Page 10 of Break Me Not

Or maybe I thought I wasn’t attached. Because now that I had her once, I wouldn’t know how to live without her.

I didn’t care that she was Claire’s mother. I didn’t care that she was older than me.

She’s mine.

Liz

“They broke in but didn’t even steal anything?” I asked as I looked at the heavy lock on the floor. The remnants of the chain used to keep the back doors locked were scattered over the ground.

“Nothing was touched and none of the alarms inside went off,” Jen, the gallery assistant, said with a small quiver in her voice.

I had received a panicked call earlier after she showed up and realized that someone had broken in through the delivery doors. Since she couldn't reach Stefan, the gallery owner, she decided to try me, as I was the next best thing.

I had been a part of the gallery for most of my adult life. I had started in a position similar to hers as an assistant, then after getting my master’s and working my way up, I was given the title of gallery curator.

Not director, much to my annoyance, but I’m still working on it.

Stefan had been fairly involved in the gallery until three years ago when he suddenly stopped answering our calls. He also started visiting less and less and dumping more of his responsibilities on me. It had become a pattern.

The gallery was practically run by me at this point, except for the mortgage of the space and the random pop-up events—I would get a heads-up for those a day before, if I was lucky. Most of the time, he didn't even bother calling me and would just send me an email.

It had been a long time since Stefan updated access security. Because of the insane amount of money inside the gallery, security there was all right, but after this break-in, I was concerned.

I looked around the delivery area. Jen had done a good job not touching anything, since it might ruin any evidence.

“Go take a break,” I told her in a soft voice. “I baked you those lemon-poppy seed muffins you like. We will open a little bit later today.”

She shifted and pushed the sides of her short pixie cut behind her ear.

“Are you sure? I think maybe I should start cataloging everything just to make sure⁠—”

“It’s okay,” I said, lightly pushing her back toward the side entrance. “Take a break, please. We can catalog it together later.”

She gave me a small nod before slinking back around the corner.

When she was gone, I finally got to work, taking pictures of everything, including the path that led up to the back. It wasn’t until I went in through the front and around to the other side of the delivery area that I realized that the perpetrator likely didn’t even set foot into the place. There were no footprints or anything stolen, like Jen had said.

I took pictures of it nonetheless, but the more I lingered, the more uneasy I felt. A small chill worked its way up my spine. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars in here, and yet they took none of it. It was almost like…

They just wanted to let us know how easy it was to get in.

With that in mind, I tried to ring Stefan but went straight to his voicemail.

Something wasn't right here. Red flags were going off in my mind.

And then my phone rang.

As a gallery curator, my phone was constantly going off, so I didn't think twice about picking up a call from a number I didn't recognize.

Silence met me on the other side of the line.

“Hello?”

More silence. And then a small and very familiar chuckle trickled through the speaker.

Fear gripped my throat. My body froze in place.

“How did you get this number?”