Chapter 21 #2
Jaxon pushed the door open slowly with his left hand, his gun raised in his right, his body positioned to react to any threat that might come from inside.
He stepped through the doorway, and I heard the sharp intake of breath, heard the muttered curse that was barely audible but carried all the weight of bad news.
“Fuck.”
The single word made my blood run even colder, made my hands start shaking so badly I nearly dropped my own coffee.
But it snapped me out of my frozen state, and got my feet moving forward.
I stepped through the doorway into my boutique and felt the world tilt sideways, felt gravity shift, felt everything I'd built over six years collapse in on itself like a dying star.
The coffee cup slipped from my numb fingers.
I heard it hit the floor, heard the splash of liquid, heard the hollow roll of the empty cup across hardwood.
But I couldn't look away from the destruction in front of me, process what I was seeing, or make my brain accept that this was real and not some nightmare I was about to wake up from.
The boutique was destroyed.
Not damaged. Not ransacked. Not messy.
Destroyed. Systematically, methodically, vindictively destroyed like someone had spent hours making sure every single thing I loved was ruined beyond repair.
Every clothing rack I'd carefully arranged last week, the ones I'd spent an hour positioning to create the perfect flow through the space, had been knocked over, the metal frames bent and twisted like someone had taken a crowbar to them out of pure spite.
Clothes I'd spent hours choosing, inventory I'd carefully curated from vendors I'd built relationships with over years, were strewn everywhere across the floor in a chaos of fabric and color.
Some were merely wrinkled, salvageable with a good cleaning.
But others had been deliberately shredded, cut with scissors or knives, the fabric torn into ribbons like whoever did this wanted to make sure I couldn't save anything.
The mannequins I'd carefully dressed just last week lay scattered across the floor like fallen soldiers on a battlefield.
But they weren't just tipped over in some random act of vandalism.
They'd been gutted. Limbs torn off and thrown across the room.
Torsos split open with foam stuffing pulled out and strewn across the floor like snow.
Heads rolled in corners, their blank faces staring at nothing with an accusation I could feel in my bones.
All three of my antique glass display cases I'd found at an estate sale three years ago and painstakingly restored over months of weekend work because I couldn't afford to pay someone else were shattered.
Glass covered the floor in a glittering carpet that crunched under Jaxon's boots as he moved deeper into the space, each step sounding like bones breaking.
The jewelry I'd displayed so carefully was gone, probably stolen.
The scarves I'd arranged by color were scattered and trampled, ground into the glass like whoever did this had walked over them deliberately.
The mirrors. Oh God, the mirrors.
Every single mirror in the boutique had been smashed like someone had gone around with a baseball bat.
The full-length one by the dressing rooms that I'd hung at the perfect angle to catch the light.
The ornate vintage one above my checkout counter that had cost me two months of profit.
The decorative ones I'd hung on the walls to make the space feel bigger, brighter, more open.
All of them shattered with spider-web cracks radiating from impact points, shards hanging precariously in frames or scattered across the floor mixed with the glass from the display cases in a way that would make cleaning up impossible without professional help I couldn't afford.
The walls I'd painted myself by spending a weekend rolling the cream paint on had holes punched through them.
Fist-sized craters in the drywall that exposed the studs underneath.
Picture frames lay broken on the floor, the artwork I'd chosen so carefully torn or trampled beyond recognition.
Shelves had been ripped from the walls, their contents dumped and destroyed with the kind of thoroughness that spoke of planning and intent.
My beautiful antique front counter that I found at a flea market lay overturned, its solid wood surface facing the ceiling.
Next to it, my vintage bronze cash register sat on its side, the drawer hanging open, empty except for a few scattered coins.
Not that there had been much in it, I'd made the deposit Friday like I always did, and had been proud of the two hundred dollars I'd managed to scrape together from a slow week.
But seeing it like that, violated and discarded like trash, made my chest tight with a rage so intense it scared me.
The back office door hung open on broken hinges, and even from here I could see that the destruction continued beyond what I could see.
Papers scattered everywhere like someone had taken filing cabinets and just dumped them.
My desk that I'd inherited from my grandmother was overturned.
Everything I'd built, everything I'd worked for was reduced to kindling, glass and ruined dreams.
I couldn't look anymore.
Couldn't process the totality of the devastation in front of me, couldn't make my brain calculate the cost of replacing everything, couldn't let myself think about what this meant for my future or my business or my life.
My legs went weak, my knees threatening to buckle like someone had cut the strings holding me upright. Only Jaxon's hand on my arm kept me from collapsing onto the glass-covered floor.
“Harper.” His voice was urgent, commanding, the voice of someone trying to pull me back from the edge. “Harper, I need you to step back outside. Right now. This is a crime scene, and we need to—”
I didn't hear the rest of what he said. I was too busy staring at the destruction in front of me, my brain stuck in a loop, cataloging the damage with numb precision while my heart shattered into as many pieces as the mirrors.
Six years of blood, sweat, and tears. Of early mornings when I'd opened the boutique before the sun came up because I couldn't afford to hire help.
Of late nights doing inventory and bookkeeping and crying over spreadsheets that never balanced.
Of carefully curating inventory and building relationships with customers who trusted me to make them feel beautiful.
Of creating something that was mine, something I was proud of even when it was failing, even when I was drowning in debt, even when everyone told me to give up.
Gone.
All of it gone in one night of vindictive destruction that someone had probably enjoyed.
“Stay here,” Jaxon ordered, his hand gentle but firm as he pushed me back toward the door like I was a fragile thing that might break if handled roughly. “Stay right here in the doorway. Don't move. Don't touch anything. I need to clear the back to make sure whoever did this isn't still here.”
The thought that someone might still be here and hiding in my back office or the storage room, waiting to finish what they started, sent ice through my veins that made my hands shake even harder.
I watched as Jaxon moved through the space with his gun raised, his movements controlled and precise like he was clearing a building in combat.
He disappeared into the back office, and I held my breath until he emerged seconds later, lowering his weapon slightly in a way that said we were alone but not safe.
“Clear,” he called out, already pulling out his phone with his free hand. “No one's here. But Harper, I need you to step outside now. We have to call Davies.”
I heard him talking to someone, his voice low and urgent as he described the scene in clipped military terms that stripped away the emotion and left only facts.
But the words didn't fully register in my brain, which was stuck on running calculations that wouldn't stop no matter how much I wanted them to.
How much money in inventory was destroyed?
At least ten thousand, maybe more if I counted retail value instead of wholesale.
How long would it take to replace everything?
Months, if I could even afford to restock.
Would insurance cover it? Maybe, if they didn't decide this was somehow my fault for not having better security.
How long would I have to stay closed? Weeks at minimum, maybe months if the insurance dragged their feet like they had with my apartment.
Could I even reopen after this? Did I want to reopen after this, or was this the universe finally telling me to give up and admit I'd failed?
The questions spiraled through my mind like water down a drain, each one more devastating than the last, each one pulling me deeper into the certainty that this was it.
This was the thing that would finally break me.
I felt Jaxon's hand on my arm again, guiding me back outside into sunshine that suddenly felt too bright, too cheerful for the darkness that had just swallowed my life whole.
He steered me to his Jeep, helped me sit on the passenger seat with my feet on the step, and I bent forward and cradled my head in my hands like that would somehow make this stop being real.
“Breathe,” he said gently, crouching in front of me so he was at eye level, his hand on my knee grounding me. “Harper, just breathe. Davies is on his way.”
But I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. All I could do was sit there and shake while sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer, bringing reality with them whether I was ready for it or not.