4 - Adrian
The keys turn in my hand, still warm from my pocket, and I push open the door to what is finally mine. Not the club, not the stage, not the carefully curated Adrian everyone knows. This empty apartment, one thin wall away from her, is the first honest thing I’ve allowed myself in years.
The space smells like fresh paint. Afternoon light streams through windows that mirror hers exactly.
Same angle, same view, same distance from the street.
She won't be home for hours yet, plenty of time to settle in before her shift ends.
I'd checked, of course. Measured. The building plans spread across my kitchen counter two weeks ago while I calculated sightlines and sound transmission rates.
Getting the previous tenant out had been simple.
Easier than negotiating territory with the Zayas crew, cleaner than the deals I broker at La Sirena.
Mrs. Villaverde, seventy-three, arthritic hands that struggled with her keys.
I'd arranged for her nephew in Boca Raton to suddenly have room for her, helped with the moving costs, made sure her new place had grab bars in the bathroom and a walk-in shower.
I held her frail hands in mine, told her stories about her nephew's "new promotion" while helping her pack the photo albums she treasured.
She'd cried when she hugged me goodbye, called me a good boy, never knowing I was the reason her nephew's financial situation had miraculously improved.
Everyone wins when you know how to arrange things properly.
I set down the single box I'm carrying. Tools mostly, and a few necessities.
The movers already delivered the furniture this morning, accompanied by a young woman I paid to look like she was moving in.
A bed because I will end up sleeping here, a desk I'll never use, kitchen supplies because appearances matter.
But the wall. The shared wall that runs the length of both our apartments, that's not a prop. That's the entire point.
I press my palm flat against it, feeling for any vibration that might tell me she's returned early.
On the other side is her kitchen, her perfect order, her carefully controlled life.
Six inches of drywall and studs between us.
I've been studying the building's original blueprints from 1947.
No concrete, no brick, just wood and plaster and the prayer of privacy.
She has no idea how thin that prayer is.
This feels like a homecoming, even though I've never lived here. Like I've been circling this moment for years, and now I'm finally where I'm supposed to be. Not across the bar bringing her coffee, not across the room watching her work. Here.
The satisfaction of it settles warm in my chest, my pulse steadying for the first time in days.
The drill weighs perfect in my hand. Not the cheap hardware store kind that screams and shakes. This is precise equipment, nearly silent. I've marked the spots already, tiny pencil dots at different heights. Eye level when standing. Lower for when I'm sitting. One angled toward her bed.
My pulse steadies with each hole I'm about to complete, the anxiety of distance finally easing.
The first hole takes thirty seconds. I work slowly, carefully, the bit grinding through drywall like butter, then catching slightly on the wood stud before breaking through to the hollow space between.
The drill vibrates in my hand, each pulse traveling up my arm.
I blow the dust away. Perfect view of her kitchen counter.
This isn't about sex. If I wanted to watch someone undress, Miami has plenty of windows.
This is about knowing she's safe. About being present in her life the way she needs, even if she doesn't know she needs it.
She needs protection. Not just from whatever she's running from, but from the sharks that circle anyone connected to La Sirena.
The Zayas soldiers who've been sniffing around, asking questions about our operations, about her.
The second hole, lower, near the baseboards where it will never be noticed.
This one shows her living room, the couch where she never sits, always too restless to relax.
The third, behind where my Van Gogh painting will go, aimed at her door.
I'll know when she comes home, when she leaves, if anyone tries to visit.
Each hole is precise, deliberate. No bigger than necessary.
Tiny holes with magnification embedded inside, almost impossible to detect from the other side.
I'm not some animal tearing through walls. This is craft. Care. The same attention I bring to everything that matters. I’ll use my key to her apartment to clean up the sawdust from her side too.
Cameras would be easier, but I don't trust cameras.
They fail. They run out of battery, lose signal, get hacked.
And they're one step removed. You're watching a screen, not watching her directly.
The distance matters. I distrust anything that puts technology between me and what I'm protecting.
Through these small windows, I'll see her with my own eyes, direct and unmediated.
No digital delay, no pixels, just the truth of her existence.
I could have twenty men watching her, could put a security detail on her without her knowing.
But this, me, personally, through these walls. This is love.
The fourth hole I place higher, requiring a step stool. This one angles down toward her bathroom door. Not inside, I'm not that kind of monster. But I'll know when she showers, how long she takes, if she falls and needs help.
I test each sightline, making sure the views overlap slightly. No blind spots. No moments where she could disappear.
The dust from the drilling coats my hands. I brush it off carefully, already planning how I'll cover the holes on my side. Small pictures, furniture placement, things that look natural. She'll never see them from her side. The holes are too small, placed inconspicuously.
This is what devotion looks like when it's more than words and roses. It's vigilance made physical, care carved into the bones of the building itself.
The hidden box waits in the bedroom closet, behind a panel I installed myself.
Climate controlled, archival quality, the kind museums use for preservation.
My archive of her, years in the making. I pull the box out carefully, setting it on the bed like something sacred, something that deserves reverence.
Inside, everything has its place. The coffee stirrer from the first ‘Old Fashioned’ she made me five years ago, still faintly stained.
A receipt from the bodega where she buys groceries.
Three hairpins collected over months, the cheap kind she uses and loses without noticing.
Each item in my hidden archive tells a story she doesn't know she's writing.
Each item is labeled with a date, stored in its own small envelope. Not obsessive. Archival. There's a difference between keeping and hoarding. This is curation, the way you'd preserve love letters from a war, proof that something beautiful existed.
Today's trophy makes my chest tighten with something electric, something that spreads warm through my veins.
During my visit to her apartment yesterday, fixing her squeaky hinge, changing her burnt-out bulbs, I'd found it in her bathroom wastebasket.
Not a thread from her clothes or a receipt from her pocket, but something better: a cotton pad with the faintest trace of her lipstick, the dark red she wore that night.
The lipstick trace on the cotton pad has long since dried, but I imagine it still holds the warmth of her mouth.
She'd wiped it off before bed. Thrown it away without thinking.
Trash to her, but to me it's proof of a specific moment.
That night at 2 AM, she stood at her sink and removed the mask she wears for the world.
This small cotton circle holds that transition.
I place today's trophy, this intimate receipt of her private moment, in its envelope, writing the date and time on the outside. "May 15, 2AM. The night she said Lisbon." It’s like holding the ghost of a kiss.
Some would call this stealing. But you can't steal something that's been discarded. I'm a poet collecting moments, turning ordinary things into something that matters.
The box goes back in its hiding place, sealed and safe. These fragments of her are mine now, my hidden archive that tells the true story of who she is when nobody's watching.
Her keys hit the lock at 11:45 PM. Three seconds to turn the first deadbolt, two for the second.
She's tired. I can tell by the extra moment before she pushes the door open.
When she's alert, it's fluid. Tonight there's a pause.
My chest tightens at the sound of her keys, the same anticipation I feel before stepping on stage, but deeper, more necessary.
Through the uppermost hole, I watch her enter.
She moves differently when she thinks she's alone.
Shoulders dropping, that careful control loosening just slightly.
She pulls her knife from her boot and sets it on the counter.
Within reach. Smart. The Delgado empire might be rebuilding, but our enemies are still out there, circling.
Her routine is liturgy, each movement a prayer to the god of staying safe. Locks checked, twice. Lights on in a specific order: entrance, kitchen, living room. She opens the refrigerator next, not because she's hungry but because she needs to confirm nothing's changed.
Then the pause. She stands in her kitchen, head tilted slightly, listening. She's sensing something different, some change in the air. My breathing goes shallow, silent, my body automatically stilling the way it does when the cops sweep through La Sirena, looking for what they'll never find.