The deed to this house was mine, acquired three years before his arrival, purchased with the blood-money of a brutal consulting career I had leveraged into a lucrative healthcare operations role. Ethan was merely a tenant in a life I had built from scratch.
At 3:30 a.m., I dialed a twenty-four-hour dispatch. The locksmith who answered sounded as if he’d been dragged out of a REM cycle by his collar.
“Emergency rekeying?” he grunted.
“Yes. Immediately. I will compensate you double your premium rate if your truck is in my driveway in twenty minutes.”
A pause pregnant with nocturnal mathematics followed. “Text the address.”
By 4:00 a.m., halogen headlights swept across my pristine lawn. The technician, a stoic man in a thermal hoodie with a graying mustache, lugged his heavy metal kit up the walkway. He took one look at my tangled hair and the rigid set of my jaw.
“Rough night?” he rumbled.
I wordlessly rotated my phone screen toward him. He squinted at the text, his thick eyebrows migrating toward his hairline. He released a low, melodic whistle. “Well. That is certainly a definitive way to find out you need deadbolts.”
He was methodical. Front door, rear patio, side entry, garage interface. Fresh tumblers. New, jagged brass keys. Uncompromised codes. By 5:00 a.m., the perimeter was utterly impenetrable. Ethan Jensen was now a trespasser in the only sanctuary he had ever known.
I paid the man, declined a third set of keys, and ascended the staircase. I stripped the linens from the master bed, desperate to banish the lingering phantom of his cologne, and collapsed onto the bare mattress. I plunged into a dreamless, two-hour oblivion.
At exactly 8:00 a.m., the front door shuddered under a barrage of violent, entitled pounding. It was the knocking of a man who still believed access was his birthright.
I jolted upright, disoriented for a fraction of a second before the reality of Vegas and deadbolts slammed back into my skull. I wrapped myself in a heavy robe and descended. Peering through the reinforced glass, I didn’t see Ethan.
