I didn’t sleep after that. I sat on the edge of my bed, clutching my phone, listening to their voices drift through the walls.

By morning, I was ready to figure out exactly how they’d gotten in. The front door’s deadbolt looked untouched. The digital keypad was dead, its screen cracked. Then I spotted it—the sliding door to my balcony was ajar.

The balcony of my unit sat just a few feet from the emergency stairwell landing. All it would take was a few bold steps along the narrow concrete ledge—eighteen floors up—to climb in. One wrong move, and they’d have been street art. The thought should’ve made me feel lucky they hadn’t fallen. Instead, my skin prickled. People that desperate weren’t going to be scared off easily.

When I came back inside, I found Mrs. Landry sprawled across my bed in a silk robe I’d bought just last week, her feet on my pillows. Mr. Landry was sitting beside her in nothing but boxer shorts, working at a stubborn toenail.

From the guest room came muffled noises that made my skin crawl. I didn’t knock. I didn’t want to know.

In the smallest bedroom, Tyler was spreading fresh sheets, like we’d just agreed to move in together again. He looked up and smiled like nothing was wrong. “Come on in. It’s been a while since we slept together.”

I backed out so fast I nearly tripped.

The air in the condo felt thick, sour. I left without another word, spent the night in a 24-hour coffee shop two blocks away, watching the same silent newscast loop until sunrise.

When I came back the next day, I planned to have one last, civilized conversation. Tell them to leave, or I’d call the cops.

The elevator doors slid open, and my stomach dropped.

My sofa, coffee table, and bookshelf were in the hallway. In my living room, a crew of men in dust masks was swinging hammers at my walls. Light fixtures lay shattered on the floor. Even the hardwood planks were being pried up and stacked like firewood.

“What the hell are you doing?!” My voice cracked halfway through.

“Making the space more practical,” Adam said from the kitchen, holding one of my wine bottles—nearly empty. “A big living room’s a waste. The baby needs its own room.”

I shoved past him to the wine rack. Ten bottles gone. Only two left, both vintage reds I’d bought to share with my mom.

“That’s for my family,” I snapped. “Do you have any idea what those cost?”

Mrs. Landry strolled out from the kitchen, wearing my mother’s birthday necklace and the matching gold bracelets. “Don’t be so territorial. What’s yours is ours. We’ve given the workers a taste too—”

Jessica emerged in my mink coat, grinning. “We believe in sharing the good stuff.” She plucked the last two bottles from the rack and handed them to one of the men tearing down my walls. “For your trouble.”

I caught her wrist before she could let go. “You don’t give away my property.”

Mrs. Landry slid between us and slapped me hard across the face. The room tilted for a second, my cheek burning. “Watch yourself,” she said. “You’ll stress Jess and hurt the baby. The workers offered to knock a couple hundred off the bill if we gave them something nice. You should be thanking us for saving you money.”

I stared at her, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Saving me money? You’re demolishing my home. And I’m supposed to pay for it?”

Mrs. Landry folded her arms. “Who else would? Your ex’s savings are for a new car, Adam’s got a kid on the way, and we’re retired. You’ve got lottery money and no responsibilities. It’s time you learned what family means.”

That word—family—made something in me twist.

Behind her, a man in overalls was lugging two large boxes toward the door. I recognized the tape on them instantly. My dad’s books.

The man in overalls stopped in the doorway when I shouted, but not for long.

“Hey,” I called out, crossing the room in three strides. “Where are you taking those?”

He shrugged. “Old books. Your dad’s, right? They’re heavy as hell. Adam says you don’t need ’em.”

“They’re not for sale.” I grabbed at the nearest box, my fingers scraping against the cardboard. “They’re rare. Out of print. My father spent decades finding them.”

Mr. Landry stepped in front of me, his frame filling the hallway. “Don’t make a scene. I can get five bucks a box from the scrap guy. That’s a pack of smokes.”

“You can’t—”

The rest of my sentence turned into a grunt as his foot slammed into my hip, sending me to the floor. The boxes were gone before I could get up, carried down the hall toward the freight elevator.

I pushed to my knees, but Adam’s boot came down between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the hardwood. My cheek pressed into a strip of duct tape that had fallen from one of the half-dismantled walls, the smell of dust and paint sharp in my nose.

“Stay down,” Adam growled.

Mrs. Landry’s voice floated over me, falsely sweet. “You know, you’ve been nothing but trouble since we got here. Always complaining, acting like we’re strangers. Family doesn’t treat each other this way.”

“Family?” I spat the word into the floor. “You broke into my home.”

“Which is why we need to keep you somewhere safe.” Her tone turned brisk. “Adam, take her to the bathroom. Tie her up. We’ll finish up in peace.”

Rough hands grabbed my arms, hauling me toward the hallway. My heels scraped against the floor, catching on a nail jutting from the baseboard.

The bathroom door slammed shut behind me. A towel was stuffed into my mouth, the bitter tang of detergent making my stomach turn. Rope—no, some kind of heavy nylon cord—wound tight around my wrists and ankles. My phone was plucked from my pocket before I could twist away.

“You bring this on yourself,” Mr. Landry said, not unkindly. “Could’ve just let us stay.”

The light clicked off, and I was left in the dark with the sound of their voices and the crash of my life being dismantled outside.

Through the muffled cotton in my mouth, I tried to breathe slow, steady. But the darkness pressed in. My muscles started to twitch, not from fear, but from the creeping, electric itch of what I’d been fighting to keep under control.

A few hours earlier, one of the workers—someone I’d never seen before—had mentioned, almost casually, that the building had “a crazy lady” on my floor. Someone who screamed in the middle of the night. Someone who left dead animals in the hall. His tone had been curious, almost amused.

Mrs. Landry had laughed it off, insisting he must be thinking of someone else. I could hear the edge in her voice even now in my memory. She was scared—not for me, but of what might happen if that story stuck.

The walls of the bathroom seemed to pulse with each beat of my heart. I imagined my father’s books being tossed into a pickup bed, spines splitting, pages crumpling. I imagined the gold on my mother’s necklace glinting on Mrs. Landry’s throat.

And then my mind went somewhere darker.

If I were free, I thought, I could make all of this stop.

The thought didn’t scare me like it should have.