3 - Isa
The hinge doesn’t squeak.
I stand frozen in my doorway, keys still in hand, staring at my apartment door as it swings open on silent hinges.
For three months, that hinge has announced every coming and going with a small metal complaint that I'd grown to expect, even depend on.
My early warning system. I've meant to oil it.
I've put it off, the way you do with small irritations you learn to live with.
Now it moves like silk. Recently oiled. Carefully. With exactly the right amount.
My pulse kicks into overdrive, adrenaline flooding my system so fast my vision sharpens. I push the door wider, testing. Silent. Perfect. Someone fixed it while I was gone.
I step inside, every nerve firing. The overhead bulb in my entrance gleams steady and new.
The old one flickered since February, had a visible black spot near the base where the filament was dying, a distinctive flaw I saw every single day.
This one burns pristine white, a different temperature of light that turns my familiar space alien.
It even smells wrong. Not the dusty-electric scent of old bulbs but something sterile, recently touched by someone's hands.
The violation hits me like cold water. My skin prickles, every hair standing on end.
Someone has been inside my apartment.
The morning had started with such lightness.
Lisbon sitting in my chest like a secret, the passport renewal form on my counter filled out with the same precision I use on broken watches.
The relief from choosing, finally choosing, still humming beneath my skin as I'd moved through my routine.
Coffee, black, no sugar. Not like the Cuban espresso Adrian brings every day at La Sirena, thick enough to stand a spoon in, sweet at the edges the way only he makes it.
I'd pushed that thought away, irritated at myself for comparing. In Lisbon, there won't be any morning coffees I didn't make myself. No unspoken rituals. No debts of gratitude I never asked for.
My knife had settled into my boot, the weight of it familiar against my ankle.
Three inches of Solingen steel I bought five years ago, the week after one of Gunner’s soldiers got too friendly behind the bar, his hands suggesting things his mouth wouldn't dare say in another man’s presence.
The blade has tasted blood before. Some women carry pepper spray. I carry certainty.
Now I move deeper into my apartment, and that's when I see it. The hallway bulb too. The one that's been threatening to die for months, that I've been meaning to replace. New. Bright. Steady.
My hand goes to my knife, but I force myself to move through the space with measured calm, documenting violations.
The lock turns smoother than it did this morning, freshly lubricated.
The cabinet door that used to stick, that required a specific pull-and-lift motion I'd perfected over two years, now closes flush. Silent. Perfect.
Tiny improvements, each one proof that someone studied my life closely enough to know what bothered me. Watched me struggle with that cabinet. Heard me curse the flickering lights. Noticed the squeak that marked my comings and goings.
They didn't take anything. They didn't destroy anything.
They made it better.
The realization makes bile rise in my throat. Destruction would be simple. A threat I could understand, violence I could answer. But this?
Care. The word makes me want to break something. This isn't care. It's invasion wrapped in kindness, control dressed as consideration. Someone has been in my space, touched my things, improved my life without permission. The intimacy of it makes my skin crawl.
The watched feeling from this morning suddenly makes sense. That certainty of being observed hadn't been paranoia. It had been instinct, my body knowing what my mind refused to accept.
And I'd been right. Someone had been watching. Following. Learning my patterns well enough to know when I'd be gone, when they could slip inside and make their improvements.
For a moment, I think about calling someone.
But who? The cops would laugh. Someone fixed your squeaky hinge, ma'am? My instinct is to call Adrian, but he would… what? Bring me coffee? Tell me a joke? Logan would go overboard with guns, and Gunner would probably kidnap me and have Daphne tie me up in their newly enlarged apartment until the coast was clear. Marisol would… well, we don’t have the kind of relationship where I would ask.
No. This is mine to handle.
I work methodically, the way I fix broken watches, but underneath the calm, something wild claws at my ribs. This is my space. Mine. The violation of it makes me want to scream, but I swallow the sound and channel the rage into action.
First, every lock gets tested. Checking each window latch, the door deadbolt, even the bathroom window that's painted shut.
I run my fingers along the frames, searching for tool marks, signs of entry.
My fingertips come away dusty but reveal nothing.
All secure. No scratches, no damage, nothing forced.
Whoever came in had legitimate access or picking skills that leave no trace.
Someone professional. Someone who might have done this before, to other women who thought their locks meant safety.
The knife comes out of my boot now, held with intent rather than reflex.
The weight of it in my hand brings focus, turns fear into purpose.
Three inches of German steel between me and whoever thinks they can walk into my life uninvited.
I'm not some victim cowering in violated space.
I'm someone who's survived Miami's underworld for five years, who knows the weight of real danger.
The building super flashes through my mind.
Miguel, the elderly Cuban man who announces himself loudly whenever he needs to enter an apartment, who leaves hand-written notes explaining any work done, whose arthritis makes delicate work like lock mechanisms impossible.
This isn't him. Too subtle. Too careful. Too intimate.
I check every possible entry point again, this time looking for cameras, listening devices, anything that would extend the violation beyond the improvements. Nothing visible, but that doesn't mean nothing's there. My skin crawls with the possibility of being watched even now, in my own space.
Then I move through the apartment with purpose, reclaiming it the only way I know how. I place a thread across the doorframe, invisible unless you know to look. A glass positioned precisely on the counter, photographed with my phone. Another photo of how I've arranged items on my shelf.
If anything moves, I'll know.
The knife stays in my hand as I make one final check. Corners, closets, shower, anywhere someone could hide. Each empty space is both a relief and a disappointment. Part of me wants confrontation, wants to face whoever did this, to make them understand that I'm not prey.
I fall asleep with the knife still in my hand, still fully dressed in my black jeans and tee, not even kicking my boots off before I lie down. Sleep claims me fast and hard.
A thump wakes me with a start. It takes me a few moments of disorientation before I realize it’s morning, and the sound is just an ordinary noise from a waking building.
Movement in the hallway draws me to the peephole, my body automatically shifting to the side of the door in case someone fires through it.
Habits learned in a world where paranoia keeps you breathing.
Through the fisheye lens, I watch movers navigate boxes through the door of 4B next door.
Mrs. Villaverde must have moved out. Odd that she didn’t tell me—we weren’t exactly best friends, but I knew the names of her nephews and nieces and that she bowled at the lanes on Main Street on Sundays.
In fact, she never tired of updating me about the mundane details of her life, but she didn’t even mention she was leaving? Odd.
The removalists work efficiently, professionally, just another Tuesday job. The normality of it makes my shoulders drop slightly. Just life happening. Just the world moving on while I'm jumping at shadows.
I catch a glimpse of the new tenant directing them.
A woman, average height, jeans and a t-shirt, utterly unremarkable.
Just a silhouette really, half-turned away as they gesture toward where something should go.
Could be anyone. The kind of person you'd pass on the street without noticing.
No one who triggers my instincts, no one who makes my hand drift to my knife.
A faint scent drifts through my door. Something expensive, bergamot maybe, there and gone before I can properly place it. Probably whatever designer cologne the movers are drowning themselves in. Miami men and their scents, every one of them convinced they're God's gift.
But my body responds anyway. A flush of heat that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the sudden image of hands. Male hands, careful and competent, fixing my hinge. I dreamed about that, I realize, while I was passed out on my bed. The thought makes me press my thighs together.
This is what they do, men in our world. They don't court with flowers or sweet words.
They court with violation disguised as care, control dressed as protection.
They show you they can get to you, touch your life, change your world, all while you sleep unaware.
It's how they claim territory before they claim flesh.
I recognize the game now. Someone out there thinks they're courting me.
The realization should disgust me. Instead, something darker unfurls in my chest. Not quite fear, not quite desire, but something that lives in the space between. My pulse kicks up, but this time it's not just adrenaline.
I press my back against my door, knife still in hand, and hate myself for the wetness gathering between my thighs. This is wrong. Sick. I should be planning escape, not imagining those gloved hands on my skin instead of my doorknobs.
But I've always been drawn to danger. It's why I've lasted five years at La Sirena when other bartenders run after five weeks. Why I can serve monsters their drinks and meet their eyes without flinching. There's something broken in me that responds to broken things.
And whoever is hunting me? They're definitely broken. You'd have to be, to court a woman by breaking into her home and fixing her life without permission.
The May heat presses against my windows, thick and alive, but I'm burning from the inside out.
This morning, I'll hunt. I'll use every skill I've learned in Miami's underworld to find out who thinks they can claim me like territory.
I'll make them understand that I'm not some fragile thing to be collected, protected, possessed.
I grip my knife and imagine all the ways I'll make him pay for wanting me.
I imagine pressing the blade to his throat, watching his eyes darken not with fear but with recognition.
Predator acknowledging predator. I imagine the exact amount of pressure it would take to draw blood, that perfect point between threat and promise.
My breath comes faster, and I tell myself it's rage. Just rage. Not the twisted excitement of finally finding someone who might be as fucked up as I am.
I move away from the door, needing distance from that lingering scent, from the sounds of normal life next door that feel anything but normal now.
The knife goes back in my boot, but my fingers trail along its handle first, a promise to myself. Whoever he is, wherever he's watching from, he's about to learn something important about Isadora Navarro.
I don't run from hunters.
I become one.
Men in our world might court with violation, but women like me? We court with violence. And I've been sharpening my knife, and my hunger, for years, just waiting for someone stupid enough to think they could tame me.
The thought makes me smile, sharp and feral in my empty apartment.
Let him watch. Let him want. Let him think he's winning this sick game.
I’ll show him what happens when you wake the blade.