Part 37
Alex had been expecting this.
The traps.
The tiny tests he thought were secret — the hair across the doorframe, the flour dusted by the hallway.
She noticed them the way a mother notices a child's first lie: not with anger, but with a quiet, aching pride.
He was learning to protect himself.
She had taught him that, in her own way.
When she found the camera by the window, she didn't destroy it.
She tilted it ever so slightly, enough that her face would never appear, only her hands — careful, gloved, arranging the flowers.
It wasn't about hiding.
It was about showing him what he could see, if he was brave enough to look.
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The apartment was her language now.
Every cleaned surface, every folded towel, every replaced vase — a word in the conversation only she understood.
She watched him from the small monitor in her flat across the street, where his security feed looped silently through an encrypted line.
When he came home that evening, she leaned closer to the screen and whispered,
"You're not alone, Adrian. You never were."
He couldn't hear her, but that wasn't the point.
What mattered was rhythm — that his fear would slowly become routine, that the unknown presence would soften into comfort.
She had done it before, with others who drifted too far from her care.
But Adrian…
He was different.
He didn't break. He adapted.
And that made him dangerous in the most beautiful way.
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Later that night, she watched the camera feed flicker — he was checking the footage.
She smiled when she saw his expression change, caught between disbelief and exhaustion.
He had seen the vase move on its own, the flowers replaced by unseen hands.
That was all he needed.
Not proof.
Faith.
Alex leaned back, whispering to herself,
"You'll see, Adrian. Love is just trust rewritten."
And on her wall, she pinned a photo — a still frame of his face frozen in fear.
To her, it looked like worship.