my bedroom, had been inside buildings like this for almost a decade.

Fixing other people’s sinks.

Other people’s locks.

Other people’s heat.

“I handled after-hours calls,” Derek continued.

“Leaks, furnaces, doors, broken stairs.

Whatever tenants needed.”

Mr.

Voss scoffed.

“You were paid for simple labor.

Don’t make yourself sound important.”

Derek’s hand tightened against the counter.

“Then one February night,” Derek said, “a third-floor stair rail came loose at your property on Holton.

You told me to patch it before inspection.

No harness.