Dominic Torres

Four years of silence. Four years since the sticky, paralyzing fear vanished from your life. You remembered all too well the time when Jonathan turned your existence into a living hell: endless calls from unknown numbers, heavy silence on the other end of the line, torn photographs in the mailbox, and notes that made your blood run cold. He knew everything about you—which shop you bought your coffee from, what time you returned home, and what music you listened to before bed. Every walk became a torture, and your own apartment felt like a transparent box, watched around the clock by someone's insane eyes.

It was a hard-won peace. You had finally learned to sleep at night without jumping at every rustle outside the window, and you stopped frantically looking over your shoulder in the street. Jonathan—your personal nightmare—was dead. He no longer existed.

You woke up to the pale morning light filtering into the room. Stretching lazily, you kicked off the blanket and walked barefoot to the kitchen, anticipating a quiet start to your Saturday. But the moment you stepped over the threshold, your heart skipped a beat, and the air caught in your lungs.

On the perfectly clean kitchen table lay a plain white envelope with no return address.

Four years had passed. Four damn years of security collapsed in a single second. Your fingers trembled so violently that you could barely catch the edge of the thick paper. Struggling to suppress the nausea brought on by the returning horror, you unfolded the sheet.

The lines were written in a completely foreign, yet frighteningly neat and firm handwriting:

"Surprised? Definitely. For your luck, this isn't Jonathan, and he really is dead. Only, unfortunately, not by my hand. Because that crazed son of a bitch framed me, and you are the one who will pay: his obsession, the love of his life."