Chapter 23 Solana #3
True to her word, Khaleya returned with our meals shortly after.
She even had Duke cut into his chicken in front of her to confirm it was cooked to his satisfaction.
By the time he cleared his plate, he was quietly asking me questions about the airline's ownership structure and talking about looking into an investment.
I didn't know the full extent of what Duke was sitting on financially because he never made a production of it.
He didn't live flashy or throw numbers around in conversation. I liked that more than I ever let on.
For the last hour of the flight, we dozed off against each other until the attendant's voice came over the speaker letting us know it was time to buckle up for landing.
I noticed Duke had never once removed his seatbelt the entire flight.
I smiled to myself and shook my head. The man was something else entirely.
Once the plane touched down and rolled to a stop, we thanked the staff for taking such good care of us. Duke shook Khaleya's hand personally, which made her day based on the look on her face. Then we walked out toward the awaiting all-black SUV parked just outside the steps of the plane.
I slipped on my black baseball cap and slid my shades into place.
Duke grabbed our bags, only for the driver to step in and take them from him to load into the trunk.
The driver held the door open and I slid across the back seat, Duke sliding in right behind me.
I exhaled slowly as the door closed and the driver settled back behind the wheel.
"Ma'am, we're heading to 2458 Rosemary Lane, correct?" the driver asked.
"That's correct."
He nodded and eased out into traffic. I shifted closer to Duke, needing his presence to steady me as the city I had run from began to close in around us.
The familiar skyline, the billboards, the palm trees lining the boulevard, all of it hit differently when you had spent months pretending it didn't exist.
The ride was quiet. Neither of us felt the need to fill the air with words.
My chest tightened as landmarks I used to pass without a second thought came into view one after another.
The coffee shop I used to stop at between shoots.
The studio lot I had driven past a thousand times.
The street that ran parallel to the apartment Henderson used to insist on meeting at for early morning calls.
The moment the Rosemary Lane street sign came into view, I tightened my grip on Duke's hand without thinking.
The driver pulled up to the call box at the gate.
He rolled forward just enough for me to reach out and punch in the code.
We waited as the gate groaned and slowly swung open, revealing the long driveway that curved toward the house.
The grass on both sides was overgrown, tall enough to brush the sides of the car as we rolled through.
Whatever the HOA had to say about it, I would deal with later.
As the driver rounded the circle at the front and came to a stop, I noticed the front door was sitting slightly open.
Duke had his arm around me, but the moment his eyes landed on that door, his posture shifted entirely. He released me, sat up straight, and reached for the door handle in one quiet motion. I touched his forearm before he could move.
"Wait. What if someone is still in there?" I asked.
Duke looked over his shoulder at me with a calm that somehow made it more unsettling.
"Then they're going to wish they had broken in somewhere else."
I opened my mouth and then closed it. I had seen Duke handle things before, but something about the absolute stillness in his voice in that moment made every other thought leave my head. I crossed my legs and looked out the window to collect myself.
He shook his head lightly, then glanced toward the driver.
"Call the police. Let them know there's been a break-in at this address," he said, then stepped out of the SUV without another word.
I couldn't help myself. I rolled the window down and watched as he reached around to the back of his pants and produced a gun I hadn't even noticed he was carrying.
He moved toward the front door with a measured calm that somehow made it scarier to watch than if he had been running.
He nudged the door the rest of the way open with his foot and disappeared inside.
The minutes that followed felt stretched out.
The driver was on the phone with dispatch.
I sat with my hands in my lap and my eyes fixed on that door.
Ten minutes passed before Duke reappeared in the doorway and walked back to the car, tucking the gun away as the sound of sirens cut through the distance.
"Nobody's in there," he said, his jaw tight. "But I think you need to see it before you decide what you want to do. A deranged muthafucka did that."
He didn't say anything else. He didn't have to.
Two police cars rolled in behind us before I could respond. I looked up as the officers stepped out, and something stopped me cold. One of them was the officer who had told me about Rose Haven. The same one who had handed me that small piece of hope when I had nothing left to hold onto.
He spotted Duke first, and his entire face changed.
He walked over and extended his hand. "Duke, man. It's been forever."
Duke dapped him up with a half smile. "What's up. You know it's not much that drags me out of the Haven. But this one did."
The officer nodded, then glanced over at me.
"We've met. I've responded to this address before on similar incidents.
I never thought I'd see you back out here.
" He paused and lowered his voice. "That manager of yours has kept this department busier than you'd think.
You'd almost assume he had a personal stake in your whereabouts. "
I looked over at Duke, whose head was tilted slightly, his expression reading exactly like what I told you.
"I don't know why he was doing all of that. Money has a strange way of making people act outside of themselves," I said.
The officer nodded, then gripped his hips. "I went through the inside when we first pulled in. Nobody is in there. If you want to take a walk through, you're welcome to. But I want to prepare you for what you're going to see. Whoever it was spent time in there," he said carefully.
Duke spoke up before he could go further. "Furniture's destroyed. Spray paint on every wall. She couldn't stay here even if she wanted to."
The officers exchanged a look, then headed inside to do a full sweep. Ten to fifteen minutes passed before they reappeared in the doorway with tight expressions that told me everything before they said a word.
"What would you like to do, Ms. Amore?" the officer asked.
I looked back at the house for a long moment. The facade was still beautiful from the outside. Manicured stonework, tall windows, the arched front door I had loved the moment I first saw it. None of that mattered now.
"Nothing," I said finally. "This isn't my home anymore. I just want to go inside and take whatever isn't completely destroyed so I can donate it. After that, I want someone to gut the place, clean it top to bottom, and then I'm putting it on the market."
The officer nodded. "We'll stay posted out here until you're ready to go."
Duke intertwined his fingers with mine as we turned toward the door. "You sure?" he asked quietly.
I nodded and we walked in together.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I stopped.
Red paint was splattered across the couches and walls in wide, frantic arcs.
The curtains had been torn from the rods and ripped apart.
The refrigerator was covered in black spray paint.
Every surface that had once felt carefully chosen and lived-in now looked like the inside of someone's breaking point.
I forced myself to keep walking.
The walls were covered in the same word repeated over and over in jagged letters.
Mine. And then further down the hallway, in a different hand or a different moment, the messages changed.
I will find you. Forever. The repetition of it was more disturbing than the damage itself.
This wasn't impulsive. This had been deliberate.
I took the wooden staircase slowly, stepping around the places where the treads had been cracked, some of them nearly split through like something heavy had been brought down on them repeatedly.
A few of the walls on the way up had holes punched or kicked through them, the drywall crumbling at the edges.
I didn't stop at any of the other bedrooms. There was only one place I needed to go.
My bedroom sat at the far end of the hall, the door already open from when Duke and the officers had come through earlier.
I stepped inside and immediately understood why his jaw had been so tight when he came back to the car.
It was the worst room in the house.
My clothes had been pulled from every hanger and violated in a way that made my stomach turn. You could tell it had happened more than once, over what must have been multiple visits, the fabric stiff and discolored in places. I kept my eyes moving and didn't let myself sit with it.
I released Duke's hand and moved toward the closet.
I already knew what I was looking for. Tucked at the very back, behind everything else I had left behind in my rush to disappear, was a trunk my mother had left me.
It was the one thing I hadn't been able to carry when I ran.
It was also the one thing I never stopped thinking about.
The closet looked like everything else in the house.
Old photos of me from when I had red hair were pinned or taped across every inch of the walls.
My clothes were thrown in every direction.
But the trunk was sitting undisturbed in the far corner, partially hidden behind a row of coats that had been shoved to one side.
Either he hadn't noticed it or it hadn't meant anything to him.
Either way, I was grateful.
I kicked a path through the mess and pointed toward it.
"Can you grab that? That's all I want from in here. Everything else can go. We might need to wipe it down before it leaves the house just to be safe."
Duke stepped around me without a word, pulled the trunk from the back of the closet, and lifted it like it weighed nothing. I turned and walked out ahead of him, not looking back at the room again.
We made it back outside into the late afternoon sun and the driver popped the trunk so Duke could slide my mother's trunk inside. I stood on the driveway for a moment and let the air settle around me.
I turned back to the officer. "Do you know anyone who can clear this place out by end of day tomorrow? I know it's too late to start tonight."
He nodded and pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket, wrote down a name and number, and tore the page free before handing it to me. "They're good people. They'll take care of it."
I thanked him, shook his hand, and slid into the back seat. Duke got in beside me and pulled the door closed. I leaned into him and let my eyes close as the driver pulled back down the long driveway toward the gate.
I didn't look back at the house. There was nothing left there for me to hold onto.