LIES WE MAKE, LOVE WE BREAK

Watching

Mia woke with the smell of toast in her mouth and the echo of Julian’s laugh under her skin. The flat felt too bright for morning, like someone had turned up the wrong light. Eli slept on, small and steady, the little rise and fall of him like a metronome for her life.

She heard Kade before she saw him — the soft step in the hall, the quiet of someone who knows how to move without making noise. He knocked once, polite like a neighbour, and then the door opened.

“Morning,” he said. His voice was low, the kind that made you listen whether you wanted to or not. He had a coffee in his hand and a look on his face like he’d been up all night thinking about other people’s troubles.

“You came,” Mia said. She tried to keep her voice ordinary. Inside, her head felt like a kettle about to spit.

“You texted me,” he said. He set the coffee down on the small table as if leaving a peace offering. “Thought I’d check on you.”

She wanted to say don’t come. She wanted to say get out and never come back. Instead she let him in. “Thanks.”

Ava was already there before she could make much of a plan. She moved around the flat like she owned the place — making coffee, pulling curtains, making everything look lived-in and not about to fall apart. “You look like you slept with a storm under your pillow,” Ava said, and laughed like it was no big thing, though Mia saw the worry on her face.

Kade watched them. He leaned against the sink like he was an ornament. “You want me to stay?” he offered.

Mia’s gut said no. Her heart said maybe. She thought of the photo, of the hand on the table, of the scar in the corner of the picture. She felt the memory click in the back of her skull like a portrait catching light. The jawline. The scar. A name fluttered at the edge of her mouth and she swallowed it down.

“I don’t want you to stay because of me,” she said. “I want you to stay because of him.” She pointed to Eli’s sleeping form. Kade’s gaze softened. For a second he looked like a man who could be kind.

Ava sat opposite, hands wrapped round her mug. “You told him?” she asked.

“Some,” Mia said. “He knows Julian’s been knocking. He knows the card. He—” Her voice went thin and she stopped. Saying the words made them real.

Kade’s jaw tightened. “I can put a team on it. Quiet. Watch the building. Cameras to Anything.” He didn’t sound like he was trying to impress; he sounded like a man offering a fix.

“You sure?” Ava asked. “You know these people.”

“You think I don’t?” Kade said. He folded his hands. “Just tell me what you need.”

Mia felt the weight of his offer like a hand on her shoulder. It steadied her. It also pushed her toward a cliff she did not know the edge of. “Keep it quiet,” she said. “No paper. No talk.”

Kade nodded. “Nothing on record. Just me and a couple of people I trust. I’ll check the cameras myself.”

They planned in low voices, like thieves plotting. Ava called contacts in Portland, called lawyers who would move without blinking. Kade left instructions and a card that said, simply, CALL ME. He left like a storm moving off, not loud but sure.

After he left, Mia sat on the edge of the bed and let the quiet come for a second. The flat smelled like coffee and detergent. The sun pushed through the curtains and made shapes on the floor like ghosts. She put her hand on Eli’s back the way you steady a ship. The skin under her palm was warm and steady.

“Eli,” she whispered, not wanting to wake him. He muttered something and turned, safe in the net of sleep. She closed her eyes and let memory leak in as if through a c***k.

It came like an image, quick and sharp: a dark room, fairy lights, a glass slipping from a hand. A jaw in the corner of the frame — scarred. Not whole. Not kind. The picture from the phone but moving now, alive, with sound. A laugh that smelled of bleach. A voice that said a single word just before everything blurred.

She opened her eyes and the sun looked too honest.

She took Kade’s card out of her coat again. It felt like a thing that could save her or sink her. She rubbed the edge with her thumb and tried to remember what his face did when the memory sharpened. His hand in the market, the dust on his sleeve. The scar along his jaw looked the same as the photo. She hated that she noticed such small things.

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. She almost let it go. She sat up and answered.

A picture came through. Not a photo — a short clip. A small hand, gripping a bar in a mall play area. A voice in the background that could have been a child singing. The camera panned and for a breath she saw Eli — hair sticking up, nose red with sleep. He looked too big for the frame, too real.

Her heart fell out of her chest. “Who is this?” she whispered into the phone.

No answer. Just the clip, looping. The timestamp was in the now. Someone had him. Someone had taken a clip and sent it to her like a cold greeting. The message had no words, only the picture and a new number that flashed under it.

She didn’t scream. She could not. She felt numb the way you do when something heavy lands on your chest and the world rearranges itself around the weight. She clutched the phone so hard her knuckles went white.

The door banged like a fist. She dropped the phone on the bed and moved like someone underwater. She opened the door and Kade stood there again, damp from the rain as if he’d walked through the storm to find her.

His face fell when he saw the phone. “What is it?” he asked.

She showed him without meaning to. The clip played. Eli’s voice hummed a tune only mothers know. The world pressed in around them, small and terrible.

Kade watched it and his hands closed into fists. For a moment he looked very young and very scared. “Stay inside,” he said. “Lock everything. Don’t go out.”

“Who are they?” Mia asked. “What do they want?”

Kade didn’t answer right away. He looked at Eli sleeping and then back at her. The man’s face — the one she had seen in the old photo — pressed against the inside of her skull like a thumb.

“We’ll find him,” Kade said finally. “I promise.”

She wanted to take him at his word. She wanted to fall on the floor and cry and tell him everything. Instead she felt a memory rise, strange and quick: a voice that whispered in a room full of lights, a hand that smelled of smoke, a name that was not his but sounded close.

Ava came through the door like a whirlwind, keys and fury. “Where is he?” she demanded. She took the phone and watched the clip with her teeth bared like an animal. “Who sent this?”

Mia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Ava’s jaw worked. “You need to call the police.”

“No,” Mia said at once. The word came out like an order. “Not yet. If they get involved, Julian will make a show. He’ll put Eli in the middle of it.”

Kade looked at her like he’d been hit. “We can’t play nice with this.” He sounded like a man who knew how to fight. “I’ll pull cameras. Whoever sent that clip left a trace. We start there.”

Mia felt the edges of her mouth go numb. Her hands shook. She wanted to remember everything and nothing. She wanted to burn the past and hide in it at the same time.

“Where do we start?” Ava asked.

Kade laid out a plan like a man reading a map. Security teams. A call to a man who owned a string of laundrettes with cameras. A quiet notice to a friend at the hospital. A shadow network that moved without lights. He said their names like talismans. Mia listened and tried to anchor herself to the sound of them.

They worked in short, sharp sentences. The flat felt too small for the weight of what they were doing. Each knock on the door felt like a countdown.

She kept glancing at Kade. He moved like someone used to shutting things down. He had the look of someone whose hands had done damage before and then tried to fix it. It scared her and it calmed her at once.

The phone buzzed again. A new message. Unknown number.

Mia didn’t want to look but her eyes moved anyway. The text read: WE HAVE HIM. COME ALONE. BELLEVUE, MIDNIGHT.

Her stomach dropped so hard she thought she might fall through the floor. The words burned on the screen like a brand.

She looked up and saw Kade’s face fold into something she had not seen before — a burst of white-hot fear and something like a promise. He reached out and took her hand. His touch was the only thing that felt real.

“Don’t,” he said, the single word a plea.

Mia felt every choice like a razor. Go alone, she could save him maybe and be brave. Go with people and bring a war to a place she’d already been broken. Call the police and bring the lights. Trust Kade and risk the truth she feared.

Her mouth tasted of pennies and rain. She thought of the photograph on the floor, of the scar in the corner, the jaw like a half-remembered thing. She thought of the man in the message and the face that haunted her.

She looked at Eli and then at the door and felt the world close around her like a hand.

“Go,” she whispered, not sure who she meant — Kade, Ava, or herself. The house hummed like a wire. The rain sang outside.

Kade’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll drive you. But you come with me. No lone walks. Not tonight.”

Her phone buzzed again. Another message. The image opened and for a fraction of a second she saw a face — not whole, but enough. The jaw. The scar. The name she had tried to hide pressed against the inside of her bones.

She swallowed and felt the cliff under her feet.

“Fine,” she said, and it sounded like surrender and like defiance in the same breath.

They left the flat in a rush. The city smelled of rain and petrol and the old lights. The night closed around them like a curtain. They moved out into it, three shadows stitched together by fear.

Behind them, on the bed, Eli turned in his sleep and muttered a small sound like a laugh. In the world beyond the window, someone else waited with a plan.

The road swallowed them whole.